First Sunday Home

Its great to be home it really is. First Sunday back and I was interpreting for the service, definitely awesome because I find that I remember more of the sermon that way and it is just so much fun. Difficult? Yes, especially when the pastor gets excited and starts talking fast. The excitement is that either next week or the following I will officially be a member, something for which I am incredibly excited.

First week home has been somewhere between exciting and uneventful, but not mundane. Started school this past Wednesday, witnessed God's strange sense of humor. Much has transpired this past week, but alas World Civ beckons rather commands so I will write again later.

God's humor and a blog title

Every now and again I have to say God has a sense of humor. Let me rephrase, I have nineteen years, one month, one week, and six days of proof that God has a sense of humor. I suppose I am saying I think my life is a comedy sometimes, I have to ask does anyone else find it that way. Let me tell you what happened. See yesterday was the first day of my Daniel fast (going vegan for 40 days) and there is lots to pray for right now. One of the things is a situation in my life that frankly is hurting me a bit (if you have no idea what I'm talking about don't worry about it). I had been praying for healing and such and God's answer was to not bottle it up, not keep it to myself, and, when my religion professors asked for prayer requests in class, say it not vaguely, but in its entirety. A frightening concept that I neither entertained nor fancied. This morning I woke up and started praying ironically for us not to do prayer requests in my New Testament class today. Surprisingly we did not, but then again God has a sense of humor and I should not have thought that I would escape quite so easily. I had several questions to ask the professor after class regarding the computer, writing assignments, and the exams, which made me have to follow him to his office after class, should have seen what was coming. After my questions were answered he inquired about a few things and then proceeded flat out ask the very thing I was hoping and praying I would not have to say. It was all I could do to not say, "Seriously, God?" Instead for once in my life I kept my mouth shut and conceded. So all this is to say that God is merciful, but also has a rather interesting sense of humor.

Now as far as a blog title is concerned some of your are aware that I only have ten and a half months left of being a teen and am therefore on the market for a new blog title. One option is something to do with formerly knitting and crocheting like a chain smoker... I would love some feedback and I want to know what you think a good title would be. Let me know

Reflecting on the past 7 weeks

It has been nearly a week since I have been at camp, so, I have had a lot of time to reflect on my time there and offer you a recap. From the very first day of the trip I knew God had something crazy in mind for the summer, and a reason for having me personally there. That first day (see the post from June 28th) I had little doubt that God wanted me there. I missed my plane because I misread the reservation, I know it does not get much blonder than that. I did not know why that was important immediately perhaps for humbling before camp started, but on the last plane ride I found out why. There were two hurting people going to Saskatoon they had lost a family member and another was missing. I had the opportunity to pray for them. An opportunity I would have missed if I had not missed my flight. Staff training I was reunited with some old pals and got to see the beginnings of an awesome staff that was truly hand picked by God. Teen week was well a stretch at best, but interesting. We (my co-counselor Brittany and I) had some great conversations with our teen campers, though they were not convinced completely about why dressing modestly is important. I also got to have a continuing conversation with a girl who I had as a repeat camper. Teen camp was, hmmm... unique. The first week of kid's camp was stressful, but definitely a worthwhile week. Halfway through the week I prayed that God would give me a heart like His, I did not fully understand what I was getting myself into. When our girls wanted to all accept Jesus into their hearts I found myself giddy with excitement, however, when two of our girls left that Wednesday I cried over them (even though one of them had been a nuisance). The next week was what I hoped would be a welcome break, but it was quite the opposite. The first morning three of us prayed dangerous prayers. I prayed for our faith to be strengthened, Brittany prayed for an amazing and unforgettable for the kids, and another girl, Julianne, prayed for God to show His power. That afternoon God answered. A storm came there was a funnel cloud, hail, and lightning, but after we gathered in prayer again, we saw God remove the storm from us. Sounds like an amazing day, but it was not over. One of the girls also on the dish washing crew wanted to go home, but when we offered to pray for her she turned and ran. We followed her in the car, eventually I got out and walked with her, and what can be only attributed to the fear of God (no joke) she got in the car only to go home the next day. The third week I was unwillingly placed in a cabin, but it was an awesome week. The last night our girls came to us asking for us to show them how to become Christians, not all of them accepted Jesus that night, but I know the ones who did were sincere. The last week of kid's camp was stretching in more ways then I could imagine. That was the week I spoke for chapels, and the week that God decided to really teach me what reaching the unreached people groups would be like. There was a deaf boy there who knew no American Sign Language, apart from the alphabet. Worse still was that he knew nothing about Jesus, a few of us got the opportunity to work one on one with him via pen and paper (as he could read and write) and teach him about God. He did not accept Jesus, but our job as Christians is not to "save people" our job is to sow seeds. The last week was discipleship week where God shoved me out of my comfort zone yet again during devotions. The girls went to the basement for devotions and God put it on my heart to share with them about my 4 and a half year struggle with purity, that was the first time I had ever said the entire story out loud in front of anyone. I am still not entirely sure why that needed to be said. On the way home, reflecting on the trip, God revealed an issue that I think many of us have whether we know it or not. The issue is tunnel vision. Many Christians are so caught up on a small perspective, a narrow view if you will that we miss important things. We may be stuck in the current circumstance that we fail to ask, "How can God use this for His glory?" or we may be stuck focusing on our own issues that we fail to see the hurting people around us. If I may be blunt with you I would like to point out that our current hurts, struggles, and sufferings are minimal in comparison to eternity Paul wrote on that nearly 2000 years ago. God gives us the opportunity to love other people fully by allowing what we are going through to matter less. This is something I struggle with daily. I find myself saying, "Because of this hurt I am incapable of loving someone else." In essence we are self-absorbed at times. I have found that often times God will allow us to go through some tragedy and gives us the opportunity to share with others the good news because we have not lived perfect lives. A recent event in my life should have been traumatizing, and I suppose at first it was, but because I have not and will not allow it to define the rest of my life , and there is crazy joy that is still in my heart despite it, I have been able to reach out to other people going through the same thing. I still wish it had not happened, but I am grateful for the opportunities to share God's love that have come from it. So this is my challenge to you, a challenge given to me this summer. In the morning as you are going through your routine, perhaps having your alone time with God, pray and ask for an opportunity to share God's love with someone. Also look beyond your circumstance.

