Faith Journey Life Journey

Good morning, dear reader. If you want to make your reading of today’s entry one with sensory participation resembling what many of us experienced, take the following steps:

1. Turn off your air conditioner.
2. Turn on some bright lamps and point ‘em right at you.
3. Start a fire in the fireplace.
4. Sit next to it.
5. Rub some dirt and tar on your arms, face, and in your hair.
6. Bend over and lift up your computer fifty times or so.

Doing all that could be key to feeling the heat of the day out in Verina, Iowa. I’ll cut to the chase and say that after our work day ended, I discovered a post on my Facebook page from Art saying the state of Iowa had declared a heat advisory and asked people to get indoors near the time we’d wrapped up for the day. Sunday looks to be even hotter, so we’ll see what happens in terms of what sort of work we do and at what time.

Paint the Town Red, White, and Blue

As you can likely tell by now, today saw us return to Verina to continue work on yesterday’s unfinished projects. If we had thought a little more, we’d of taken more “before” photos of the park because the “after” is a night and day difference in terms of a welcoming arena for gathering, playing, and town pride. The crew finished painting the bell (red for the bell, white and blue for the base) as well as the small barn (a more accurate nomenclature, I’ve been told by the youth, than when I named it a “shed” in yesterday’s post), the merry-go-round got its white panels to match the red panels and blue bars, and the picnic shelter got a fresh coat of white paint on its peaks and beamwork.

The merry-go-round received a little extra white paint in the center, which had already been painted blue. A little splatter turned into *ahem* a clearly intentional white splatter piece of artwork. Despite its accidental origins, it does look nice, indeed. The merry-go-round isn’t the only thing that received accidental painting. Stepping off of it, Kelsey managed to stick her foot onto the edge of a paint can and tipped a wave of white paint on her white shoe, leaving one side white with mud and dirt and the other side pristine white. Meanwhile, William reports the crew had to contend with not only hornet nests in the picnic shelter rafters but also “spider nests,” – large clumps of spider webs with hard clumps of wrapped egg sacs and “food.”

Later, several people got to stand up on the lift – while others like Trevor, Mitchell, Sam, Alex O., and Alex N. used ladders to gain access to the picnic shelter roof – and trim tree branches. Katie, Olivia, and Anna cleared the debris that fell to the ground.

Hijinks Ensue

Much of the debris was put into piles which Justin promptly turned into a fort. He stood his ground in the fort, a big smile on his face, as his peers piled more and more sticks and branches on the battlements. It was around this time a new member joined our work crew: Max Liquidator. That’s the name of the water gun Brenda brought out of her van to give willing (and some not-so-willing) participants a quick and cool splash of refreshing water. Tragically for Justin, it was Max Liquidator who assaulted the fort.

Hattie, Maggie, and Dana got to go up on a mechanical lift (“As high as it would go,” I was told) to paint the peaks of the barn. That’s when Dana received mystery paint on her leg: her scheming friends on the ground below gave her a quick swipe with the brush and backed away, leaving its origins a “mystery.”

Unbeknownst to William, Dave gave the girls some sponges to scrub their paint brushes clean. So when William insisted he could clean his brushes as well, he started by hand. After a half hour or so, Dave gave him a sponge and the work was done in a snap.

Up On the Rooftop

Meanwhile, the shingle work continued on City Hall. During the morning, all of the shingles got stripped away and piled into the waiting wagon below and the tar paper and plywood boards got put up on a majority of the roof. I had run to town to enter yesterday’s blog post in so when I came back for lunch I saw the roof crew sitting there, beat. Each of them was coated in a fine layer of what looked like black soot. Arm hair patches were turned into thick clouds of black hovering a half-inch above their arms. Streaks of oily, sweaty dirt crossed their foreheads and cheeks. Once white shirts were a patchwork of shades of gray. And the posture they took at the tables was that of outright exhaustion.

In the afternoon, just over half of the crew went back to the church to shower up and head to the pool while the rest of us continued to work on the roof. I was on the ground crew with Sam, Dave, Maggie, and Molly picking up nails, shingles, and delivering up sheets of plywood that Kent and Steve cut at Mayor Chris’s house. Meanwhile, Hattie and Dana joined Jacob, Jake, Loretta, and a few locals on the roof to lay the new shingles and attach the plywood and fresh boards. By the time we finished for the day, nearly a third of the roof was completely shingled.

