The List

I am a person who likes lists. I have lists in a notebook I keep for work. I have lists in a calendar I keep for home. I have folders with lists in them for the various projects in which I am involved. I have lists in my head all the time. It's like a data ticker wherever I go. People talk, I hear them in list form.

At first blush, it would seem that Mission work is also about lists. Dan Valentine has a whole entire notebook of lists that gets scratched out, re-ordered and listed again. Debbie Peterson has lists that seem to be growing with every minute that she is on the site. Our faithful BM Team has the shortest list... I think it probably says "Finish."

While our lists are important, coming to New Orleans is not about what we get to mark off our lists. It's about the lives that God is touching through our lists. We won't even come close to accomplishing all that is on our hearts to do this week. But as our Devotional Leaders (Beth Williams, Alex Ball, Drew Anderson, David Johnson) told us last night... there will be more crews to come behind us. We are a small link in the chain that God is using to haul New Orleans out of their despair.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine that our little tasks will amount to anything when we look at the great need. But in an exercise of believing that no task, no contribution, no effort is too little ... yes, you guessed it ... I went back to my old habits and made a list.

List number 1: our people. Paralegals, corporate executives, stay at home moms, stay at home grandmas, teachers, administrators, secretaries, students, children under 10, 4 adult men, 13 middle schoolers, some wild assortment of crazy, fun women and only a handful of folks who have ever done anything like this before. We are ust 39 normal folks.

List number 2: our accomplishments, to date. Repair exit signs, weed a children's garden, cut grass, remove 13 old and install new windows, move 50 boxes of tee shirts, apply two coats of paint to 15 doors, scrape & re-paint trim, order, dig 15 3' holes, purchase and install 15 galvanized steel fence posts, replace facia and angle trim on house exterior, install 45 fence rails, apply 2 coats of primer paint and 2 coats of exterior paint (by hand) on an entire house, remove two walls, install over 60 pieces of siding (of various sizes), clean church pews, paint 2 coats of ceiling paint on a new tutorial room in the church, touch up trim across the church, clean and prepare a conference room and office for the new Presbyterian Disaster Assistance central office, destroy two pads of concrete, remove stand alone concrete stairs, paint furniture, record three hours of disaster area video, conduct 7 volunteer interviews, record 8 testimonies, conduct 3 victim interviews, install 150 fence boards, etcetera!

Hmm... maybe a list is not such a bad thing from time to time. :)

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Becky Jordan
Blogging the FPCMTTANOSBM, 2007