Missions

So often we find ourselves overwhelmed by missions. “Save the heathens!” We try and become the Holy Spirit and try to convert people to Christianity, but that is not our job. We look at the numbers and become overwhelmed. What happens when the masses are concentrated down to the face of a little boy, a little boy who has no home, does not speak or hear, a little boy who feels alone in the world? When we focus on numbers, we do nothing, but when we focus on each individual soul, lives are changed.
I know I have been called to foreign missions, to go into all the world, but it has always been me thinking of it being my responsibility for people to change. It’s not though. A few weeks ago I asked God to give me a heart like His. I found myself torn up by campers who went home, and I found myself overjoyed when just one camper came to Jesus. This week missions hit me hard in the face. Meeting the little boy, and having to learn how to communicate to him is just a small picture of what reaching the unreached will likely be like. Having to learn how to communicate, build relationships, and teaching them little by little. I have seen such amazing things this week. Some of us were talking and it became evident the work that God had from the beginning. All of us put together we cover all the bases as far as relating to kids, if we took even one person out we would be less effective. Truly God put this team together.

It would be this week

A year ago Thursday I felt God calling me to deaf ministry. I had no idea where or what would happen next. I started learning sign language and fell in love with the language. I far from fluent, but able to have a decent conversation with someone. One of the things I love about sign language is that it gives me the ability to reach one of the largest unreached people groups and it gives me the opportunity to worship with my hands in church. When I moved out to Texas I started interpreting services and worship for the deaf man in the congregation which was great. This week in one of the boys cabins there is a little boy who has a tragic story that I am not going to go into, but it is really sad. He does not know sign language, but he can read so praise God for having the ability to communicate with him, but we are going to write to him today during swimming. Please pray for him.

Week # 3

The summer is flying. I cannot believe that next week I am speaking and I only have two weeks left here. This past week I was in a cabin, and I was not too excited about it. However, this is not my first summer and I have learned if I go in with a crummy attitude then my week will follow likewise (okay so that is not just at camp). So I prayed and started reading Philippians over and over again, and I came across a passage in the first chapter where Paul is talking about people preaching with the wrong motives and how to him it doesn't matter because Jesus is being preached. Anyways with that in mind I decided it was time to stop judging some of the others for their motives and rejoice that God is using even them to preach the good news. This week was awesome. Energy was found in God, and I discovered that actually spending time with God on my breaks helped. This past week was awesome and the best was Thursday night when a few of the girls asked to accept Jesus. Neither my co-counselor nor myself asked them, they came to us. It was so sweet. This next week I am speaking in the chapels so I would greatly appreciate your prayers.

Dontcha love Mondays

I have no idea how to describe what exactly just happened. I know that God is good and huge and mighty and we are all so in awe of what happened. Let me give you a breakdown of what happened today. The forecast called for sunshine and warmth all week long, and that is how we woke up, sunny and warm. Midway through the morning dishes a storm rolled in, which put a little bit of a damper on things. After supper it started raining like crazy then hailing, first about the size of marbles then it got bigger. I am not entirely sure how long that went on, but after awhile everything calmed down and we thought it was over. Jason came in and herded the 53 campers and 18 cabin leaders into the basement. The rest of us formed a circle outside and started praying over the camp for protection and praying that God would send the storm away. This is where it gets awesome. At first it was just a small break in the clouds, the slightest sliver of blue is what we could see. As we waited and watched it got progressively bigger until there were clouds all around, but blue sky above the camp. After that the entire staff was praising God and some of the campers too. It was a pretty awesome ordeal. The crazy thing is that there was a tornado touchdown about 2 miles (around 3km) from the camp. The damage done by the storm was minimal and fixable so praise God for that.
Unfortunately last night right about 11:30 it was just about bedtime. One of my LIT girls was talking to Anita about going home. We were walking back to the cabin trying to find out what happened. She could not put it to words. About the time we got to the cabin we were staying in Anita asked to pray for her, and she refused. Shortly thereafter she turned around and started walking quickly towards the road with the intention of walking home. We followed in the truck. About ten minutes after she started walking another storm had started. The wind was blowing like you would not believe, lighting every which way, and we are pretty sure there was a bear knocking around. We finally convinced her to come back into the truck. We phoned her grandma who said she would come in the morning. We both ended up spending the night in Jason and Anita’s basement. I do not know what all was happening with this girl. Perhaps I am just a bit wimpy, but it strikes me as odd that a girl of 14 would willingly walk out in a thunderstorm after a tornado touchdown a few miles away and a bear on the loose. Please pray for this girl.