An hour and a half after we climbed into dugout canoes, we were there. As we got further away from the mainland, it started to feel like it we weren’t on a trip down a river, but on a trip back in time. When we finally beached the canoes at the Emberá Puro village, my eyes were having trouble adjusting. Not because of the light, but because of what they were trying to take in and process. Open-air huts, kids in loincloths, women with no shirts… It was overwhelming, to say the least. But by the end of the day, I wasn’t overwhelmed. I felt more at home than I had anywhere else in Panama, and that’s because I was among family.
Our mission trip to Panama was three-fold. While mainly a medical mission trip, the patients were encouraged to listen to a sermon while waiting for their turn to see the medical team. While the parents waited, the kids came to VBS. Because of the setup, we were able to reach hundreds of people and fulfill both physical and spiritual needs.
We were setting up for our last VBS in the preacher’s house, which was an open-air hut, raised on stilts, with a roof made from palm leaves. All of his family’s belongings were right there in front of us, and there weren’t many. His home was larger than most in the village because he built it with the intent of having the church meet there. Most of us have walls around the edges of our home, but he had benches for church members to sit on.
One of our team members was sitting in one of two plastic chairs in the hut, not doing anything wrong, when the chair was suddenly in pieces and he was on the floor. I don’t want to embarrass anyone by calling names, but I guess the Panamanian chair wasn’t made for a Thomas Swinea-sized person.
In the big picture, a plastic chair isn’t a big deal. I never expected Emiliano, the preacher, to be angry about the chair being broken. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to be bent out of shape over something like that, even though he didn’t have many material possessions (even before we came along). And although I wasn’t expecting him to be angry, I also wasn’t expecting his response.
He gathered up the pieces of the chair while Thomas quickly told Caleb Paul to translate his apologies for the broken chair. Emiliano looked at Thomas with the biggest smile on his face, and then said to Caleb Paul, “Tell him it’s okay. He’s in the house of a brother.”
Have you ever had a moment where it all suddenly makes sense? Where you realize what it’s all about, and your eyes are opened? I always knew that being a Christian meant being a part of something bigger than me, but it didn’t truly click until I heard that.
Over the course of our trip, I gained six new brothers and sisters in Christ. I got to witness three of their baptisms. When I asked Caleb Paul what I should say to the new members of the church, he told me to say, “Bienvenidos a la familia de Dios,” which means, “Welcome to the family of God.” Seeing those new members added to the church and meeting the members of the churches all over Panama really taught me a few things about the family of God.
God’s family is bigger than me. It’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than country borders and language barriers. God’s family is everywhere, from Tuscaloosa to the jungles of Panama and everywhere in between. Wherever you go, you can be in the house of a brother. No matter what language you speak or whether you worship in a building or a hut, the message is the same.
I may not ever be able to have a full conversation with my new brothers and sisters because I don’t speak their language. But in Panama, I saw that the love of God translates not only through words, but also through actions. People saw the love of God in us as we gave them medicine. I saw it in them as they prepared food for us and in the faces of those precious children.
There’s no way we can ever meet everyone in our family. We’ll never be in most of their houses. But the only thing that matters is that one day we will meet them. We’ll speak the same language and raise one voice in worship. We will be together in a house with them, but it won’t be one that we own. We’ll be together, with our family, in the house of God.
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