Mission Trip Day 5

Friday of the mission trip reached a fever pitch as we brought everything that had been done throughout the week into a central focus for the day.  This was the day that I had personally anticipated for many weeks because it involved so much planning on my part.

 This team sure looks happy for being so tired!!  I'm the owner of the baseball cap on the right.

We started the day off on the wrong foot as the kids just couldn't seem to get it together and get ready to go off to camp at the YMCA as they had done all week.  They were tired just like us and were moving slowly.  We finally got them moving and I drove them to camp.  On the way back I noticed that the U.S.S. Nimitz was pack in the harbor.  Several weeks ago it had left port and we had assumed it was gone for a while, but it reappeared on this morning apparently for some more maintenance work.  I sensed as I was driving back from the YMCA that the Lord really wanted us to put first things first and pause for some prayer, which is what we did.  The team went to the top of Rucker Hill in the neighborhood behind our house where we can get a clear view of the Nimitz and we prayed for the crew of that ship as well as for our strength for that day and for the city of Everett.  It was a very moving experience to circle up and hold hands with fellow believers in such an amazing spot.  To me it was also a reminder that agendas are for the Lord to do as He wishes.  Had we proceeded as planned that morning I do not think things would have gone well for us that day.

  
2 Chronicles 7:14New Living Translation (NLT)

¹⁴ Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.

After leaving Rucker Hill we traveled into the Silver Lake area near the church to do prayer walking and visit Family Tree Apartments so that it could be prayed over.  As we pulled in to the parking lot Amanda noticed several families moving that day.  Family Tree is undergoing a lot of renovation right now and is moving families from one building to another, which is a huge hardship for many of them.  We decided to go offer to help the people move.  When she walked up to them and asked if we could help, their response was incredulous.

"Are you serious?"

Yes, we were serious, and about 5 of us worked for the next hour and a half to move one family across the complex.  When we were finished they were nearly done with moving, and with as much furniture as they had it would have taken them all day to do on their own.

As usual, God was at work in all of this as well.  The family genuinely couldn't believe that we'd help so willingly.  One of their relatives currently goes to a church across town but doesn't attend that often from what I could gather.  She said she'd been wanting to find a church like ours that treats each other like family.  Another person had a somewhat cynical view about church from their past, but in talking to them I sensed that their mind had dramatically changed due to what had just happened with the move.  They also are interested in coming to see what is happening at EFC.  Praise God!  Through a simple act of His people he can still bring glory to Himself and reach out to those that he chooses to reach out to.  That is His work, which he does as we do our work.

After finishing our work, we went over to the main corridor of Family Tree to set up for the barbecue.  We again had a great turnout and were able to invite even more people to the carnival that would be happening that evening.  There were many people we had not previously seen that week, including some who had been at work on the other days but who were off on Friday.  One woman I talked to had several kids and no church home, and she agreed to come to the carnival to see what God was doing at EFC.  The family that we had previously moved came by to request 6 plates for the people who had moved her family.  She did a double take when she realized that the crew that had moved the family was also serving lunch to her!

John 13
³⁴ So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. ³⁵ Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

The pace only increased in the afternoon as we went to the church property to prepare the carnival for that evening.  We each took specific roles during the event and everyone set up specific stations and parts of the event.  As a team we had to lug the inflatable slide out of the trailer as it arguably weighed about 1,000,000lbs.

At 5:30 we began to have families show up.  The cooking crew began serving chili dogs, the snow cone and popcorn crew did their thing, and we got several to operate the bounce houses.  All told we probably had about 100 people show up to this event.  We had people from the neighborhood around the church show up also because they heard us playing loud music and wanted to see what was going on.  All of the food and fun was free to the attendees and we welcomed anyone and everyone to the event.

The most important event of the evening, I believe, was our ability to give testimony in response to the question "Who is Jesus to You?"  At periodic times that evening we shut down the rides, games, and food lines and myself and the other community pastors got up to tell the crowd who Jesus is to us.  It was a great opportunity to tell them our personal story, which no one can argue with, and plant some seeds among the listeners.  Many people there that night are not believers, so it would have been an opportunity missed had we just done an evening of fun without spreading the Good News.

I told the crowd that Jesus is my Leader because He personally led me and my family to the Northwest.  I was able to tell about how He had aligned everything perfectly for us, from our specific call last year at this very time to me wrestling with a new heart in the fall semester at Summer Creek, all the way to how God moved us here when we didn't have a home, a plan, or any money to make it happen.  I feel it is a powerful story of how God can move through a person or a family.  If you haven't read the earlier post on "The Call," I would encourage you to do so.  May the Lord receive glory for what He has done in this family. 
 

When the evening was over myself and the community pastors as well as many from the mission team were able to talk to people from the neighborhood who didn't have a church home, some stopped and prayed for those individuals, and the Lord used it to draw a number of families back to His side.  I really don't think things could have gone any better than they did.  Praise God for what He did.

In what was a surreal moment for myself and Amanda, as the sun was setting and we were wrapping up our festivities and preparing to clean up, two songs were played on the loudspeakers which the Lord had used as part of our call to the Northwest.  God can use anything to glorify Himself and talk to His people, and this was only one piece of how He did it with us.  Here's what we heard:

White Owl, by Josh Garrels

When the night comes,
and you don’t know which way to go
Through the shadowlands,
and forgotten paths,
you will find a road
Like an owl you must fly by moonlight with an open eye,
And use your instinct as a guide, to navigate the ways that lays before you,
You were born to, take the greatest flight
Like a serpent and a dove, you will have wisdom born of love
To carry visions from above into the places no man dares to follow
Every hollow in the dark of night
Waiting for the light
Take the flame tonight 

Child the time has come for you to go
You will never be alone
Every dream that you have been shown
Will be like living stone
Building you into a home
A shelter from the storm 

And the one-two punch of the Lord continued later with the song "Beyond the Blue," also used by the Lord in our call.

And wisdom will honor everyone who will learn
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern
And to do the right thing even when it burns
And to live in the light through treacherous turns
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns
To keep on course from the bow to the stern
And throw overboard every selfish concern
That tries to work for what can’t be earned
Sometimes the only way to return is to go,
Where the winds will take you

And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond, the blue.

I am still moved to tears in hearing both of those songs.  I don't know why the Lord is so good to me.

Once again, this mission team did a quantity and quality of work that would have taken EFC at least a year to do on its own.  It is quite possible that at our current size it would have taken us multiple years to achieve it.  Instead of that, the Lord used a team from Texas to do all of those things in a week.  All total we had 6 salvations, countless connections were made at Family Tree and in the community, and the Lord reached out to numerous people who were hurting and thought they were alone.  If God can do that in a week, what will He do in the next 6 months?  I guess you and I had better stay tuned...