I am sitting here waiting for midnight to roll around so that our boys come in. On one hand I am tired and want to go to bed, on the other….. it is finally quiet. After eight weeks at an aerobic pace, there are no visitors on our campus, only the 100 of us that live here year-round! There are no screaming voices outside my window. There are no more requests from our boys to stay out past curfew ‘just one more time’ so that they can spend time with the American mission trip guests. Man, I already miss it!
We wrapped up summer with a worship service and baptized one of our very own youth in the swimming pool. She was the 10th person to be baptized this summer. It was one of those super sweet moments that you wish you could wrap up so that you could open it up and experience it again and again. Something powerful happens when a group of people are all going the same way, with the same goals in mind. You can feel the power, the passion, the presence of the One who is pushing everyone in the same direction.
We felt that moment powerfully one day when we were serving out in the Rio III, a squatters’ village that Back2Back serves. It is about the driest, dustiest, smelliest place that I’ve encountered. It is a neighborhood built on a trash dump. The people there are poor in wealth, but rich in spirit.
View while mission trip guests walk through Rio III - © DSL Images
While serving the community, one of our group members that felt the One pushing, so at His prompting, she grabbed a bucket of water and rag and began washing women’s feet. These women are poor. Several have been abandoned themselves by men or family. And here was this American, washing, massaging and drying their feet. What a picture of what I want my heart to look like. I want to be a washer. I want to see the dry, dirty, lowly, and I want to wash them in the name of Jesus. I want to crawl around on the concrete floor washing feet until my knees are bloody so that I don’t leave anyone out. I want to forget me.
A woman from Rio III has her feet washed - © DSL Images
The only way I know to do this is to stay connected. Connected to the One, the only One that can move our hearts and souls to strive for holiness. To want to be more than we are, but in a way that makes us less. Less of us. Less of our wants and desires and more of the desires of the people that surround us. Those who feel unlovely or hardened. I want to wash them. I want to massage their dirty feet because I finally understand how valuable they are. More of them, less of me. God only you can move me in that direction.