Challenges of Doing ‘Business As Missions’

Post from Father Mark:

Unlike ministry where you have a board to decide what should be done, business is not the same way. You’re on your own for trying things out, and if they don’t work at least you gave it a shot. People are the most important thing and no matter what at least you showed them Jesus.

In business, most partnerships don’t work. Especially if they work side by side, one wants to do it this way and the other a different way. I have found in business there is a right way and a wrong way, but only one way. Make the wrong choices and you fail, make the right ones and you succeed. Business is a dictatorship, like it or not. You can’t have everyone making decisions, it just doesn’t work.

I bring this up because we had a Bible study yesterday on Ephesians 4:1-14. Working and doing business is very hard. For example, I have been trying to get a big pizza oven done for 3 weeks. It’s a 5 or 6 day job. I have told Chan every day that I want it done. We can’t do any more advertizing until it is done. We can also only cook two pizzas at a time. Two weeks ago we had five pizzas to do at once and it took over an hour before the last one was finished. The customers were very unhappy. So today I had to get pretty strong with him about getting it done quickly. Which brings me to Ephesians 4; How do you show patience, kindness and love when you have asked somebody to do something time and time again? He’ll say yes and then go off and do something else. It left me feeling so defeated. I always feel so bad afterwards. I came here to love them and I feel sometimes that I am not showing that.  I’ve explained many times why we have to do everything the same way all the time as well. I talked with my friend Patrick about this and he said it took two years to finally get everything done his way. I pray that it doesn’t take as long in my case.

Having Mark here has helped me a lot, gives me someone to talk to, even though I think I may be talking too much sometimes! He is learning a lot here, hope he can take the biggest things with him back to the states. One good thing is that he is getting more experience than most ever would in two months overseas. This being the first missions group that I have ever started, it’s hard to know if I am doing things right at times. I pray that the Lord clears some things up for me. Pray for both of us and our work here.