Soon after trusting Christ in my early twenties, I worked
the night shift at a plywood company in Southern California mainly with
Hispanics. We enjoyed each other whether we fought nor not. They taught me to
really like hot peppers!
I worked on an 8-man crew (4 teams of 2 men on a team) that
off-loaded huge crates of 50 4’ x 8’sheets of plywood from trucks. We would then unstrap each crate of plywood,
inspect each piece and then stack them into piles of 100 good sheets. The stacks of plywood were then taken to
another building to be painted for mobile homes.
In an 8-hour shift, each 2-man team would prepare two or
three stacks of 100 good sheets ready for painting.
My teammate was also a new Christian, and as we began to
reach out to others with the Gospel and do Bible study together on breaks, we
began to be concerned about our testimony in the lazy, union-controlled work
environment.
So we began to pick up speed and work harder.
Soon we were doing four stacks of plywood, instead of two or
three. The other teams also began to
speed up as they did not want to look bad.
The race was on as each team began to race each other and still be
careful of quality control. The amount
of stacks increased. Soon it was three
or four stacks by lunch, and eight or ten stacks completed on each shift
instead of the previous two or three.
This became a problem as the painters then had to keep up
and go faster on the paint machines. The
union bosses then came in and made a fuss, but the management was so happy that
they gave everyone a raise, extended our break and lunch times, and provided
all kinds of amenities to the 250 workers.
Our company became the most productive factory in
California.
As young Christians this made a great impact on our personal
life as we saw the difference Christ made in the simple matter of stacking
plywood for the testimony of Christ for the glory of God!
“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord
rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23).
No comments:
Post a Comment