Potluck
Our hearts were beating nervously as the GPS announced that we were near. This was our first presentation of the “Walk, Sister, Walk” tour through the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, and our desire to give our best created anxious fluttering in our stomachs!
Our hearts were beating nervously as the GPS announced that we were near. This was our first presentation of the “Walk, Sister, Walk” tour through the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, and our desire to give our best created anxious fluttering in our stomachs!
Everything started with dinner. “Today we will have a Potluck,” they told us as a young girl brought a small black iron pot full of four leaf clovers cut out of green paper and chocolate candy. Everyone laughed, and then came the whispered translation, “we eat together whatever comes in the pots!”
When we finished the presentation, there were comments, questions, and words of gratitude that were like welcoming hugs which filled our hearts with the confirmation that the Spirit of God was working in us and through us. Little by little we said good-bye to our nervousness.
Every day, every person, every community we visit with the testimonies, the history, the cultures and the traditions are a “potluck.” What is the Lord calling us to? What four leaf clover will we be choosing and looking over in each new gathering?
Whose heart will be touched by our stories? What new connections will be threaded together by those invisible strings that tie us together? Who will become a part of the weaving of our lives?
We come and they welcome. Their eyes fill with joy, their arms open to embrace us, knowing we might not ever meet again. So they encourage us to keep our hearts open, to keep risking in the telling of our stories, to believe that God is present even in the unknown mystery of the potluck.
Carolina Fernández
Paraguay
Walk, Sister, Walk – young women peacebuilders share their stories in the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ
Translated by Elena Huegel
Elena Huegel is a missionary with the Pentecostal Church of Chile (IPC). She serves as an environmental and Christian education specialist.