Taking Church to the People...

Hooray!!!

The Lakeside/Asheboro team has arrived!  I've been looking forward to this week all summer and now it's here!  I'm very excited that they will be serving in CP this year!  (With the exception of passing out school supplies in the rain last year, this team has never been to CP)

This evening was already a great start to the week.  The worship time was stirring and Nate delivered an important challenge to "Be imitators of God" or more literally, "Exist as Christ".  He will continue to teach from Ephesians 5 this week. 

Yes, I have missed this group.  It's great to have them back!

A Father's Care

I've been having some car trouble recently and today was the day to focus on finding a resolution.  That involved a series of conversations with different people, dropping the car off, picking it up unresolved, and driving around seeking a part...  God provided exactly what I needed throughout the process.  The first guy I took the car to made me very uncomfortable, but Scott was there to shield me and handle it.  After I left Scott, the other 3 men I met on my quest were very pleasant and helpful.  The last one seemed to be a Believer and took care of my need - and all of this happened before I ran out of gas! 

Tonight I made my weekly drive to Wake Forest (in the pouring rain!) and, as usual, it was a sweet time of prayer and fellowship, plus some of my favorite music.  I felt very refreshed from being there.

I am thankful for the Father's provision of the right people when I needed them most!

Scott, thanks for your help through many car trials...

Emotions

On Wednesday I had the privilege of spending some quality time with a boy from my community who is leaving to move out of the coutry in a few hours.

Actually, I hate this part of the ministry. It's rough having your heart ripped out repeatedly. I'm not prone to tears, but as I sit here writing this, I lost it for a bit. It's the first time I've allowed the reality to sink in that I'll never see him again on this earth. He's one of the few people who have lived here as long as I have - which means he was 4 when I moved in. It tears me up to think that I'm not going to see his smiling face or hear him calling my name any more. It's bad enough when the kids move across the city, or even a couple of hours away, but he's returning to his home country.

At times like this there's only 1 thing that can keep me going. (My normal course is to run from situations that look like they'll be painful.) That 1 thing is what made Wednesday a great day. Matthew and I had lunch with our young friend. While we were eating, I asked him what was the most important thing he had learned in Kids Club. After some thought he said he didn't believe God was real when he started coming to Kids Club, but now he does. Later, as we were talking he laughingly said something about going to Heaven. We asked him several questions about how a person could get to Heaven and how they would know if they were going to get there. By answering our questions he accurately explained the way of salvation. Finally I asked him if he had ever done that - given God his heart and asked Him to be boss of his life. His response was, "Yeah, Miss Amy, I did it with you." I clarified the day he was talking about (which I remember very well!) and explained to him that I wasn't sure he understood that day and I just wanted to make sure. He may have thought I was a bit crazy at the moment, but I wanted to hear his explanation. He also assured me that God would be with him even when he was far away from Kids Club. That reminds me of a song we sing with the kids,

When I first moved down here we called the Community Center "The Basement" and one day I realized a little girl had mixed up the words to the song - and I really liked her version! For the second half, she sang;

That is my prayer for all the people who pass through our community center - that they will trust in Christ as their Lord and Savior and know that He is with them always no matter how hard life is or how far it takes them away from "The Basement" or Kids Club or Youth Group or the Bible Study in their neighborhood, or the "church girls" or the blue shirts, or whatever else they may remember us as. And that is my hope. There aren't many who move away that I have the joy of seeing come to Christ, but that's not my job. My responsibility is to teach them the Word of God in a way that is understandable to them and pray for the Holy Spirit to draw them to repentance. When they leave, I trust that the Holy Spirit will bring back to their memory the things they have been taught and grip their hearts.

After lunch he came with us to our afternoon Club in a different neighborhood and did great helping out and leading songs with me. It was really fun!

Now I'm going to dry my eyes and apply my mind to something useful and pray for him before I close my eyes and hope the headache is gone when I awake.

What I do...

People often ask me questions like, "So what exactly do you do?" or "What's your schedule like?" My standard answer is, "Depends on the day. . ." Even after I try to explain, the curious individual is usually left standing there looking confused - particularly if they've asked on different weeks, or been around long enough to hear me talk about various days. Routine isn't normally in the vocabulary.

The interns are getting a taste of that this summer. More than any other summer, they're seeing what year-round multi-housing ministry is like. Last summer we said, "It's not a job, it's a lifestyle." I think that's a lot more evident this year. We want to be as organized as possible in order to be efficient and good stewards of the time God has given us. For that reason, we try to establish structure, but at the same time we have to recognize that things are going to come up constantly that take us by surprise and require a shift in our plans for the hour, or day, or week, and sometimes longer.

For the most part, our summer interns are divided into teams and each team is assigned 2 communities. Monday - Thursday our time is divided between those 2 communities - developing relationships with kids, youth and adults through Hanging Out, Kids Clubs, Youth Groups, Visiting, Bible Studies, etc. Of course, that's only the part that can be neatly written into a schedule. The rest of the ministry is a little harder to explain and tends to s-t-r-e-t-c-h us more (Not that the above mentioned activities are always a walk in the park!) We look for needs in the communities and when we find needs, we try to minister to them. Sometimes they are needs that we've addressed before and it seems simple; food, clothing, shelter... Other times people come to us with a need that we have absolutely no idea how to address. These are good b/c they remind us of our weakness and that we are simply vessels for the Lord to use. We are nothing on our own.

Of course, we cannot forget the days that just don't go the way we had planned at all - and that's often a good thing! For example, last night I intended to be in my neighborhood all evening. In a matter of minutes those plans changed and I was on my way to a community downtown. I got to visit with some ladies there while Scott was talking with a couple of men. (And I got Bo's Iced Tea on the way home! I'm going to be sad when Labor Day comes.) Today, I was in my neighborhood for most of Open Center - minus the time I went back to church to take care of something urgent and then to the hardware store to pick up something we needed in the center. I'm so thankful for the team the Lord has sent me for this summer who are willing and able to carry on and enable me to pick up and run off at a second's notice when an unexpected need arises!

I will not take time to explain how our vehicle challenges create another curve ball in our scheduling, but the Lord has proven Himself faithful to guide us through each challenge that has arisen this summer.

Next week we have a mission team in town. I love mission teams! It's especially exciting to have a returning team that the Lord has allowed us to partner with for a few years. They have been a blessing in many ways! (And yes, that will also bring changes to our schedule for the week!)

Yea!!!

They had heard from a friend that I would like to hang out with their children. I picked the 4 kids up this afternoon and took them with me to the block party at mr. We ate (Ms. Sneed's banana pudding!), jumped in the moon bounce together, hung out and saw Dan the Animal Man's cool creatures. On the way home we sang Kids Club songs (which they had excitedly announced to me that they still remembered) It was really good to spend time with them again. I had not had any contact with them for a long time, but now the moms seem happy to have me hang out with the kids.

A Poem

by: Quon

dare I sleep?