Author: Chantelle, serving on staff with Kaleo Missions in San Diego.  To submit a story or a photo for our Kaleo Missions blog, email blog@kaleomissions.org.

Our ministry in San Diego this week has been encapsulated by the theme of love. In all our debriefing sessions, I’ve asked my team the questions:

Who was it easy to love?  Who was it hard to love?  What can I do to love my team better?

In their time here, my team has been so helpful to so many ministries. In our discussion time at the end of the week, I asked them what they had learned about the Church.  We started talking about the body of Christ and how 1 Corinthians talks about each of us playing an integral part in the whole of the church. I shared with them my perspective on what they’ve been doing this week, how each of them is like a cell in the body, with a specific purpose for this ministry, and that while they’ve been in San Diego they’ve been able to partner with other ‘cells’ to create a functioning organ in the greater body of Christ. Their service to these different ministries, and loving the people they’re working with through service, has truly blessed others.

Sara, a student in our group, started reading the passage in 1 Corinthians 12 about the church being the body of Christ and how each person has special gifts to use in the body… and silly me! I didn’t remember it until I turned there in my Bible, but what comes after 1 Corinthians 12? 1 Corinthians 13! The LOVE CHAPTER! So when Sara finished reading chapter 12, I jumped in with chapter 13… because that ties EVERYTHING together!

To give these kids these two chapters at the end of their time serving this week was so special. We got to talking about how our roles as Christians should be primarily to love others and how that in itself should be evident in how we work together as a body and love each other. It’s a conversation that can go on forever, but it was so beautiful to see how it fit so perfectly into this week for these kids. As a team, they cannot effectively love and serve the people they came to love and serve, if they are not first loving and serving each other. It’s through their love for one another that the love of Christ can truly be shown to those they are reaching out to touch. Jesus says it perfectly in John 13:34-35. He tells his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”