Kansas City Misison Trip 2011

Pastor Schiele was our mission group's
contact at Grace Baptist Church. He
made our lives so much easier! Thanks!

Have you ever had a week when you are totally surrounded by teenagers in the sweltering heat doing manual labor and loving it? I have! I know that it doesn't sound like much fun but when you are doing it all for the glory of God and the fellowship of believers it really can be amazign!

This past week was our fourth mission trip with the youth of Villebrook Baptist Church. In order we have served in Springfield, MO; Springfield, MO; Memphis, TN; and now Kansas City, MO. I love youth and I love missions, and it is amazing to see the students that my husband has mentored in his 13 years of doing youth ministry that are now youth ministers themselves. Our group this year included three groups that were led by former "Jimmy kids".

For eight days, six groups from three different states came together for a total of about 90 people serving. We had everyone from infants to senior adults living together at Grace Baptist Church. I just have to stop for a second and say how grateful we are to Pastor Lavendar and Pastor Schiele for allowing us to invade their facilities and for being very gracious and accommadating to our group. If you don't know anything about Grace, it is in a pretty rough area in Kansas City. That in and of itself was definitely out of our kids comfort zones. Not to mention that it was uncomfortable because it was possibly the hottest week of the year! So we all bonded together in the midst of our discomforts.

Everyday, our teams would undertake three hours of morning service. During that time we divided into groups that did tutoring for elementary school children, teaching life skill classes at Ivanhoe Community Center, and gardening in a local park. Then we would all meet back at Grace for lunch.

In the afternoon we headed out for three more hours of service. This time our teams did a Daycamp at Macedonia Baptist Church, community revitalization with Ivanhoe, street witnessing around the KC Metro, and services projects for the people of the Kansas City Baptist Temple. I was pleasantly surprised at the consistently great attitudes our kids had--even when they were shoveling sewage in 100 degree heat. Once our work for the day was finished we headed to the YMCA for showers and back to Grace for supper and worship.

It made for some really long but really awesome days. I am happy to say that we saw four confirmed salvations during our time of service plus we planted many more seeds. Not to mention the changes that God did in the hearts of our students during this trip.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support as we undertook this great adventure.

Busy Week!

This morning when I opened my eyes I took a deep breath and prepared to plunge into one of my busiest weeks of my year. For me it's the week before leaving on mission trip. That means I have a ton of little things...like laundry and packing...that have to be done before we leave bright and early on Saturday morning.

This year I feel especially overwhelmed because of the car problems we are having. If you don't know, a little while back our car was vandalized when someone poured fabric softner into our gas tank. On the advise of the mechanics we talked to (all five of them) we waited it out to see what was going to happen because no one knew for sure. Needless to say about a month later, our car's fuel system is caput. So our car has been out of commission since Wednesday. So I have been at the mercy and grace of all those who have either given me a ride or allowed me to borrow their car to get to work and do my grocery shopping (thanks, Cindy & Dustin & Shaina!).

Still I am trying to maintain a good attitude and not get too stressed out while I wait for my car to be repaired and to depart on mission trip. So if you have a second to stop and think about me, say a prayer that everything will get worked out quickly so that I can finish all the little things that I have planned this week. Also pray that our car repairs will be covered by insurance and will be done for a reasonable price. But most of all pray for the five different youth teams that will be convergining on Kansas City, Missouri, on Saturday, July 16th for Mission Trip!

More Mission Trip Facts:

• 5 Mission Groups from 3 States (many led by former youth of my husband's)
• 90 youth, adults, and college students from age 11 to 62ish
• Working in 4 local Kansas City, MO ministries
• Partnering with 3 local churches
• For 8 days

It's going to be great!

Duck Tales

I don’t know if you have ever done anything even a little bit crazy, but let me tell you that I have. The silliest thing is that it was all over something so small. Last Friday, Jimmy and I went to Breadeaux with two of the college couples. Jimmy really loves Breadeaux and he hadn’t had it for quite some time and we wanted to do something special so we thought – Breadeaux it is!

