A Day With the "Family"

Recently the Agape accountant in the National Office, Mari Carmen, called to ask me a favor. "Everyone in the office will be out of town next week at a conference except for me. Since your work is portable, is there any chance you could come to the office, work from here, answer the phone when it rings and keep me company?" After several weeks of being holed up in my home office consumed by tiny details for our conference the invitation was quite inviting.

So, I caught the train early each morning to Barcelona and then caught it back in the evenings. It was actually a needed lift to my "people person" spirit to be in the midst of a flurry of activity. Family Life, Student Venture, Campus Ministry, Jesus film, International Ministry....it all runs through the National Office. Since I'd spent significant time in 2006 in the office I was generally familiar with the protocol, etc. It's a balancing act sometimes to focus on one's own work (in this case the prepartions for our National Staff Family Conference) and the incoming calls, each caller with unique needs.

As the week was coming to a close, I was glad to have been able to fill a tiny gap for my friend and sister in the office. Things had slowed down and I was just wrapping up a few details during this last hour of the work day.

"Brring..." I picked up the phone and it was Samuel's voice on the other end. "There's been another flooding in the studio, Jill. Can you get me the number to our insurance company?" The truth is I had no idea but Mari Carmen did. She found the file and I made a few phone calls.

The day before brought surprise rainstorms (which were desperately needed in the midst of the drought we're in). "Could this have been the cause of the flooding?" I wondered. "Samuel, as soon as I'm finished here in the office I'll come over to help you." If I had been at home I would not have been able to help. I wasn't really sure what I was volunteering for but I was curious to learn how one goes about reducing until removing floodwaters from one's property.

When the clock struck 5pm I left the office and jumped on my rented bicycle,(another interesting public transport option here in Barcelona) and was at the studio within 15 minutes. I entered in to find Samuel alone, scattering sand to help absorb the water. The cause was actually not directly due to the extra rain. It was due to a construction error in the piping a few years ago. All the sewage from the apartments above passed through a relatively wide pipe which is connected underground to a fairly narrow pipe. Occasionally the pipe becomes clogged and there is back up. Nice.

So, there I was in my heels and office attire wondering if I should have kept my mouth shut when we were on the phone earlier. Just then, 3 other staff filed in with another on the way. I was able to help out by making phone calls to find a drainage service. The only problem was that because of all the rain the previous day, they were all lined up with jobs for the next few hours! We finally found a guy that could come when he'd finished the job he was on. So, with nothing else left to do, I figured that I'd have to jump in to lend my helping hands.

Just as the 6 of us had were mopping up the last of the puddles in the back room, someone upstairs flushed the toilet and the water begin to flood into the front room again. In seconds the front room was filled again this time with smelly sewage water. It took all of us to get this additional puddle under control.

At 8:30pm I had to leave to catch my train back home. The rest of the crew stayed to wait on the drainage truck. Apparently he came not long after I left because when I called from the train at 9:30pm to check in, he was finishing up and they were all about to leave.

It wasn't the most entertaining way to spend my evening but it's part of what we do as family, right? Although these people are not my biological family, they are colaborers in the gospel and they are family in Christ. Actually, now that I think abou tit, several of them helped Ruben and me and our families in the hospital after our car accident last year.

How many people in the world have a real family or a virutal family that they can count on in difficult times and moments of crisis? When we have it we often take it for granted. It's when we don't that we feel it the most.

Oh Lord, help us to be grateful for the families that you've given us....biological and otherwise. Help us to be sensitive to those who need family and help us to be generous to them with the family (or families) that you have placed us in.

"God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land." Psalm 68:6