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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| Picture Source: http://lwcc.net.au/ |
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