A sweet potato.  An honest-for-goodness sweet potato.

That is what popped out of the package I picked up today from the post office.

Lola Stephens, a wonderful, sweet saint from Missouri, sent us an actual sweet potato, with instructions on how to plant and grow them! Though we have never physically met, we are blessed by our e-mail friendship with Lola, discussing details of each other’s lives.

We had shared our excitement at actually finding sweet potatoes in the grocery store one time.  We savored them at Thanksgiving (along with a Butterball turkey a friend TOTED here in his carry-on!). Lola decided that instead of “giving us a fish,” she would teach us how to fish!

We are now the parents of a beautiful, bouncing brown baby——-sweet potato.

I am a little apprehensive.  I don’t know if I have what it takes to raise a large family of sweet potatoes.  Am I up for the time commitment?  Am I in it for the long haul?  It’s a serious commitment, not to be taken lightly.  We’ll be responsible for weekly feedings, watering, and weeding, not to mention, the work it will take to get the nursery prepared.

I’ve seen the statistics.  I don’t want to be one of the men who only spends 5 minutes a day in meaningful involvement with his growing sweet potatoes.  I want to finish the task, sitting down in peace this fall, my “quiver” full of pounds and pounds of sweet potatoes.

So we are going to take the plunge!  We are going to dig in (literally) and commit to seeing those “babies” grow!

But we were not called here to grow sweet potatoes!  We are digging aggressively into ministry in Moldova.  I know that missions articles always lead you to believe that the harvest is easy, baskets overflowing.  Missions stories all seem like you only throw a few seeds of gospel on the ground, and up pop hundreds and thousands of new believers!

Get real. The reality is that missions requires work, time, and sweat.  Growing solid leaders and pastors doesn’t happen in two weeks.  Raising vibrant congregations is not a short weekend experiment.  And advancing the kingdom of God still means that you need to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

I’ve been struggling with that lately.  The continual language lessons get tiring, and I’m frustrated that I’m not reading Tolstoy in his mother tongue yet!  The continual work to develop relationships with leaders and pastors has been exhausting.  And the cursed paperwork and accounting our beloved AGWM requires is, shall we say, not the joy of my life!

But Lola’s sweet potato reminded me of the truth.  If we are going to see the harvest, we need to keep doing the dirty work.

So pray for your missionaries today.  They are all doing the same thing, digging and sweating to build a harvest.  Someday you’ll read about the great harvest!  But for now, we are still digging dirt out from underneath our fingernails.

A co-laborer for Christ,

Andy Raatz