Bologna Sandwiches

Last Friday night we took a group of students to The Garden. It is a homeless shelter in Smyrna that houses about 50 women and children. We went to throw a birthday party for all of the children there, which I thought sounded super exciting. Balloons, cupcakes, a pinata, and lots of games and singing with some kiddos. That's right up my alley. I love throwing birthday parties. But we started the evening off by making sack lunches for the ministry there to pass out to homeless people today. So I volunteered for bologna sandwich making. It was just 150 sandwiches and there was about 5 of us working on it, so it wasn't that bad. Then a lady came in and asked us sandwich makers if we could help out and make a "few more" sandwiches. She said around 250, but I swear we must have made a couple thousand mechanically separated meat sandwiches. I would spread a loaf of bread out over the counter. Kevin O. would apply mustard (then "mustard sauce" after we ran out of regular mustard...ugh). I would oh-so-carefully place the bologna on, then both of us would put them together and pass them down to the bagging team. I'm gonna be straight with you and say...it was terrible. I hate monotonous work. Doing the same thing over and over for 3 hours is torture for me. I hate it. And what's worse, I didn't realize I was missing the birthday party until Jono came in the kitchen and said, "Alright. The party's over. Ya'll ready to go?" I was super bummed. Everyone else had bonded with a kid and ministered to them and taken lots of pictures. I had made bologna sandwiches. It was not my idea of a glorious night of ministry. (I must say here that Kevin O'Shields seemed to quite enjoy himself being "mustard man" which I couldn't quite understand except that he attributed it to having a Type A personality.)
Anyway, I say all that to say that sometimes ministry stinks (quite literally when we're talking about bologna). And I don't mean "THE ministry", like being married to a pastor, although that's a completely different post. I mean serving. Doing things for God's kingdom that need to be done. It's not all rainbows and butterflies and coming home with lots of cute pictures of you with a bunch of homeless kids who fell in love with you. Someone's gotta make the bologna sandwiches in God's kingdom.
And, no, it's not a matter of feeling "called" to do it (which I will blog about further tomorrow). Believe me, there was no feeling of "this is what I was made for" last night.
It was not fun.
But Saturday, there were a lot of people living under bridges in Atlanta who got to eat a yummy sandwich for lunch, and that makes me grateful that God stuck me in that kitchen.
I wonder what kind of things God wants you to make happen but you're waiting on it to "feel" right?? More on that rant tomorrow!!