October 2005

To all my Presbyterian Sisters and Brothers,

It was quite early morning, the organic Bolivian coffee brewing. I was doing dishes with some feeling of irritation. We don’t have our solar water heater running yet, and here at 11,000 feet the water is always cold.

Then it dawned on me, just as the sun rose over the newly snow-brushed Royal Range, that I was getting paid for doing the dishes. I was getting paid by thousands of Presbyterian church members to be here now, to be present. Sometimes taking the compost out, sometimes reading the newspaper, sometimes in a meeting all day, sometimes lifting llamas into a pickup. Sometimes doing dishes. A ministry of presence.

And then I wondered, as I rinsed, how often you in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and you in Port Townsend, Washington, are thanked for making this ministry possible. And what of you in Louisville? Maybe all you hear are the complaints of those of us in the field for the failures of the postal system or the lost email, the late paycheck, our coordinator out of touch in Haiti.

Well, as I finished the last plate, I resolved to say thank you right now. Thank you for your prayers, your hard work, your donations, your faith that our mission is helping to build a bit of God’s kin-dom on this tormented Earth. You, the personnel in Worldwide Ministries, need to hear my appreciation for your difficult work of tracking all of us crazy mission staff out to save the world right now.

For me, it is such a privilege to represent you and our great church, to bring the good news of hope and freedom from the heavy burden of hypocrisy, deceit, and greed; to speak in the name of Jesus, who helped his Mom in the kitchen and who was known for his open-fire baked fish.

Thanks for doing the dishes.

Bob and Julie

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 60