On the Road Again..Please Pray

Saturday at 6:15 AM, we pack 27 suitcases and 23 teenagers with 4 adults into two fifteen passenger vans to begin a nearly twenty hour journey to Swan Quarter, North Carolina. We will spend the week there loving on the less fortunate children and working on community buildings/projects or homes of the poor. This week is always an amazing time for our teens in our ministry and without a doubt it always seems to have a huge impact on me too.

I was looking back at my pictures,like the one above, from our first trip in 2008. We took nine kids that first summer we were serving here in ministry. Many of them had little experience with God, didn't know much of His Word, or really know a thing about my husband or myself. WOW, what a diffrence two years can make. Now some of those same nine kids who were so new to God's word in 2008 are living lives of radical faith for our Lord each and everyday. In the past two years, I have seen them do things like: lead the annual See You At The Pole Event for hundreds of students at our highschool, share during our church service what Jesus is doing in their lives, intentially build into other believers through leading small groups for students younger than they are, serve by working at Christian camps, and attend international mission trips to spread God's love and teach His word to unreached people groups!! God has allowed us to see so much fruit coming from the lives/faith of our youth. As I look at the picture, I just keep thinking..from these few I will build my church...

So this year we are are taking 27..three times what we had the first trip. On these few I will build my church-a hand full of dedicated teenagers..changed by the Word of God in their lives. I couldn't imagine that God would do what He has done! I praise Him for the way that He reaches out to us and uses us! I never get tired of seeing the power of God's Word working through lives of the teens that I am privileged to walk alongside daily in this life.

Pray for us as we embark on another week filled with service, learning, worship, sleep deprivation, bad food, and no cell phones. We are blessed to be a part of what God is doing in the lives of our teens and we pray that more are reached for Him this week. I am praying that like those first few who answered and continue to answer the call, some will begin to live lives of radical, obedient faith to Him!