Day 1: church among other things

We went to church at Emmanuel Baptist and our students had a great time. Harris and McKenna had the opportunity to share their testimonies and people responded pretty well. Harris talked abut his music and how that has shaped his life. Then we got to play “Come thou Fount” for everyone...it was a hit. After John’s sermon (great sermon btw) McKenna shared has she has wrestled with God through her pain. It was clearly hard for her to do, and she did a great job! People approached her afterward and shared their pain with her and encouraged her to keep trusting God.

After church we went to “Graze and Gab” where we ate food and talked to people from the church. We made a connection with Sam and Marsha who were the only teenagers that we saw in church. We had a great lunch at the Busy Bee (awesome burgers) then broke and got ready for the first night at the park. We rearranged the youth center, set up our sound stuff, got ready for games, and picked out colors for the youth center. It was a busy afternoon.

We only had a few students from town come to the park. But for those that came we had a great time playing ultimate frisbee and busing out the parachute. It was good to see all the smiling faces and joy that came from having a good time together. After playing I introduced our group to everyone who was there and asked a couple of questions to start the discussion. Then Stephanie shared her story and was very real and honest. I am really proud of her. After she shared we went back to the youth center and spent some time in worship. A few more kids dropped by and afterward we had some great chances to talk to them.

One of most encouraging things we saw last night was Raven, Rachelle, and Misty coming back with us to the Youth Center. Reid invited them to come back to the youth center and hear us play music...and they did! Misty especially seemed receptive and the other two were respectful and cool to talk to.

We had a number of “God Moments” as they were referred to as well. I’ll let our students tell you all about those in their own words:

“God Moment #1” - Amy, McKenna, Stephanie, Ashley
So we (the four girls) were walking to the store to buy lollipops for our devotions (another story) and we passed a smiley old man who said hi to us. We were all planning on doing our devotions at the A&W but McKenna, who joined us later, had forgotten her devotional book. Because of this we decided to walk back to the church to get it. We decided to do devos on the church’s amazing lawn instead of walking back to the A&W. In the middle of devos we agreed that our hearts were not in the right place nor were our attitudes in check. Therefore we decided to pray aloud for encouragement, peace, love, and to be respectful. We were having an amazing prayer session when we heard this question, “Are you girls Christians?” We looked up, startled, to see the same man who we had passed on our way to the store. We answered uncertainly, expecting questions but the man said, “Stay the course. When I passed you girls earlier, I knew that you were Christians.” He then shared a verse, John 9:25, “Whether he is a sinner I know not, but I do know that I once was blind but now I see.” He proceeded to tell us about some guys he worked with who didn’t believe in God. He told us, “God bless,” and left. We started laughing because we were so amazed. Amy was literally shaking and Stephanie was crying. It was such an amazing answer to our prayers. We don’t know his name our who he is, but we do know that he was either an angel or if God just placed it on his heart to go and talk to us right at that specific moment. We serve and awesome God!

“God Moment #2” Harris Jackson
Earlier on Saturday afternoon, we were in the basement of the church waiting for dinner and just hanging out and I found a book called “Be Thou My Vision”. It was a devotional that was based off of hymns. I found one from Come Thou Fount called “Tune Up”. It was about how we are all out of tune praise givers, but it doesn’t matter because God tunes us all up to suit Him so we do not have to worry about how we sound.
Later that night, we sat down in a small room in the bottom of the Catholic church and talked for a bit, and then started to worship. We ended up singing (probably terribly) for about 3 hours singing every song we knew with sincere praise.
So far this week, the worship has been amazing. Everyone is sincere in their hearts and are giving everything to God. We pray and ask you to pray for our worship this week, that we might praise God and call out to Him with great sincerity and love.

Prayer Requests:
Continued searching after God
Roundup connections. Our students will be out on the town today seeking out teenagers and conversations.
Ministry. More students to show up at the park, play games, and hear the gospel.

Thanks again for your prayers.

in His grip,

Jared