Day Five: We Leave. They Stay.

Having breakfast an hour later this morning felt a little like trying to pay off a school loan with a five dollar off coupon from CVS. It is a nice gesture. It is simply, laughably inadequate against what is actually owed. Our bodies were demanding a full week of sleep and we handed them sixty extra minutes and a plate of eggs. But we shuffled in anyway, grateful for the slower start, and sat down to another wonderful meal of eggs, fresh local fruit, and the low, unhurried hum of a team that finally got to wake up like normal people for once.

Somewhere in the middle of that meal, the conversation turned in a direction we did not expect. Several of the kitchen staff began opening up about health issues, real, significant, major-scale needs they have been quietly carrying. If you have been reading along, you already know these are the women who feed us three times a day, every day, and somehow still find the energy to laugh with us while they do it. Come to find out, some of them are doing that while carrying burdens heavy enough to buckle a much less faithful person.

They serve with In the Midst, and they have their own children, their own husbands, their own homes full of ordinary problems, and they have not let one bit of it dim the kindness they pour into every meal they set in front of us. I do not know if there is a spiritual gift called "serving well while quietly exhausted," but if there is, I watched several women operate in it this past week.

After breakfast invited them to their worship center, a cinder block building that somebody clearly loves, because it is spotless and bright and decorated with real care. We opened in prayer, and one by one, the ladies began to share their needs, with Kim from In the Midst translating and filling in whatever context we needed to actually understand what we were hearing. Some of them shared through tears. You could see it before the words even came out, hope worn thin, shoulders sagging under weight that had clearly been there a while. When they finished, we gathered around each woman, anointed her with oil, and prayed, team members laying hands on shoulders that have been carrying far more than we realized.

I want to stop here and say something plain: I believe prayer works.

Not as a nice sentiment we perform because it is expected of us, but as an actual weapon, aimed at real darkness, with real effect. James does not hedge on this. He says "the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working" (James 5:16). Not "might have some influence." Great power. Working.

Jesus told His disciples that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18), and I have come to believe that prayer is one of the main ways we lean our shoulder into those gates and push. We are not gently knocking and hoping somebody answers. We are storming a kingdom that has already been defeated, just not fully evicted yet.

So yes, we prayed for healing this morning, real bodies, real diagnoses, real fear. But underneath every request was the bigger one, the one Jesus taught us to pray before we ever ask for anything else: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). Healing is wonderful. But we were not just asking God to fix something. We were asking Him to invade something, to plant His flag a little further into a place that needs Him.

Here is the part I keep sitting with tonight. These staff members of In the Midst, give and give and give, to their families, to their community, and every single week to whichever team happens to be standing in their kitchen eating their food and soaking up their patience. That is a constant outpouring, week after week, group after group, with very little season of the year where the tank gets a real chance to refill.

I know that ache. I have stood in that exact kind of tired myself, the bone-deep exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much you slept and everything to do with how much you have given away. It is a tired you push through, not because you are running on empty, but because somebody in front of you has a need that will not wait for your tank to feel full again. Ministry like this rarely announces itself with fanfare. If you take nothing else from today's post, take this: pray for the people who serve you. The ones behind the scenes are so often the ones running lowest. We feel invigorated and inspired coming off a missions trip, but that inspiration came at a cost, and the cost was paid by people we may never think to thank.

Here is the trap I have fallen into myself, and I suspect I am not alone in it. It is easy, once you feel that spark, to assume everyone around you should be running on the same fuel. We come home from a week like this one lit up, telling stories, showing photos, ready to sign up for the next trip before we have even unpacked. And somewhere in that excitement, it is easy to forget that the people who made our "mountaintop" possible are still down in the valley, still cooking the next meal, still absorbing the next family's grief, long after our flight has landed and our fire has cooled a few degrees.

Our inspiration is real. But it was never free. Somebody else's steady, unglamorous faithfulness is what we are spending when we feel it. Paul told the Galatians, "let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9), and that verse was not written for the visitors who show up for a week. It was written for the ones who stay. The least we can do is notice them, name them, and carry some of that weight home in our prayers long after the feeling has faded.

Until All Have Heard,

Pastor Mark