Skills

Much of our work at Santa Maria Virgen today required some degree of skill -- or at least practice -- that not all of our mission trip team had. There was mixing of concrete, and laying of block, and setting up of concrete forms, and several other tasks that Ted and Oakley and Lee B seemed to know well enough, and that seemed more than familiar to the Honduran workers among us, but were outside the skill sets of most of us American visitors. Tying rebar and digging trenches is easy to share with less skilled workers -- like us -- because it's hard to do it wrong. But I, at least, knew that I didn't want to get anywhere near laying block or pouring cement -- I could just imagine coming back in a year or two and finding that the church had fallen down because there was a flaw in the foundation that a well-meaning but unskilled gringo worker had left by accident! Even some of the simplest tasks -- like digging foundation trenches -- went much faster when the Hondurans did them. So Martha Erickson and Lee N and I did our best with pickaxe and shovel, digging a trench, until a couple of Honduran workers came up and took over from us, and finished the trench much more quickly than we would have done. And that was after they had taken over and finished the trench that Todd Doorenbos and his mother Pat had been working on. All in all, it turned into a day of jumping in to help with things we were able to help with, and waiting while others worked, watching for our moments of helpfulness to arrive.

At some point in the day it occurred to me that, although there wasn't much going on at the worksite that I was skilled enough to really help with, there were some other skills I had, that might even be relevant in this working context. I've not had any practice in laying block; but I have lots of practice in saying prayers. I could sit there, I realized, on the sidelines, ready to jump in with a simple task when it presented itself -- and all the while I could be praying for the church, and for the workers, and for the people the church would one day serve, and for our mission team members, and for the folks back home, and for the beauty of the mountainside, and for -- well, for anyone or anything that God knew needed the benefit of prayer. Workers in the Lord have many skills; and if my skills aren't in construction, well then I could use the skills with which I have been gifted.

I started off with a simple prayer phrase I've been using lately, a verse from the Book of Lamentations, "The loving-kindness of the Lord never ceases." I repeated it over and over in my mind, like a mantra, visualizing the loving-kindness of God as an infinite support for Dana, Margaret, Ted, Oakley, Victor, Concepcion, whoever my vision fell upon at that moment. After a while I switched to the Lord's Prayer, and began repeating that in my mind. We've been saying the Lord's Prayer as part of our Noonday Office every day before lunch -- in Spanish. And though I don't know Spanish well at all, I do know the Lord's Prayer very well, and I began to think about the meaning of the Prayer as it gets expressed in different words. I started to think about the words of the Prayer in Greek in the two Gospels where it appears, and how those meanings influence the prayer as we say it in contemporary English. I began to think about the history of the English words in the Prayer, how they've changed meanings over the years, and what subtle theological nuances are woven into such simple-sounding words today. As I recited the Prayer in my mind, I began to change the words, reflecting on how these nuances can be expressed in different phrasings -- Give us today our bread for today; Forgive us our sins; Forgive us our debts; Make up for what is lacking in us, as we make up for what is lacking in each other; Lead us not into temptation; Do not put us to the test; Do not bring us into times of trial and tribulation; Bring us out of evil; Now and always and always and always. The Prayer that Jesus taught us turned and flowed and opened in my mind, applying itself anew to the people and situations presented to me; and yet it was always the same prayer at the core. Over and over again, and with a delight of new discovery each time around.

And then, as I prayed, I would see that someone needed some masonry blocks for a new course of foundation wall they were laying, and I'd get up and bring them some blocks. Or two Honduran workers were about to mix some more concrete and would need water; and I'd get a bucket and go down the hill to where the water barrels had been delivered -- there is no plumbing at Santa Maria Virgen -- and I'd bring up a couple bucketfulls. Or a form was ready to have concrete poured, needing only the open end to be blocked; so I'd get some wet paper and dam up the end. Simple, silly, unskilled things I could do, while the skills of the skilled workers went to more important things. Over and above and through and around it all, I could do the thing that I was skilled at: I could pray.

So, little by little, task by task, skill by skill, the worksite at Santa Maria Virgen is being transformed. Already in the few days we've been here, the site looks different: more formed, more developed, more revealing of the potential of the church that will be here. Hard work and shared work and skilled work and prayer work, all together building up the People of God, the church.