Confessions of a Pittsburgh Missionary: It Won't Return Empty

July 4-18, 2015

I know I’m terribly behind on a blog update so I am going to update you on the past two weeks once again. I am finding it harder to keep up with all of the paperwork and office work that has to be done this year much more than last year. I’m not totally sure why but if you think of it, please pray for me! My office to do list can get a bit overwhelming at times. Hence why I’m making it a priority to blog (it was one of the more fun things on my to-do list).

July 5-10 started another week of ministry and once again we had two clubs. AJ had left me for Mahaffey yet again. So Mary Cooper, a Westmoreland County summer missionary, came and stayed with me so she could help out in Pittsburgh. I was very grateful for her help. We had two clubs. Our first club of the day was at Rankin Christian Center. Chloe and I had gone to this club last year and had a blast with the kids. Once again, Mary and I had a blast with the kids this year. They were certainly a lively bunch that kept both of us on our toes. But they were also passionate and enjoyed us as much as we enjoyed them.  Our evening club was my home church, Fellowship Alliance Church, Soccer Camp. This started on Sunday and went until Thursday. It was a delight to have Cathy and the rest of her crew join us to help out Sunday through Tuesday. It’s always fun when we get to work together. At soccer camp, the kids spend most of their time learning soccer skills and playing the sport, but during a 30 minute rotation, they sit and listen to a story from us. The CEF team does a lightening round club (cutting out most everything except a Bible lesson, memory verse, and a few songs). We get to see a lot of kids and it’s a lot of fun. On the last night of soccer camp, it rained and we had to huddle under roof. I was pleased that since we were confined to the small dry place, all of the parents that had stayed also heard the gospel as I presented it to the children. We didn’t hear about any decisions made by parents, but the word of God does not return void. Pray for any seeds that were planted in the hearts of parents. By the end of the week, we had 9 salvations at Rankin and 2 at Soccer camp. Praise God!

Harvey enjoys helping us set up for Soccer Camp.

July 13-17 was an interesting week. AJ was back and his younger brother, Caleb, also tagged along a couple days. We had three clubs. The first two clubs were at housing developments in McKeesport.

Our first club at Crawford Village went relatively well. There were both good days and bad days. Sometimes the kids could get a little rowdy but in mind, they behaved pretty well. I got nervous when we arrived on the first day and the director of the YMCA program that we partnered with came up to me and said, “We’ll do our best to help you… we’re rooting for you. We have twice as many kids as last year.” With that expectation in place, anything short of chaos was bliss. Later in the week he told me that for some reason they only had half as many kids as usual and they were giving us their best behavior. While part of me was disappointed to hear there were a lot of kids that we were missing, I believe it was also a blessing in disguise. A team of 2 or 3 simply couldn’t have handled a crowd as big as he said they usually had. While I would have loved to reach more kids, I’m not sure any of them would have heard the gospel if the room was chaotic the whole time. In moments like these it’s best to remember that God is sovereign. While I would have opted for more kids, God knew who needed to be there and knew what we could handle. We still reached 44 children at Crawford and saw 12 of them make first time salvation decisions.

The second club of the day was at Harrison Village. Harrison was one of the more challenging clubs I have ever done. Last year it was a difficult location because there was no structure and we couldn’t get any of the kids to participate in the club. We had to do open air activities like face painting and other games instead of a club. I was pleased to hear this year that they had reopened a YMCA lunch program and this year there would be some sort of structure for us. The kids at Harrison were great. I was excited to Sinai again, a little girl I’d run into last year that accepted and noticeably changed in her behavior for the Lord. The kids were enthusiastic and I could tell they enjoyed having us. The YMCA leaders, however, could not have cared less that we were there. We soon discovered that our new challenge at Harrison was no the children, but the leaders. The leaders gathered around a desk while we did the program with the children. They played cards and didn’t bother to talk quieter than usual. Occasionally they would even burst out laughing or yell across the room to someone. Most of the leaders were really nasty to the kids and yelled at them for even small things. It was really ironic when they’d scream at the kids any time they got even mildly jittery or noisy. Since we were in their domain, I didn’t feel comfortable asking them to be quiet. So AJ and I learned how to use our stage voices even in a small classroom. I made sure to thank the leaders before leaving on Friday. One of the leaders told me “thank you” and that she had really enjoyed. I don’t know if she meant that, enjoyed it because we took care of the kids for an hour, or was just being polite. But all of those leaders sat in the room while we shared the gospel with the kids, both at Harrison and at Crawford. I may never know what effect we had on the adults in both of those rooms. But I know that God’s word is powerful and does not return empty.

