In the end, here is how the schedule worked out:
Week 1: Family Camp at Pine Cove Woods
Week 2-3: Time at Home and visiting church
Week 4: Time away with Ginger
Week 5: Isolation
Week 6: Preparation to come back
Surprise!
Week 1 – I was speaking at Family Camp at www.pinecove.comWoods. Traditionally, I teach at one of their Family Camps each year and it always creates great family time. It is more or less restful, but it is a great focused family time each year for me to get special and unique times with each of them and also all of us together. This felt like it would be a good transition week from work to away from work.
However, God has a surprise for me. Family Camp turned out to be week 2 of my Sabbatical.
- The Dominican Republic and Dan
The week before camp, I was scheduled to go on a short-term mission trip to the Dominican Republic with our students, including my eldest son and daughter. Typically, short-term mission trips are just hard. You are sleeping in rough conditions without American comforts of a comfortable mattress or Air Conditioning. There are dogs barking, roosters crowing and other noises going on all night (at least in Central America) in the rural areas and loud motor traffic in the urban areas.
The work is usually very low-training kinds of grunt labor. You paint, lay grass sod, clean up, or do some low-level construction (or at least a non-carpenter like I do). You may work hard playing/being crowd control, with local kids for a VBS kind of event. It is wonderful.
But it isn’t restful. The job (rightly so, to some degree) for short-term mission groups from the US is to be a cog in an engine that has cogs that can be replaced weekly without hurting the overall system. So, they work the weekly cog hard and then send you back the day before they welcome in the next cog the next week from a different church in the US.
There is nothing wrong with this. I’m not complaining. Understanding the correct role for short-term missionary trips is a complex one worthy of conversation at some point, but not here.
Regardless, in this context, my point is that I was predicting little or no restfulness from this trip.
I was getting the chance to get some special time 
with my eldest two (Mark and Ellie) who were coming too. They ended up working in a physical therapy most of the week. I will say that I love traveling with my kids. They are the very best of travel companions.
Once there I discovered that I would be helping the group that was making water filters for the locals. I had done something like that before in another country. We had developed an assembly line and worked for a few hours cranking out ceramic bowls for water filters.
Exactly what I had figured.
So, when Dan showed up in his truck to take us to the water filter site, I was ready to get to work. The other person assigned to this track, Michael, was too.
Dan drove us to a small community, Los Corralles (I think that is the spelling), and stopped in front of the typical concrete style house. There were a half-dozen “old” women sitting on the front porch, sitting in a random assortment of chairs and sofas. The woman whose house it was, was named “Lucia” and she let them make filters on her back-porch area.
Dan introduced us to the women and Michael and I said hello and headed back to behind the house to get to work. We set down our backpacks, water bottles, etc. (welcome to being an American on a mission trip, right?) and then slowly realized that Dan had not also come back.
We waited for a few seconds before looking back to the side porch where the women were.
There was Dan, sitting in one of the chair talking in his broken Spanish to the ladies. He caught my eye and with more than a little bit of an eye-roll, and a signature forehead rub, beckoned us back.
I assumed we had accidentally done something rude and needed to go back and make a little more effort at keeping the peace. So, I went back and stood by the ladies.
With a much clearer eye roll, Dan looked up at me and mouthed “Sit. Down.”
I sat and so did Michael.
Lucia asked a question which in my limited Spanish, I thought was about coffee.
Dan asked us if we wanted coffee and then told us that we did. He then asked us if we wanted it a certain way or “Dominican” style.
I don’t recall what Michael did, but I said, “Dominican style”. (I am a sophisticated world traveler, after all). Lucia got up and went into the house, bringing back a lovely, though completely mismatched tea/coffee set.
She poured two cups and to mine added 4 heaping teaspoons of sugar. That’s the Dominican way. Diabetes is a real issue there, by the way.
Fortunately, I liked sweet coffee. In the past, I had been teased for preferring a candy bar in a cup to coffee. It was true.
Ironically, by the end of my time in Dominican, I would drink coffee black and I would know how coffee was meant to be drunk (hint: slowly) and why (hint: slowly)
We sat there with those ladies attempting to communicate for about an hour or so. Finally, their little party broke up and we went to the area behind the house for Dan to express his strategy.
His strategy was to use water filters to get into peoples’ homes and lives and to get to know them. This wasn’t about water filters. It was about introducing people to Jesus via Dan via water filters, partially via short-term missionaries.
He said it took about 3 hours to make one. He said if we made 2 in the week, he would be pleased. After all, any faster and he wouldn’t be able to get to know the people enough to be ready to place one with them.
So, our week was spent walking and driving around greeting people in the various communities. Each day represented 3-4 cups of coffee with Lucia and her family and friends. The coffee was excellent. We got to know various people in Los Corralles. I learned to pay dominoes with the men (not well, but they let me play).
We made 2 filters (and I think had a 3rdhardening when we left). We placed one in a new home and we checked on a handful of others. Each time, we drank coffee, met and played with children, sometimes helped with something, had gardens explained to us, and met people.
At night, we would come back to the entire group of our church and hear about their work – typically the more “normal” kind of short-term mission work. We met Dan’s lovely family and heard about his plans for this aspect of ministry.
By far the most important thing we did was sit.
And drink coffee. We drank it slowly. Across the week, for my sanity, I slowly got less and less sugar. In the end, I realized I like the taste of black coffee if it is pretty good, pretty fresh and drunk slowly.
I am a teacher and team-leader. These are the most valuable skills I bring, probably. I neither taught nor led while there. It is good that my gifts are able to be practiced in my everyday life, and it is usually a frustration to go somewhere to minister in ways I am least valuable to the Kingdom.
This mission trip wasn’t about me accomplishing anything. It was about God, without my input or permission, resting me.
As I understand it, the actor in Matthew 11 is Jesus. He is the one who causes or gives the rest. He caused rest in me. He created the conditions. He made it happen. He started my Sabbatical a week early with rolled eyes and a mouthed “Sit. Down.” from Dan.
God spoke through Dan that week for me.
27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus Christ recorded in Matthew’s gospel. Chapter 11, verses 27-29.
My yoke that week was perfectly cut for me. It fit well.
This was a great lesson in looking to God to fulfill HIS sabbatical for me. It allowed me to hold the rest of this experiment in peace much more loosely.
