A Week of Blessing.

Two weeks ago we had a pretty rough Kids Club…I’m not going to sugar coat it. It was awkward from the beginning because two teams wanted to do Kids Club, so one team did Monday and Tuesday, while the other team did Wednesday and Thursday. This is a very terrible idea in case any of you are planning on leading mission trips in the future. Because it was set up this way, each team spent at most 5 hours with the kids. It’s hard enough for the kids to warm up to a new team every week, why would we make them do it twice in the same week? One interesting thing I’ve observed being on this side of mission trips is how easy it is to be unintentionally selfish and inconsiderate of the community we’re trying to serve. We see that two teams have a heart to come and love on kids in the name of Jesus and we think ‘awesome’. We love that they have hearts to serve, and we want to use people where they are passionate, so we just split up the week and let each team do a few days. Makes sense…kind of.

But the reason that we’re here, or the reason that I’m here at least, is for the kids. It’s not to make teams happy– yes that would be great if both happened, and most of the time it does. However, I deeply believe that our first priority should be serving the kids, meeting their needs in any way we can. That being said, I went into this past week with much prayer. I sent this request to the faithful people praying for me this summer:

Please pray that the Lord would give us endurance to persevere in loving these kids, and for supernatural wisdom concerning how to discipline them, love them, and point them to Jesus. Also, please pray for maturity on the part of the team that’s coming in– we need some people passionate about kids!

And that is exactly what the Lord graciously sent this week. I got a front row seat to watch the Lord do more than I could ever ask or imagine, and I am so grateful because the kids here know the Lover more richly as a result.

The team that came in to do Kids Club came with a passion to love on the kids. Beautiful. They prayed for the kids every day before we went to pick them up. They were focused on the kids from the moment they walked in the door. I hadn’t yet experienced a group of high schoolers this selfless, and they blew me away at how loud their love for Jesus was. And the Lord blessed their willing hearts.

Muscles and Dakotta hanging out with the boys.

One of the leaders was able to have an incredible conversation with a seven-year-old girl named Toshaliqua. This girl is so precious, but I have never experienced a child so defiant and manipulative. But the Lord sent Whitney who was able to show the love of Christ to Tosha in a way that I have not been able. Tosha asked Whitney to pray for her and crawled into her lap in order for her to do so. I watched Tosha’s behavior completely turn around this week, and it was because love was communicated to her in a way that she heard, felt, and understood. That is an incredible victory for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Whitney and Tosha

The team led several worship songs for the kids, and I have never seen the kids engage as much as they did this week. We sang Marvelous Light with some sweet motions. An adorable six-year-old named Cedaysia loved to scream “Sin has lost its power!” Amen, sister. I love how worship creatively communicates truth about Jesus in a way that will stick in the minds and hopefully in the hearts of the kids. We also learned a song in Swahili this week and the kids were great at it!

Cedaysia and her googly eyes

We tried something new this week– we broke into groups of 3-4 to discuss the message, to work on the memory verse (1 Corinthians 13), and to pray together. This proved to be a sweet time, especially as I got to see how God is planting seeds through the memorizing of that chapter of the Bible. Some of the kids are really close to having it memorized, which is incredible in a community of kids who have heard very little from the Bible at all. God gave me a front row seat to watch the kids being prayed for by older kids from an entirely different community and an entirely different life. It is so beautiful to watch God moving in lives from all angles.

Toward end the week, we had a very sweet glitter, bubbles dance party. Does life get sweeter? Today I am incredibly humbled that God entrusted me with these sweet, beautiful, precious hearts this summer. Lord, may you be lifted high in their lives.

 

The Foolishness of God.

For a class I’m taking this summer, I’ve been reading through an anthology about the usefulness of literature called The Christian Imagination. I stumbled upon this poem and was intrigued by it, so I thought I’d share.

The Foolishness of God

Perform impossibilities
or perish. Thrus out now
the unseasonal ripe figs
among your leaves. Expect
mountains to be moved.
Hate parents, friends, and all
materiality. Love every enemy.
Forgive more times than seventy-
seven. Camel-like, squeeze by
into the kingdom through
the needle’s eye. All fear quell.
Hack off your hand, or else,
unblodied, go to hell.

