Being Thankful Even When Everything Goes Wrong

We took four carloads of teenagers to Campina Grande for a short campaign in the AME program. These kids spent three Saturdays (Morning and Afternoon) preparing to share Christ there. The plan was to hand out pamphlets, make friends with local teenagers, invite them to group dynamic games and to a Bible study at night. But once on the campaign, things did not go as planned:

The central park, which is always open and filled with tons of people, was closed for fifteen days for renovation,
Therefore local teenagers that had been invited had no where to meet up with us for the afternoon of games;
A new building for the church had been rented and was to be inaugurated during the campaign, but the owner delayed on fixing something and wouldn't hand over the keys;
So the meeting was set up outside in a yard with chairs, powerpoint projector, etc, but even though we are technically in a drought, it rained and everybody had to rush to cram indoors;
And one of our cars broke down.

Samuel McKinney (13) said the blessing before one of the meals, praying "Thank you, God, for this trip. Even though everything went wrong, we had a lot of fun." We did have some visitors, the young people learned that God still works even though things don't go as planned, and instead of the park we handed out pamphletes at a jogging trail - Samuel was an example of dedication there, running up alongside the joggers to tell about Jesus and give them an invitation to know more. Some ignored him, some were annoyed, but some stopped, and like the Ethiopian Eunuch asked to know more.
We thank God in all things.

Comments

Our Women: Shining Stars in the Universe

Unity Through The Word

Thank you all for your prayers for the PORMISSOES meeting last month. It was a great blessing. We sat and studied God's Word together for the entire day. There were some differences of understanding on some passages, but we worked our way through them. In the end, everyone was saying how the meeting was edifying. It started around 9:30 am. We broke for lunch at 1 pm. We started back around 2:30 and went until 6 pm. They wanted to keep going, but the SEARA class started at 7 pm. If every meeting could be as encouraging as this one, we would be in heaven. My goal with these meetings is to teach the church workers throughout the state how to listen to someone who has a different belief about God's Word, try to understand their logic, their thought processes and share their own understanding from the Bible. My hope is that God's Word is heard above their personal wants, desires, or traditions. This is no

Sharing Jesus in Mexico

by Renato Menezes Renato is the second young person from João Pessoa to go through the Adventures in Missions program. His 18 months is Mexico is about to end, and undoubtedly he has grown tremendously in his faith during these past two years. Here is his report on his personal Bible studies: Praise God I started studying the Bible with one more person since last month, raising the number of weekly Bible studies to four. Ema is one of the main people that work at the orphanage where we have a ministry (the children from there call her mother). She would visit the church before, but stopped because of work and other things, but in the last months, she not only started coming again, but brought her daughter too. Some Sundays ago I offered a Bible study, and she accepted happily (I was happy too). So then Ramiro and I began to meet weekly with her to study the book of John. We talked about the importance of baptism and about whether her baptism was Bib

McKinney Report

Search This Blog