Kombanwa friends and readers,
A good marathon runner can run 26.2 miles in under 4 hours. I am astounded by that. But what happens if it is a 26.2 mile obstacle course? Could their bodies endure? Would their spirits break? We all set goals for ourselves, sometimes it is just another day of work, or it might be whenever we step through our front doors. Usually it is a combination of all of them. We struggle to have the endurance and mental toughness to make it through the twenty-four hours we are given and how we use them. How do you keep pushing forward when you are dehydrated and cramping? Or when you think your muscles will give out?
I have spent a lot of 5 am to 10 or 11 pm days in the last months. Then I got sick last week, and I still wound up with a pretty full plate of work. I learned a valuable lesson last week when I felt like my time was out of my hands. Patience allots to success in that it allows you to relax and see the opportunities in the midst of chaos. It is also the source of the endurance we need to advance forward when we feel so far behind on our priorities. Today was my chance to put this lesson into practice.
I have training for a fight this Friday. I have to prepare for my trip back to the U.S. next Monday. I am still working on ministry stuff for this week. My biggest goal for this year is to take a small mission team of Nicaraguans to Japan, and today that took its just place on the totem pole consuming nearly the whole day. The result was satisfying.
My wife and I will take two youth to Osaka, Japan in November to share the gospel. One is a polyglot volunteer with the One by One ministry who sings, cooks, and speaks Spanish, English, German, and Japanese. His spare time is spent working with kids here in the church on scholastic reinforcement. The other is one of my wife's Japanese students at the House of Hope. The House of Hope is a refuge for women who were prostitutes and their children. This young woman is studying to be a nurse with a diligent work ethic and a humble heart. The young man, Kevin, obtained his passport a few weeks ago. Today we went out for the girl's passport.
My wife and I left our house at 6:30 this morning. We got to the House of Hope at 7. We checked to make sure that the girl had all of the necessary documents. From there we left for the immigration offices to get her passport. When we arrive at immigration, we are placed in the first line of many to be sent to one of the other innumerable lines. There we are told that our payments are not accepted at immigration, but rather at the bank located at a convenient ten-minute drive. We go to the bank where we luckily find one of the only drive thru transactions and pay for the passport. We then take the voucher back to immigration. We go back through the first line, and the lady directs us to another line where we can by the paperwork for the passport. We get the paperwork, and the four of us fill it out as a team to avoid any mistakes or ink stains which would cause us to restart the process. Then we go outside to photocopy our documents. Then we return to the first line. The lady asks for all of the documents. We were told at first that we just needed the birth certificate, and the lady asks for a cédula(like a social security card). The girl was just eligible to get one in January, but they had not yet given her hers. So now we had to hunt this down.
We drive to the other side of a major city to a small office, where supposedly we might find the cédula that was applied for four months prior. When we arrive They tell us that the government changed the required document for withdrawal from her birth cirtificate from the mayor's office, to a birth certificate from the Supreme Electoral Counsel which was located even further away, and we did not know what she needed for it. They changed the law and her birth certificate that she had for her entire existence on this planet was now null. We then remembered that they said that she could also use her application information for her cédula. So we drove to the House of Hope outside of the city itself on a dirt road in the mountains outside of the city to get the application information.
Once we obtain what we need, we drive all the way back to the immigration office. We go through the first line again, and we finally pass!!! They send us to a new line where we wait to get a number to stand in another line. This line took by far the longest, but when the girl and her mother stepped in, they turned in their documents, went through a confusing interview, and finally got confirmed for her passport!!!! It took almost nine hours total, but mission accomplished!
In the midst of it all I kept praying, and I felt like God was repeating, "Just be patient." Sometimes patience is God's way of preparing us for bigger things. Sometimes we need the obstacle courses to mold our characters into what God is calling us to be for the next situation. Endurance training prepares us for bigger races, and the race we run for God's glory is the biggest there is. Don't let exhaustion stop you! Be patient and keeps your eyes on the prize!
O daiji ni!!
"We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation." - Romans 5:3-4
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