I have three different sites here. They are Cedaridge, Friends for Families and Emergency Christian Ministry. Each has similar ministries within it, but each is also very different from the rest. They all serve the community in several ways (food pantry, clothing closet, hygeine items, etc). Cedaridge is like a thrift store that uses whatever resources it has to aid families in hard situations. Friends for Families is a warehouse that houses furniture, clothing, food and other resources for families in need. Emergency Christian Ministry has several apartments for people who are homeless due to a number of circumstances.
I love each of my sites for various and, each for, very different reasons. The one thing I challenged my students with this week was to learn someone's story and learn where they came from. Many of us have prejudices about people we first meet and I wanted students to begin to break down these notions about people who are different than them. My group this week definitely stepped up to the challenge and they were excited about it. Many of them were coming to tell me what they learned each day. Pretty cool stuff.
Most of the week, I was busy running back and forth between smaller groups divided out of my 32 participants and didn't get much time to talk to students on site. On Thursday, our last full day of camp and our last on site, I saw one of my students sitting by herself because the clothing closet was making her feel, in her words: claustrophobic. I decided to sit with her and talk for a bit. I soon realized that this precious girl had a lot more in common with me than I initially thought. We both allowed ourselves at one point or another to become very angry and hardened from family situations. She is in the midst of dealing with this and I still deal with it in little bouts from time to time. As I described what I felt like in my anger (physically- burning in the back of the throat from suppressing crying for days and back tension/soreness) as a preteen dealing with this anger, her countenance expressed familiarity with these ailments.
We talked for a bit and I knew that something was melting this precious girl from within. Only God could have been working in her at this time. God was using my story to break down barriers in this girl that I know from experience are incredibly huge, unclimbable walls. The next day, I was sitting in my bible study room, waiting for students to arrive, when another girl from her church urged her to share something that happened on site the day before. Turns out that the girl I had been talking to had shared Christ with a woman at the shelter after our talk. The woman at the shelter accepted Christ! Praise the Lord! The girl handed me a note after bible study that brought me to tears. She wrote that the talk we had earlier that day had motivated her to share Christ with this woman and that it helped her to see that people need a second chance (we had talked about this somewhat when discussing our families in our conversation).
I was to the point of tears upon reading her sweet, kind words to me. They may have even been too kind. She described me with words that were exaggerations of my real character, but they weren't exaggerations of God's character. It was God working through me that caused all of these events to happen on site, not my own work. I could not have orchestrated such a series of events. You see, this girl's youth minister had been in my track group and he had been talking to this woman all day. He learned her story and ministered to her. This was happening while I was talking to the girl and sharing my story with her. As walls were coming down, hearts were being healed and God was doing something bigger than us all. Praise the Lord for His sovereignty in placing everyone of us exactly where we needed to be that day!
I wish that I could keep contact with this girl, but I can't. It's camp policy. However, I know that the Lord, in His sovereignty, will grow her and strengthen her. Pray with me for this girl to grow and continue to desire to share Christ with the people all around her. Pray she will continue to develop a genuine love for the people all around her.
Prayer requests:
- the girl from camp and all of my track group students to continue to grow as they go home.
- pray for genuine faith in the woman this girl shared Christ with on site. I will get to visit this site each week, so I hope to be able to see the Lord work in this woman's life this summer.
- I need rest in general. I got some this weekend of course, but I feel myself dragging each week as Thursday runs around. We get up early and run until it's late. It's very difficult, but the Lord will sustain me. Pray for me to rest in the Lord and remain in His word each day.
- Pray for our team. It's several weeks into the summer and tension can flare with teams of people who are always around each other. Pray for godly humility and patience between us as teammates. Pray for the unity among believers that Paul constantly writes about in his epistles.
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