Late Friday afternoon, I heard someone pounding on our front door. Before I could yell, “Come in,” he barged, breathless, into the foyer. “Where is David? Doug’s house is on fire!”

I raced out the front door and looked left. My heart sank. I could see smoke billowing from the caretakers’ cottage at the AFM training center. Questions immediately bombarded my mind. Who has been called? Is anyone still in the house? A prayer then escaped my lips . . . “Lord, help!”

Quite a crowd gathered that day to watch, pray, and pray some more—volunteer missionary candidates, AFM staff and concerned neighbors—as the firefighters battled the fierce flames and suffocating smoke. We were all in it together.

As I sit here writing this Sabbath morning, I think about how there is something special about “in it together”—something that draws out the best in folks, something that made the missionaries in training willing to get up hourly throughout the night, each of us taking turns, to look and make sure the house did not re-ignite.

Once the fire had been put out in his home, “in it together” made Doug, the facility manager for the training center, more concerned about the water supply that had been cut to the training center and the missionary families living there than for his own personal losses. Fellow pilgrims—AFM staff and friends in the community—opened their homes for showers. Someone parked their pick-up truck, with a water tank in its bed, outside our condos so we could flush toilets. Phone calls, logistics, attention to detail all showed beyond a doubt the concern for others. It is more than ‘something special.’ It is something sacred.

There is something about crises, something about teamwork, something about sacrifice that makes you proud in a godly type of way—proud of the community of believers that we have the privilege to work alongside. And the best part? There is always room for one more. Is it you?

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