One More Turn

Yesterday, I stumbled across this photo.

I received it three years ago from a group of sister missionaries serving with us in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission.

Behind their laughter were the daily rhythms of missionary life: praying, studying, planning, teaching and serving – then getting up the next morning to begin all over again!

The photo however, carried me back more than thirty years.

In July 1994, Monic and I were newly married and living in the Netherlands. Despite my limited language ability and in between my studies, I still had to find a part-time job; otherwise, even though I was married, I’d be deported! That was the law!!

The solution? A kaaspakhuis, or cheese warehouse, in Woerden.

Dutch cheeses are left to ripen for many weeks, sometimes for more than a year. To prevent them from drying out, they are covered with a yellow plastic coating, applied layer upon layer, and regularly turned so they mature evenly.

For several weeks, coating and turning cheeses became my work – row after row, with shelves stacked twelve high. It was heavy, smelly and repetitive.

Eventually, I became rather good at it.

At the time, I thought the lesson was simply that repetition enhances learning. Yet, looking at this photograph again, I wonder if another lesson was waiting among those rows of cheese.

The cheese was not only being handled; it was quietly maturing.

One more layer was added. One more cheese was turned. There was no dramatic moment when everything changed, yet beneath the yellow coating, something was happening.

Now I know that’s how our spiritual growth takes place too.

We pray, study, worship, repent, forgive and serve – again and again. Perhaps God repeats certain lessons not because we fail to learn them, but because He is helping them become part of us.

Like those cheeses in Woerden and those sister missionaries faithfully living the routines of missionary life, we are shaped layer upon layer.

The scriptures teach us: “…be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.” – Doctrine and Covenants 64:33

Heaven’s work is usually found in quiet, consistent goodness – not in occasional bursts of busyness that everyone can see.

It’s found in the missionary who offers another invitation, the parent who keeps loving, the friend who keeps listening and the weary soul who gets up and tries once more.

Nearly thirty years after I worked in that kaaspakhuis, these happy sister missionaries brought the lesson back to me. And now, three years later, their photograph has done so once again.

What quiet and repeated act of goodness may be shaping who you are becoming?