Slow and steady...

To be honest, there is a great amount of anxiety that pumps through my heart, mind, and fingers as I sit down to write each week about our time in Jamaica. The reality is that each week is very much like the others. Our mornings are spent primarily at home in preparation for afternoon and nightly meetings and classes. Our weekends are typically busy in study and teaching. So what is new? Well, not much.

I did throw away my favorite hat this week because it was covered in mold. I apparently sweat a lot in this Jamaican climate, which has left my hat damp - a prime target for mold to grow on in the intense, humid heat.

Kirsten and I also celebrated Memorial Day. We did not organize a parade of any sort, but we did eat pizza and beef! We were able to break away from Buff Bay yesterday to enjoy a day of mini-vacation, including some time on the restaurant's water slide.

As this is the second post I have written today (although the other one you may never see) I get this intense anxiety to write things that are shocking, startling, incredible, and fresh. Well, life is not always lived on the mountain tops; ministry, I am learning, is the same way. It is a consistent, faithful plugging along that we do. We strive to live well for the sake of the Gospel while praying that others will see Jesus in us and be drawn to Him.

The longer we are here, the more we see that consistency and faithfulness are the foundation to the Christian life and specifically for the ministries here in Buff Bay. Change is neither occurring at record pace nor are conversions of souls being tallied in the hundreds like a Billy Graham crusade. But these are not the point. The way God pulls in the harvest are not really up to us. I have recently heard it said that we can only control two things: our faithfulness and our effectiveness, meaning we can only give it our all. We must be diligent and consistent in our lives (which is faithfulness) and evaluate whether or not we are doing all that we can do in our lives to be faithful (which is effectiveness). Kirsten and I are trying to do both to the glory of God and the good of the people of Buff Bay. Let us be faithful people; that is what God truly desires.