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By: Brandon Scott on: October 10, 2013
Story Type: Story    

Worth the Wait

 
Some things are worth the wait, and I had anticipated this moment for almost seven years. Today I smelled the coffee blossoms. Coffee blossoms only have their fragrance for a day, maybe two, each season. I wanted terribly to experience this, but in six years had never been in the right place at the right time.

As I traveled with my friend Anilmo to teach a discipleship class, we wove through coffee plantations in our descent from the highlands to the coast. On our right stood the snow-capped volcano Tajumúlco, the tallest peak in Central America. We descended a steep twenty-five miles from there to our destination on the coast.

At first, we saw a few sparse and isolated coffee bushes growing in people's yards. Then we arrived at the plantation, and I opened all of the windows so we could drink in the aroma.

Coffee in Guatemala lives in that place where the warm, damp air from the Pacific coast rises to meet the cool, dry air seeping down from the highlands. At four to six thousand feet, they dance. The dense, moist air drew every molecule of aroma from the blossoms and they percolated into my truck, filling it with sweet honeysuckle blended with magnolia and the woodsy depth of the forest.

The aroma was so intense I could almost feel the smell. And we worshipped the Lord. The people He has made, and this place He has made, have come together to cultivate his creation... It brought us a warm sip of Eden.

It made me think about how the Lord has used our discipleship material to transform how pastors think about grace, mission, and motivation for ministry. After a session entitled The Finished Work of Christ on the Cross, Moíses, a pastor from another region, told us that for twenty years he had pastored simply because someone had to do it. Now, he desires to serve the Lord Jesus with all of his being as a love response to what Christ did for him on the cross. After three years of cultivation, a leader blossoms.

After I taught, we filled my truck with pastors and headed back to the highlands. They were chatting in the back seat about how Guatemalans can so easily graft into Muslim cultures where U.S. missionaries tend to struggle. They discussed how the Lord’s work in missions had moved from Europe to the U.S. and now to Latin America. They talked about how American missionaries had carried the load, and it was now their turn to go, their responsibility to fulfill the Great Commission.

For an hour I listened as we ascended toward the highlands. Then they asked me what I thought. I took a deep breath, full of the ambrosial aroma of the blossoms I had waited so long to savor. I had waited even longer to hear my brothers say those very words. I smiled and told them they were right. Let’s go. And we laughed and worshipped the God who gives us blossoms in their own time.

Brandon Scott has served in Guatemala since 2006, training pastors to equip their churches. Find out more here.

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