Thus the divine unreason.
Despairing you may cry,
with earthy logic– How?
And I, your God, reply:
Leap from your weedy shallows.
Dive into the moving water.
Eye-less, learn to see
truly. Find in my folly your
true sanity. Then, Spirit-drivven,
run on my narrow way, sure
as a child. Probe, hold
my unhealed hand, and
bloody, enter heaven.

A Lively Doctor’s Visit.

I have the best luck with doctor’s, really I do. My teammate Chad is sick with a sinus infection this week, so on Wednesday morning, we made an eventful journey to the Welch Community Hospital. We walked into a hallway with lots of doors, and not a lot of signs. Eventually an RN wandered down the hallway and helped us out by pulling us into a very tiny room with only one chair, so I sat on the scale, which was great fun. Next we returned to the waiting room and entertained ourselves by watching airplanes explode on the history channel, and reading through one of the 20 copies of “Grandbaby” magazine that were in the waiting room. Eventually a voice called Chad’s name…from where, we had no idea. So, we stood up and walked into the hallway with the many doors. Since we didn’t really know where to go from there I said, “Hey, where did that voice come from?” And fortunately I said it loud enough that an old woman took pity on us and directed us a few doors down.

The woman there needed Chad’s insurance information, so he handed his phone to her and showed her the insurance information his mom had texted him earlier. She asked if she could scan it.

Then we went into an actual doctor’s room and a PA student came in to take Chad’s vitals and find out about his scary infection. The student looked in Chad’s ears and listened to his breathing, and all this went well, then he went to look at Chad’s throat. He opened the tongue depressor successfully, and then he attempted to put it into Chad’s mouth, but I guess he miscalculated a bit because he hit Chad with the tongue depressor right above his lip and Chad’s head jerked back, and I wanted to laugh hysterically, so I fought desperately to keep it together. Chad and I died laughing about that once the poor student left.

I also entertained myself by blowing up a glove and drawing an awesome face on it. The doctor was not that amused. We also didn’t have to pay for the visit, which was an interesting perk. Not sure how that worked out exactly, but we’ll take it.

Some Gary Culture.

I am so blessed to have the opportunity to live in this community for three months. I’m realizing how long it takes to really begin to dig into the culture, and see it for what it is– with its gifts and limitations. I think it took me longer to get over culture shock than necessary because I didn’t expect it to be that different. Yet the longer I’m here, the more I find similarities and subtle connections, even within things that seem starkly different.

This is the sequence of events that happened to me the other day. I went to the nursing home to get the schedule of events for the month of July. As I was walking down the hallway, the resident pet– a small Jack Russell terrier named Miley, came sprinting down the hallway to attack my feet with her vicious teeth. She didn’t leave me alone or stop trying to bite my shoes the entire time I was there. Once I’d gotten the schedule of activities, I started looking at all that was listed in order to find something that we could bring teams to participate in. One event stood out to me immediately, and I had to laugh– “Pimp wheelchair day”. Yes, please.

Later that day, we ran out of lettuce for salad, and where did I go to get more? The Exxon station right down the road. Yes, I bought gas station lettuce and then fed it to teams. It was delicious.  

On Wednesday nights we usually take teams up to the top of Miracle Mountain, which used to be a retreat center for the coal mining executives. This Wednesday there happened to be a bluegrass concert coinciding with our trip up this week, so we sat back and enjoyed us some bluegrass. Well, the adults enjoyed bluegrass and the high schoolers were high schoolers.

Please enjoy this photo of Bobby and Chad grilling. Each week we grill out on top of the mountain. The first week we didn’t have a grill because the one left for us was rust and moldy, yes a fabulous combination. So, these ingenious boys took it upon themselves to create a grill. They took two kitchen pots, put charcoal in the bottom, and a grate from one of the ovens on top. Toward the beginning of the grilling process, they realized that the charcoal wasn’t getting enough oxygen to burn, so to solve this problem, they took a drill and drilled four holes into the side of each pot. Successful grilling ensued. Although we have a real grill now, we still enjoy using the one they created when we grill out on the mountain, in the spirit of creativity and summer awesomeness.