Kids playing games in the gym at Rankin Christian Center.

One little girl at Harrison Village stole my heart. She came back to talk to me one day and I started going over the gospel with her. When I asked her, “Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for you?” She shook her head no. Now if you have never been involved in children’s ministry before, you may not know that it is very rare to find a child that doesn’t believe in Jesus. There is a reason that God calls us to a “child-like” faith, it’s because children readily believe! But this little girl, Leilani, didn’t. I asked her why and she told me that she wasn’t sure she could believe that Jesus died and rose again if she was there to see it. And she wasn’t sure she could believe in God if she couldn’t see him. My heart broke for her. I explained some reasons why we can believe in God like using the “air is invisible but it’s there” analogy or even explaining that I could feel God because I had a relationship with him. But none of them convinced her.  I explained to her that I didn’t want to convince her, I wanted her to believe on her own. I told her to pray and ask God to show her if he really is real. She felt kind of strange praying that, but I also prayed for her. I didn’t see her after that so I don’t know if God had shown himself to her or not yet. I believe God can work miracles for little Leilani and reveal himself to her in a way that is meaningful to her. I don’t know how he will do it yet, but I know he can. Pray with me, that God will speak to Leilani and that she will have an open mind and heart when he does. I may never find out what happens to Leilani, but I know that the word of God does not return void.

Our third club for the week was with a church in Allison Park. That club was completely different from the first two clubs of the day. We still had fun with the kids though and I was impressed with a lot of their knowledge of the Bible or quick-wittedness. At the end of the week we had reached 97 children between all three clubs and seen 15 salvation decisions. 

Pray with me for all of the leaders, parents, and children that heard the gospel in these past two weeks. Pray that the gospel would resonate in their hearts and speak loudly to them. Pray that God would reveal himself, not only to Leilani, but everyone who hears the gospel. The word of God does not return void. I don’t know how the gospel will change those that heard it these past weeks, but I know it will.

Isaiah 55:11 “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Confessions of a Pittsburgh Missionary: The Desert

The Desert

June 22- July 3, 2015

Two weeks of ministry have passed. I meant to write an update sooner after last week but never got around to it. These first two weeks have certainly been busy as I have been spending time preparing myself, rather than the summer missionaries, for the ministry this summer. So I have been learning the lessons for myself, preparing the games, printing and cutting out various hand-outs needed for clubs, and other such preparatory tasks.

The first week of clubs is technically considered the second week of training. The summer missionaries are expected to use the clubs that week to learn how to put all that they learned at training school into action on top of finishing evaluations. AJ was away at camp for that week so I travelled out to Westmoreland County to help Cathy and all of her summer missionaries. We did three clubs there. The first club was at a church in Saltsburg. We had trouble getting the kids in the first club to get excited about what was going on. I think they did have fun in the end though. The second was through a rescue mission in Arnold. The kids there were urban and mostly unchurched kids. It was the hardest of the three clubs because of behavior issues. We crowded around a table made out of a slab of wood on top of crates under a canopy with holes in it every day. But the kids kept coming back and as the week went on, we gained more of their respect. The last was at a daycare in Arnold which was a ton of fun. They were very enthusiastic about everything which makes our program much easier. Talk about three very different clubs! One of Cathy’s summer missionaries said to me, “I like the last club. It’s indoors and the kids are excited to see us and everything is easier.” I responded with, “Yeah… but which club isn’t hearing the gospel anywhere else?” Not all of the clubs were easy but they all needed to hear the gospel. Some of the clubs needed us more than others because we were delivering a message they wouldn’t hear otherwise.

The kids huddled in the shade at Lighthouse Ministries in Arnold, PA.

This past week, AJ was back and we started our first week of ministry in Pittsburgh. We only had four days of clubs this week because of the holiday weekend. Our first club was at a Salvation Army on the North Side and the second one was with a child care center in East Liberty. We were returning to both of these clubs from last summer. I began to get very worried on Saturday night, however, when I started feeling sick. A bad cold had been going around since training school and I caught it. That definitely added a lot of stress to my week. I was not only preparing my first week of clubs on my own, I was also battling a bad cold. I am feeling much better. I'm still slightly congested but I am getting better. It was tough to be at the clubs when I didn’t feel good. Monday and Tuesday in particular were a challenge. Since it is just AJ and myself, I had to teach the lesson, which is about 15 minutes of talking, twice in one day. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt after both times. Finally by Wednesday, I ended the clubs still having a voice. It was certainly stretching for AJ as I kept assigning him more tasks so he could do more of the talking. He had to step up and lead more than he is used to but I think it was good for him.