It was hot, long work and at a certain point, it was simply time to call it quits. For some it was difficult, leaving a job unfinished when so much time and energy had been poured into it. Yet there’s something of a teachable moment in that, too, in terms of learning how things unfinished affects one emotionally. It came up during our processing meeting that evening in small groups, as well as topics like self care, humorous anecdotes, and discussing how we can apply our work to our lives and faith, metaphorically.

And the Rest of It

No one went to the pool; we were too beat. It’s likely on the docket for Sunday, though, after we spend time in farmers’ fields and ditches of debris. Because it’s due to be the hottest on Sunday (perhaps over 100 degrees) we’ll start earlier at 7:00am and end earlier, too, which will allow more much-needed time at the pool during the hottest part of the day.As for the remainder of Saturday, it was low-key, with some games, some chatter, and a movie (500 Days of Summer). Oh, and a nap or two. As for dinner, we were served a tremendous, generous meal by members of HUMC, starting with cheesecake Jell-O, vegetables and dip, and then baked potatoes, sweet green beans, rolls, and a main course of ham balls (giant meatballs of ground ham, hamburger, and sausage all smothered in BBQ sauce). Dessert was brownies and ice cream and by the time that rolled around, some people were too stuffed to even partake, including hard-working teens who were up on the roof all day long.

My Sheep Show Metaphor

It’s difficult to believe the trip is already more than half over, though that’s part of how a five-day mission trip goes, I suppose. I’ll leave you with an observation I had about the sheep show we attended on Friday night. If I use this as a sermon illustration down the road, I’ll ask you not to stand up and shout, “HEARD IT!” on that particular Sunday, dear reader.

During our evening processing time, we had our small groups discuss what happens when we enter into a competitive or judgmental nature when it comes to the work we do, how much we do, and how we do it. Did so-and-so do enough work, did this person work as hard as that other person did, and so on. When we enter into that comparison zone, we can lose sight of the focus of why we’re here: to help others with our labors and to help ourselves by learning from the process.

I watched that 4-H sheep show and listened to how the judge explained the call he made. For the pen-of-three contest, when a youth shows three sheep all together, the judge went through each trio and told of their specific merits and demerits. It was clear what he was looking for and why some trios rose to the top and why some didn’t. When he gave his criteria, he gave it to all of the competitors and the entire crowd (which likely has some adults who used to compete against each other in the very same contests when they were young). It wasn’t a blind decision with the reasoning unknown to the competitors. This judge turned the contest into a teachable moment everyone could learn from for next time. I think about the work we’re doing and how much teaching and patience goes into how we go about it and what we can learn from how the judge operated.

When one shows a pen-of-three, it’s not just the youth in charge of the sheep who goes out there trying to wrangle three sheep by his or herself. Other 4-Hers, their competitors, come out and help them. If you’re not showing in the round, you’re holding your competitor’s sheep. And you’re doing your best job. You’re not poking the sheep in the neck so it jumps. You’re not trying to sabotage. You’re showing good sportsmanship and taking it all in as a learning experience. When I spoke about this to the group, I asked them to imagine either the Minnetonka or Eden Prairie football teams choosing to offer water to each other at half time. I think about the work we’re doing and how it’s less about competing with each other to do the best job and more about doing the best job we as a group can do.

Finally, there were some sheep that just kept jumping around, bleating, misbehaving. That’s got to be frustrating, to raise these sheep for several months and do everything right only for the sheep to have a bad day when it comes time to be judged. How much work do we put into things only to have them not turn out the way we envisioned them? I think about the roofing work we’re doing in particular, and how we’re leaving the job uncompleted for other crews to help with, and whether we can be 100% okay with that or not. It can be tricky, if one lets it get to them.

And in the long run, there’s a whole lot of work that will need to be done – years’ worth, millions of dollars’ worth – long after we’ve left the area. It puts the whole thing in perspective. In the meantime, we get to do what we do and know that they couldn’t get to the next step without what we did. That doesn’t fuel our egos; that fuels our hearts.

That will do it for now. Your comments have been appreciated during our evening meetings and we hope you’ll keep them coming!

Regards,
Nate