Day 5: Off to the Jungle
Our morning began with gathering as a team to read the Word (Mark 9:14-29) and pray. Each of our meal times is spent with all the missionary families and so this morning Dave, Candance, Jeff, and I sat with the Bates to get a full update on life. Although their church is small, God is using them in Denmark. Just recently they had a person come to faith! So exciting! They are seeing God's goodness amongst the challenges of society. They mentioned how encouraged they are by Grace Bible and really appreciate our Church and Pastor Rick. They also praised the Lord and were so encouraged that we would send a team all the way to Germany to serve and love their kids! Thank you, Church for being so faithful to support our STMI teams through your prayers and finances...the Lord is at work! We have had multiple conversations with different missionary families who express the same thing to us...they are so thankful that we would come, serve, and love their children.
After breakfast, we were in full VBS mode! We have a total of 7 kids. All of them are boys except one sweet girl, Mia! Praise the Lord, because we have been praying that Mia would want to stay in VBS this year. Every year she has been too shy and scared to leave her parents. Nathan and April are living in Germany as tent makers doing church planting work. Mia is adopted and mostly speaks German. Today was a big step for her and her parents were thrilled and encouraged. :) She didn't want to play the games with all the boys, so she stuck close to me and we drew lots of pictures together while the games went on. Jeff taught the 7 C's of history beginning mainly with Creation and Corruption but he also introduced Catastrophe and Confusion. Tomorrow he teaches on Christ & the Cross! All the kids are interactive and we are enjoying our time with them. They are BIG soccer players, so most of our outdoor games end with a soccer game :) The teens spent their morning sharing and discussing their struggles of doubt and they looked at the life of Abraham and the many time he doubted God, but then also looked at the times he fully surrendered his doubt to the Lord and had full confidence in His God. The teen time is mainly a focused time in giving the youth an outlet to discuss and share the things that hinder their own walks with the Lord while building them up with God's Word.
After lunch was quiet time from 1pm-3pm (the place we are at has a quiet time which just means everyone was mainly indoors hanging out with one another). Our team has intentionally sought out and have been pulled in by the missionary youth and for the afternoon they have all been together playing games and having conversations. It's really encouraging to see.
We enjoyed dinner, played relay races and had a scavenger hunt with soccer balls with the younger children and then later in the evening, after the last session, we took a hike through town up into the old ruin castle. They had a blast running around and playing freeze tag and Mafia. It's been a full day and tomorrow we will do it all again! :) We are having such a sweet time with both the younger kids and the teens and we are praising the Lord for His kindness in allowing such sweet fellowship and relationships.
Please pray that we continue to remain healthy, and for those still feeling a little under the weather, pray that the Lord would sustain them. Pray also for restful sleep as we californians are realizing we like our air conditioning :) The conference center does not have air conditioning and our rooms get very warm at night. We've had 2 very hot days with humidity. Thankfully, it is suppose to cool down the rest of the week, so we are looking forward to that.
Pastor Rick, if you're reading this, Ron Furst says to give you a BIG HELLO!! :)
Enjoy all the pics...it's so hard to choose which ones to post because there are so many to choose from!
Comments
Post a Comment