A Different Call

Our church and local university maintained a partnership with missionaries to the Ngäbe people of Costa Rica and Panama for several years. We helped with five church plants and made regular trips to provide training, hold Bible schools, construct or update church buildings, and other requested work. One trip helped us understand the value of a different call.

After learning the Costa Rican government requires churches to have a working bathroom, complete with running water, commode, and shower, a construction team became a top priority. As they planned and collected supplies, the wife of one team member felt called to offer a women’s conference.

A Different Call

Ngäbe women have a rough life, and she believed they needed spiritual nourishment along with some physical pampering they had never experienced. Her vision included haircuts, manicures, pedicures, a special meal they didn’t have to prepare, and small personal gifts for everyone in attendance. As her excitement grew, her husband never discouraged her. Nevertheless, his attitude was, “Sure, sure, you can have your little women’s conference while we’re doing the real work.”

Undeterred, she began recruiting others. Her vision culminated in a service to wash the women’s feet. She wanted this to be a special time, with the women feeling Christ’s love through the team’s servant role.

Upon their arrival, the construction crew went to work, carefully laying a foundation and building the bathroom structure. Out of the corner of their eyes, they viewed the progress of the women’s conference. They found the large number who attended surprising.

A Humble Call

The Ngäbe women loved the special attention but also listened attentively to the truth proclaimed. When the team began washing the women’s feet, even the children watched reverently — as did the construction team.

With an assembly line style, they washed, dried, and massaged the women’s calloused feet. Then they polished their nails and gave each a colorful pair of flip flops. They loved the women with each drop of water poured from the pans and their eyes … with every gentle stroke of the cloth … with every application of lotion or polish … and with their prayerful smiles. No person there felt God’s love more than those servant women on their knees and the men who watched with hammers in their hands.

Later, several of the Ngäbe women told the team, “No one has ever done anything for me like this.” Every team member echoed that sentiment. Never had they experienced such an event.

Same Message, Different Methods

And the husband who minimized the little women’s conference? He now believes that conference was probably God’s primary plan for their trip. However, the entire team fulfilled their call — whether through construction, teaching, evangelism, or a long overdue day of respite.

Before the team left, the Ngäbe church had a working bathroom that met government regulations. Everyone present heard the gospel message. And the women had been fed — physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

What ministries have we minimized because their methods differ from ours? Is God calling us to a new way of feeding our world?

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6 NIV).