God provided my family with an opportunity to go on a Mission Trip during the week of Spring Break. I had been praying for the Lord to open a door for the girls and I to do some type of ministry work in order to serve Him. My sweet friend, Melanie McCarty, started talking about working at one of FBC Powell's Mobile Home Parks and doing VBS during Spring Break. God placed the desire on my heart to ask her if they needed any help. She immediately said, "Yes! We would love to have you help! We need someone to be in charge of crafts." Wow! Doing crafts with children is what I love to do! Isn't God amazing? I told Melanie that Lily, Maddy, and I would be working together. I couldn't wait to tell the girls about this opportunity. When I first told the girls that we would be going on a Mission Trip, they immediately asked if we would be going out of the country. Jonathan went to China on a Mission Trip in October 2007, so it would only be natural for them to ask that question. I was glad to be able to share with them that we don't need to travel far to be on a Mission for God. There are people right here in Powell that don't know Jesus! The girls were shocked to learn this since Jesus is a name that we talk about daily in our home. Our Mission Team was commissioned on Sunday, March 28, and we began our mission work on Monday, March 29. Every day that week we met at Gamble Community Church at 5:30 and ate supper with the children. Then we had VBS from 6:00-8:00.
Our VBS curriculum this year is called Hero Headquarters and the goal is to teach children that anyone can be a hero for God. We had between 6 and 15 children come each night. We would have praise and worship time, story time, recreation time, and then craft time. Here are the children working on our first craft, windsocks:
The girls loved being with Melanie. Maddy was eager to help her:
There was only one little girl that came that week and she and my girls quickly became friends!
Our memory verse for the week was 1Timothy 4:12 and it was perfect! I prayed that God would help my girls feel comfortable and that they would be good examples of God's love by what they said and did. He definitely answered my prayer! My girls jumped right in and participated in all of the activities. Here they are unscrambling capes to make a word:
Maddy being a Hero during Recreation time! Can you tell she is having a great time?
One of our stories was about the shepherds and how they were unnamed heroes. The kids got to pretend they were shepherds herding their sheep:
I loved seeing and hearing the children reading from the Bible
(Please keep Kayla in your prayers!)
One night for craft time we made prayer books out of paper bag scrapbooks!
All the kids loved Recreation Time and the Lord provided us with such beautiful weather:
I loved watching my girls sing praise and worship songs with the motions!
The kids unwrapped the secret message for the night:
Here is Maddy being a "Hero" and helping set up the cans for "bowling." The 40 cans represented the 40 people that were against Paul:
Me, my girls, and our new friend, K.K.
We had an ice cream party on the last night.
Lily and her pink cone!
The night was bittersweet. We were sad that VBS had to end, but also happy with all of the friends we made and the opportunity that the Lord provided us to minister to the children of Gamble. The Mission Trip was such a blessing to us, and it came at just the perfect time. We were able to not only share the love of Jesus with the children, but also prepare our hearts for Easter by spending our Spring Break doing Christ-centered activities. The girls absolutely loved it and have been asking to go back. I am praying that we will get an opportunity to visit and worship with them one Sunday morning. Please pray for all of the children that we met last week and that they will continue to learn more about our Savior. I am so thankful for this opportunity to glorify the Lord and I am praying that He will provide more opportunities for me and my family to be heroes for God!
Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for other followers in what you say and do, as well as by your love, faith, and purity.
1Timothy 4:12
