There’s something honest in revisiting the past. In 2012 we had been to Cape Town for 6 weeks to serve Zimbabwean refugees. Our plan was to raise support to return. We committed everything to this plan, we lost almost everything along the way. But it did not materialize. Still our ideas about ministry were shaped. We were and still are, inspired by Henri Nouwen’s thoughts expressed in “The Wounded Healer”. His quote below summarizes our hopes for ministry in Cape Town but also my hope and aspiration for ministry here in suburban Chicago.

“We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. They mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Therefore true ministry must be mutual.”

Henri Nouwen