Our Strengths, Giftings, Weaknesses, and Disabilities.

During the decades that we served God among the Canela people of Brazil, Jo and I thanked God for giving us the ability to learn an unwritten language and feel at home in the Canela’s culture.

Girls, stop playing with lunch!

God Given Abilities
We also thanked Him for giving Jo and me some special abilities. He made Jo an excellent cook. She took many meats and vegetables she had never imagined using to make meals and then cooked them all over a wood fire built on a clay-packed table.

Jo’s clay kitchen stove

I thanked God that He made me a problem solver. I used this God-given skill to solve household problems, as well as problems the Canelas brought to us to solve. Many of them were medical issues, from rotten teeth and deep cuts from accidents with bush knives and axes to fevers, difficult births, and multiple tropical diseases. Other problems were mechanical issues, such as a defective muzzle-loading shotgun.
One day, I injected a snake bite victim with anti-snake-bite serum, then permanently repaired a hole in a large cast-iron cooking pot, using a small bolt, a couple of washers, and some epoxy metal glue. Bystanders marvelled and exclaimed, “Behold, he doeth all things well,” in Canela, of course.
The Negative Side
My problem-solving skills were undoubtedly a gift from God. I just knew what to do. What I didn’t realize was that my ability was accompanied by some negatives, like constant interruptions in our main task, linguistics, literacy and Bible translation. That showed some of my disabilities: impatience, a hatred of distracting interruptions, and losing track of what I was doing.
The Story
When I was seven years old in Holland, I had a huge problem. My mother sometimes cooked cauliflower for our meals. She served it on my plate and covered it with a ladle of white sauce. I didn’t like the taste of cauliflower to begin with, but along with the white sauce, it made me gag unless I quickly took a large bite of potatoes to cover the horrid taste.
One day, everyone had finished eating, and I still had my cauliflower and white sauce, although I had mashed it all together. So, my mother picked up my plate, saying, “Come with me.” She led me into a small room and set the plate on a wooden box, saying, “Stay here and don’t come out until that plate is empty.” Then she left.
The Solution
I sat on a little stool and swallowed a tiny bite and gagged again. Then I solved the problem. The wooden box I was using as a table had been made by my father as a place to keep a cooking pot warm. My mom had only two small gas burners to cook on and no oven, so she needed a place to keep a third pan of food warm.  The box was insulated with hay and lined with cloth, leaving just enough space to put in a hot pan.
I opened the lid, the box was empty, so I scraped the cauliflower and white sauce dinner into the empty space and closed it. Then, I happily walked into the kitchen and gave my empty plate to my mother.
The Lesson
That was one of my early successes in problem-solving. I meant to go back later, scoop up the food with some toilet paper, and throw it into the kitchen garbage. I forgot to do that, however, and several days later, when my mother came with a pan to keep warm, she saw the moldy mess on the bottom. That led to my own bottom receiving a well-deserved spanking so I would remember to never do that again. It worked! Eighty years later, I still remember!
God’s  Compensations for Our Disabilities
It also made me realize that with every God given ability, we tend to also have a disability: distraction and forgetfulness in my case. I’m learning to take my weaknesses and disabilities to God and ask Him to show me ways to compensate. And He does. For the past few months, for instance, I’ve been using many more sticky notes for daily, even hourly reminders of all kinds, not just for the weekly shopping list.