We had good groups at both locations. The Salvation Army has a day camp of about 30 kids. It took some time to gain their trust and get them to feel comfortable with us but once we did, they were sad to see us go. The childcare center kids were ages 2-5 so that definitely took some adapting. They have so much energy! As soon as I figured out some activity that would entertain them, it would last about three minutes and then I had to think of another one. I got the hang of it by the end of the week however. After giving the invitation on Thursday, one little girl came back to tell me that she had believed in Jesus for the first time so we are praising God for that. Despite my sickness, the goal was accomplished and we had a successful week.

A little girl named Kayla came back for counseling at the Salvation Army on Thursday. She had already believed in Jesus as her Savior, but she often liked to come back to talk to me. On Thursday she came back and was talking to me about the Bible. “We’re supposed to discover the world through books,” Kayla said, seeming to be quoting something she probably heard in school. “Right,” I said, “And the Bible is an excellent book to discover the world through because it’s God’s word.” She thought about it and then said, “Why do grown-ups always only read the Bible a little bit but then spend the rest of their time reading other books?” OUCH! There have been several occasions that I have seen kids display wisdom beyond their years without knowing it. This was one of them. I tried to explain that since the Bible is a little harder to understand, sometimes we just read a little bit of it to understand it better or sometimes we don’t want to read it because it’s hard to understand. She replied, “But you and Mr. AJ tell us really good stories from the Bible.” I nodded, “There are good stories in the Bible, aren’t there? People should read it more.”

God used Kayla’s innocent question to convict me once again of something that I think he’s been trying to get through my head for a while now. In another conversation this past week with my boyfriend, Patrick, I was expressing some of my feelings of stress and exhaustion with the week since I had been sick, tired, and still had a lot to do. He responded to me by telling me to relax. I responded that I didn’t think there would be opportunity for relaxing until the weekend. He responded by saying, “When I say relax, I just mean that God has it under control. If you don’t take the time to refresh yourself, then you’ll lose your ability to be effective. You can’t continue to pour into the kids if you aren’t allowing time for God to pour into you.” It’s moments like these that make me love and appreciate Patrick all the more. But OUCH! Twice this past week, God used two people, first Patrick, and secondly Kayla, to speak to me.

You see, if I’m being perfectly honest, my relationship with God has not been the first priority in my life lately. I have been neglecting to spend time with him or read his word for some time now. I think I felt the separation, the dryness, that the lack of spending personal time with God brought a little bit before the summer started. But during that time, I was also regularly doing devotions with Patrick as well. When the summer started, I just wasn’t spending any time at all with God. And once the ministry started, I really began to feel it. I noticed it during the second week of training with Cathy. Something felt amiss, something was off. Why didn’t I have the energy like I did last year? Why does this ministry feel so dry? And then this week, though I tried to blame it on the sickness, I knew in my heart it was deeper than that. Where was my passion?

The thing is that there’s no passion in going through the motions. There’s no passion in doing things just to do them. There’s no passion in serving someone if you’re not also enjoying a relationship with them. There’s no passion in serving God if you’re not also spending time with him. When you don’t take any time to refresh yourself with living water, no matter what you do, you’ll find yourself trudging through a desert.

Picture Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert 

Though I’ve spent all summer thus far in ministry, serving God, teaching children about him, I’ve been in a desert.  Because even though I’m telling others how they can experience God’s love, I haven’t been taking the time to experience God for myself. Sometimes in Bible College and ministry you can fall the thought process that being surrounding by the Bible constantly is enough to feed us spiritually. But it’s not! That living water that refreshes you, is found not by talking about the Bible or about God, but by experiencing him for yourself.

I’ve been in a desert. I haven’t been taking time to refresh myself with God. I’ve been pouring out of an empty pitcher. I praise God that he can use me and use my words in spite of my own shortcomings and can still use the lessons I’ve taught and words I’ve ministered with so far this summer. But it’s time to get out of the desert. God showed me that twice this week, through Patrick and Kayla. God not only used the voice of someone I love, he used the voice of a child. I have been reminded just how important it is to spend personal time with God. And yes, I read my Bible this morning. As you pray for me, please pray that I would continue to be reminded of the important lesson I learned this week. Pray that I would be daily refreshing myself in the presence of a God who loves me. And please hold me accountable, ask me how I’m doing. Ask me if I’m staying refreshed. Ask me if I’ve let God lead me out of the desert.

What about you? Are you in the desert? Do you also need to refresh yourself with living water?

Picture Source: http://lwcc.net.au/