Atop my desk sits a faded black-and-white photo of a dwarf and a giant. I knew them both back when I lived as a child in the Dominican Republic. And though they long since have "slipped the surly bonds of earth," the dynamic duo still speaks to me each day by way of that yellowing, 50-year-old snapshot.

Lape is the little one. He wouldn't have won an argument with a yardstick. He had a full-sized head and a tiny, shrunken body. Even so, his lungs were like giant bellows capable of projecting his piercing voice over great distances. And his large head was home to a great intellect. The picture on my desk shows him grinning mischievously, which is how I best remember him.

Cecilio is the big one, really big. He stands frozen in time behind Lape's buggy (a homemade wheel chair designed by Lape). He appears befuddled, which was his trademark look. His super-sized feet are hidden by the buggy's wheels. His hammy hands seem anxious to push the cart, right now, to get moving.

Lape and Cecilio were inseparable, though they were at once both opposites and akin in many ways. Each had a radical conversion experience on the same night in the same church. Both men were called into the ministry, almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter.

But their call was questioned, if not by them, by many church members. The more logically minded wondered, not without reason, how Lape was going to get around and how Cecilio, with his obvious mental limitations, was ever going to preach a sermon worth hearing.

Then God did the remarkable: He made a team out of them, bringing together the seeming misfits. That's right; Lape and Cecilio joined forces, and thereby was birthed a most unusual (and effective) evangelistic team.

Lape designed a buggy for himself and his considerable stuff; then Cecilio built it. Lape preached the sermons outdoors with his powerful voice, and then Cecilio pushed the cart to the next town, so the exercise could be repeated. Lape was the brains, and Cecilio was the muscle. Their work never flagged because neither cared who got the credit.

I was just a boy when this mighty dwarf-and-giant team was in its heyday. My parents were missionaries. I remember little Lape and giant Cecilio coming to our home often, always unannounced, except for the sound of the cart's wheels scrunching on the gravel of our long driveway. They'd come in and we'd all sit under the mango tree in our courtyard drinking rich Dominican coffee, and they'd tell stories of what God had done in a recent crusade.

The missionaries were somewhat awed by the pair, and not without reason. It wasn't unusual for a missionary to take a four-wheel drive vehicle into the hinterlands, expecting to blaze a fresh gospel trail, only to find that Lape and Cecilio had been there a few months earlier. The strange and wonderful "twins" were the stuff of ministerial legend.

But, alas, there came the great falling out. Something happened of an unhappy nature between the fabled pair. No one ever got the whole story, but the word on the street was that Lape had to use the bathroom at midnight, and Cecilio wasn't of the mind to help him at the moment.

So words were exchanged; heated words, unkind words. Deficiencies were pointed out. ("You have no brains." "Yeah, well you have no brawn.") Yes, it was childish, but dawn found the team tragically dissolved.

"Pero no habia problema," as one might say in that culture. Cecilio was convinced that he could be a good street preacher. But a few days out in the open air in a few town squares proved otherwise. He soon found that no one would listen to him, though more than a few laughed at his mangled efforts.

Lape thought he could easily find another willing fellow to push him across the island or into the hills. But he soon discovered there was a dearth of buggy-pushers, especially big ones. He was confined to a dark little house where he sat, alone, wishing his eloquence hadn't been misused to insult his now-offended partner in ministry.

Fortunately, mutual friends intervened. The dwarf and the giant were soon reconciled by the very Word they preached. The team was back together.

They were disposed to come to our house more often after that brief lapse. We would spend an hour or two drinking rich black coffee and hearing stories about their ministerial adventures, usually under the shade of our drooping mango tree. On those occasions, Lape's contagious laughter and Cecilio's shy giggle affirmed that interpersonal healing among God's people is a miracle of the first order.

I look at their photo often. It isn't good to be alone, to serve alone, I seem to hear them say. Esteban, remember that we were made for community. You see, mi hijo, Jesus sent his disciples out two-by-two. He still does. Don't ever see your brother as a bother. We did and, even though it was for an instant, we suffered great pain and loneliness.

Amen, I mumble, amen. You are ever so right, hermanos.What one can't do the other can. We're all called to be twins, and at times, even triplets. Some preach and some push. If we do our part well, God gets the glory.

That's what my aging photo of Lape and Cecilio conveys to me whenever my eye catches it, as I interact with a fellow minister across the table, especially one I am irritated with. It has saved me countless hours preaching to myself in a lonely room, or pushing an empty buggy down a lonely road.

R. Stephen Warner is pastor of Brockton Assembly of God in Brockton, Massachusetts.