Day 10: Our God is mighty to save.

Oh, God is good! After our nightly debrief with the team, it sounds like we all had a phenomenal day. God is so powerful, and His love is truly overflowing.

I can say that, for me, today was just breathtaking. We woke up this morning, and instantly I was exhausted and angry that I didn't get enough sleep--knowing full well that it was going to make the day drag on. When we got on the car to depart for Sweet Home, the mood was totally different than usual. Where we typically converse and laugh, today we all just were battling nodding off to sleep. I fought through it, but the entire time I just felt weird. Not to mention that three of our team members were ill.

Everything just went wrong this morning. (No surprise, today was the day we revealed the story of Jesus' life and death, and how we are saved into God's kingdom because of it-- Satan did NOT want today to go well.) Because of the number of people from our team that were going to VBS today, we always have to take 2 cars. Shortly after rolling into another township, Phillipi (where many of the Bridges Academy students came from, and a very dangerous place to be--especially as a group of white people...) we got a call from the other car saying they got two flat tires. (Read William's story below.)

Then we realized we forgot to bring the peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches for the VBS kids, meaning we'd have to just feed them bread and juice.

To make matters worse, we woke up to beautiful blue skies but as we loaded up into the car to leave, it took a turn. Storm clouds rolled in big time, it got super windy and cold.

Everything that could have gone wrong did. We sat in the car after arriving to Sweet Home and just laid out some honest prayer to God, confessing fear and frustrations but praising Him and recognizing His big and glorious plan.

And wham, things instantly began looking up. We decided to run all of our stations in one room. Now normally, this particular room is freezing--even on a nice day. But praise God, it was warm all day. The kids were super zoned in and focused on every thing we did, loving every moment of it.

Then we jumped into story telling. I was so terrified--these kids literally have never heard about Jesus before, how do I explain his whole life and death in one 20 minute segment with a translator, without going over their heads?

But by the grace of God, he reached them right where they were. Though I planned to wait til tomorrow to invite the kids to accept Christ in their hearts, I totally felt God tugging on my heart BIG TIME to do it today. Though I was terrified (since I've ever done that before) I dove in.

I asked the kids to raise their hands if they prayed the prayer the first time and several hands shot up. Praise God. Moreso, in the second round of kids even more hands shot up. You could tell by talking to the kids afterward that something was just absolutely different in that room, and in each of those children. Please pray for them, pray that God would reveal himself to them in mighty ways.

Though, as we were leaving I felt a little discouraged again. I started to think that we only have one more day left, and then we're taking off. What will happen to these kids faith when we leave?

But when we got home to the students at Bridges, God totally gave me a divine appointment that uplifted my soul. I sat down with one of the students I've bonded with a lot, Odwa, and he just started asking me a lot about my day. He said "Today you went to Sweet Home? Did you play games? Did you tell them a bible story?" I answered him saying yes, that we shared a bible story and told the kids about Jesus and played all sorts of games. With a huge smile on his face, he said "Oh yes, I remember when I was a child I would go to the OVC (Orphan and Vulnerable Children] Camps. I remember every time the Americans came and shared bible stories. I remember everything they said."

Absolutely floored I stopped him and said "Really, you remember all that from your childhood with the Americans?" And he, again with a huge reminiscent smile said "Yes, I remember all of their stories. All of them."

This was the greatest encouragement I could have received. Praise God for today. I love that we were able to lay down our plans, because we totally saw God carry us.

Here are some words from William, as he shares his experiences today:

Romans 8:28

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

As we arose this morning, the day was bright and the air was right! The plan of the day was to drop off four duffle bags of stuffed animals at St Paul Church in Philipi for the kids there, then head down to Sweet Home for another Sweet Day of VBS. There were two cars going to Sweet Home. As the team started driving to Philipi, everything was great and fine. After a thirty minute drive on the freeway to Philipi, we got off the exit and started driving on the surface street. Just a quick reminder, the roads in Philipi were unevenly paved and there were pot holes every five feet - basically a land mine.

Two minutes on the surface street in Philipi, I saw a giantic pot pole as I was following the car in front of me. I tried to avoid it by steer the steering wheel to the right, but for some bizzare reason the car went straight through the hole. All of a sudden, the car became lower and lower, so I decided to pull the car over to the left, next to the side walk. As soon as the car came to a Full Stop, I came out of the car and checked on the tires; the two tires on the right side of the car were blown. Once I realized the two tires on the right side of the car were blown, I immediatedly went back into the car and unleashed the bad news to the people who were in the car. According to other team members who were also on the prior trips, people in Philipi would rob passengers in parked cars - that is definitely not good. The car that I was following was out of of sight when this happened so we had to call them on the cellphone and ask them to come back to rescue us. They came back in five minutes and we decided that the guys should stay with the car and the girls should go with the rest of the team to Sweet Home. By the grace of God, we had two guys waiting in the car with blown tires, which was way better than just one! It was awesome that God was watching over me and this other guy while we were waiting in the car that nothing bad happened to us. During the wait in the car, we prayed that God would watch over this entire day and we thanked Him for everything that just happened because we know He allowed things to happen for reasons. After the prayer, I turned on the radio, and guess who's on the radio - Joyce Myers. She was preaching on trusting God in all things and at the end of the her sermon, she gave a Verse - Romans 8:28. After hearing that verse, we realized that God affirmed the prayer we had a couple minutes ago! After an hours and half, the first car came back with a used tire so we were able to put on a used tire and a spare tire for the car.

As soon as we were able to get the tire situation squared away, we rushed to Sweet Home. My task for today was to lead the kids to memorize John 3:16 and I wasn't sure how it went. Surprisingly, it went extremely well. God was able to use one of the people from Sweet Home when I was absent to lead the kids to memorize the verse in their own language. It's a very important verse and God knew that it's would be a lot better for them to memorize with understanding than just to memorize. Praise God for everything that happened because if the tires didn't pop then the kids would not have an understanding of one of the most important verses in the bible!! " - William


Today was awesome--all the glory to God!

Please pray for our partners, the CHEs, as they are feeling discouraged and are loosing some unity among their group.

Please also pray for the students who accepted Christ today.


Much love and thanks to everyone who is supporting us and sending encouragements. We're ending strong!