Now if you don’t know, Breadeaux is French style pizza and they specialize in small towns, but we live in Saint Louis. So the nearest Breadeaux is about 45 minutes from our house. SO we all got in the car and took a drive to Milstadt, Illinois, just for pizza. I know crazy! Once we were in town we passed Happy Days Icecream. We figured we had come this far, why not have some dessert. After dinner we stopped to get icecream, and that’s when I saw them…

Cute. Adorable. Tiny. Miniature. Rubber Ducks! Shaina, Shelby, and I instantly fell in love! We each purchased a couple of ducks from the vending machine and gave them cute little nicknames. I got Cow Duck (white with brown spots) and Edward Cullen Duck (Black with White Fangs) that day. They even rode on the dashboard all the way home!

The thing is… When you find something so cute and adorable and you fall in love then you are always going to want more. Therefore, when I discovered another mini-duck vending machine in Bowling Green, Missouri, on my way home from visiting my sister at Hannibal LaGrange College, I knew my duck family needed a few more members. Yeah, I bought three more!

Still this wasn’t the craziest thing that happened! On Sunday, the couples were all sitting around and we were talking about all the fun we had had on Friday and I was showing the girls the new ducks I bought on Saturday and then Shelby decided we should drive to Milstadt again just to buy more ducks! Yep. We got in the car, drove 45 minutes, ate Breadeaux, had icecream, and bought more mini-ducks!

I now have 8 mini-ducks sitting on top of my computer monitor at home. I still think they are cute and adorable, but I can’t believe the extra effort I put into getting the last three ducks. Would I have put that kind of extra effort into other areas of my life? Or do I waste it on things that have no eternal importance? Not to say that it’s not okay to have fun and be crazy and go on wild duck chases, but what I am saying is that I need to make sure that I don’t lose out on things that are more important because I am too busy chasing rubber ducks.

Daughters of the King Pt 1: Evaluation

Two weeks ago, we went on our annual mission trip. This year we traveled to inner-city Memphis. When we began planning this trip back in December, we decided that this year we were not only going to challenge our teenagers and adults with physical and spiritual tasks but also with mental ones. We decided that the best way to do this was to require them to take classes during their mornings. They were allowed the freedom to choose classes from a list of course offerings and then they were required to attend their chosen classes all week. The other ministers’ wives and I decided we could best handle our other responsibilities by joining forces to teach a girls only class. During this class the girls learned many different lessons as each wife took time to share the lesson that God had laid on her heart for the week.


For my lesson, I taught the girls about being Daughters of the King. My time that week was limited but I want to take the next couple posts that I make to further expand and break down the lesson that I presented to these beautiful young women. We all need to learn about being the Daughters of the King!

Daughters of the King Pt 1: Evaluation

How do you view yourself?

When the girls entered the room on mission trip, I handed each of them a marker and a pad of sticky notes. They were to write one word or phrase on each sticky note that she felt described herself. Once everyone had the opportunity to write five to six different things down I collected the written on sticky notes. Then the girls and I divided them into positive and negative columns and hung them on one section of the classroom wall. Let me just say that as I prepared this lesson, God used it to convict me of some of the attitudes that I have toward myself and how I see myself. Knowing the attitudes I often have, I was not surprised to see much of the same in the girls we were working with.

So what did I find…

Positive.
Let me just start by saying, I was pleasantly surprised to see more in the positive category that I hoped. Here are some of the things the girls said that were positive about themselves.

Smart                                              Good Smile
Friendly                                           Good Sense of Humor
Tall                                                  Athletic
Hard working                                   Musical
Artistic

Many of the girls had the same or similar to the things listed above so I have simplified.

Negative.
I really expected the negative column to be totally overwhelming and in truth it was better than I thought but still twice as big as the positive column. Here are some of the things the girls said that were negative about themselves.

Fat                                                 Overweight
Short                                              Zit Faced
Lazy                                               Lonely
Friendless                                       Not good enough
Impatient                                        Unforgiving
Uncommitted                                  Poor
Annoying                                        Ugly
Unemployed                                   Stupid
Critical                                           Angry
Hurting                                           Worthless
Sarcastic

Many of the girls had other things to say that I do not feel that I can share with you, but I think you get the picture.


In Summary
So today we have learned that although some of us do see a few positive attributes in ourselves we are way more willing to see and believe the negative things about us.

Tune in next time to learn more about your true identity as a Daughter of the King!