Hey, Everyone!
So, the summer’s almost over. I can’t believe it! The time
literally flew by-crazy busy, full of stories of awesome things God did, and so
fun! In all we sent 16 teams to 15 different countries, over 175 students and
50+ leaders on 2, 3, 4, and 5 week trips. The final team came back last week.
Don, Connie, and I drove out to debrief them ourselves in Mexico. It was so
cool to see them and be on the field with them.
After Training Camp the first week of July, we welcomed
several teams back every weekend. Our days were full of handling random issues
for the teams on the field, organizing debriefs, and preparing for next year. This
continued until the first week of August, when all the students were officially
“home”. 🙂
Right now I’m trying to find a way to sum up all that God
did over the summer through our students. And there’s no possible way to tell
you everything, about the hundreds who came to Christ in Uganda, the orphans in Haiti
who gathered around our team and prayed for them when the team left for the
States, how the Peru team discipled
local Christians and took them on a missions trip into the jungle to share the
gospel in a remote village, and how the Mexico
5 week team saw God multiply water when they were giving it out on a very hot
day. I could tell you the stories of people who were healed, of the foundations
of a church built in Kenya, the Puerto Rico team that lived in a woman’s
shelter in the mountains of that beautiful island, how the Scotland team went out into Glasgow to feed the homeless and wrote
their own dramas to be used in ministry, and the group in the Philippines made sure to tell the
little girls something they’ve never heard before: that they are beautiful and
loved by the Almighty God. The Bolivia
team found a ministry called Manos de Amor and spent their days loving on the
children there, teaching them about Christ; the Guatemala team prayed for a man who lost everything in the mudslide
and when they asked him if they needed anything, he only said, “prayer”; our Jamaica team played soccer with blind
children in Kingston; and the DR
team met a little girl named Meraldy who captured their hearts. The Costa Rica team worked with a church
who served them so profoundly all they could say was, “we went to serve them,
but they taught us the meaning of servanthood”, the Romania team got to meet and tell the gypsy king about Christ while
being interviewed on national television, and the students in Nicaragua went into the dump to meet
and share Christ with families who literally live in, on, and surrounded by
trash.
There’s no way to tell it all.
So, in their own words, our students are going to tell you
what God did in their lives. When asked on their trip evaluations the following
questions, here were–some of–their answers:
What was the biggest
impact on you?
-seeing
people affected by poverty/death, who have joy in spite of it
-playing
with kids, forming relationships, church ministry, evangelism, etc.
-God
taught me the power of prayer
-leading
someone to Christ
-seeing God heal people
-realizing my own brokenness
-living simply and realizing how
much of my possessions are luxuries
-choosing to surrender
-hearing God speak to me for the
first time
What was the
coolest thing God did?
-He saved people!
-He
healed people!
-He
gave me the words/courage necessary to minister to people
-I saw
a depressed city smile
-I was
in awe of how God worked through me and my team
-He
broke my heart for those around me
-He
led our team
-He
brought groups of people (who spoke different languages) together
-He
showed me how much I have to be thankful for
-He
strengthened my relationship with Him
-He
opened my eyes to what is important
-He
brought me out of my comfort zone
-He
showed me what the Body of Christ really looks like
-He
gave me everlasting joy
-He
answered prayed
-He
multiplied things like water, balloons, etc.
-He
gave me peace
-He
brought life (when a widow in Haiti gave birth to her child, whose father died
in the earthquake).
For more stories from the summer, check out these links:
http://10pp0630amb3.myadventures.org
http://10ug0630amb4.myadventures.org
http://10ke0616amb4.myadventures.org
http://10pe0616amb4.myadventures.org
http://10gu0616amb2.myadventures.org
That’s it for now! Hopefully by reading the above you
feel like you have an idea of what this summer was like for me. In summation:
wonderful! I am so blessed to do this, to be able to go out into the nations
and be a part of sending others overseas to share the good news of Christ, to
be able to pour into the Church in America as well through the discipleship
ministry of AIM. It is still surreal to speak about countries and trips as
everyday things… to be like, “oh, Guatemala called and this is happening…
Mexico needs this… guess what God did in Kenya yesterday?” 🙂
I think it was Training Camps that did it for me.
Standing there in a room full of hundred + people (each time!) set to go out to
15 different locations around the world, knowing that each of them would have
stories and an impact on at least one person across the world. A friend came up
to me one night, motioned around the room, and said, “Do you realize these are
all your fruit?”
It’s humbling to think about. It made any stress, lack of
sleep, any sacrifices whatsoever-completely worth it. I want to say the same to
y’all now-for those of you who’ve made it to the end of this email 🙂–do you realize this (the above and so much more) is
your fruit? Because of your prayers, because of your encouragement, and because
of your financial support, God has used you to provide for me and give me what
I need in order to live. Whenever I step off a plane, pray for a teenager, or write
a team blog post, I know that there is a host behind me, who supports me and ministers
alongside me. And while you might not see all of the fruit before your eyes (I
don’t always either); that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The above stories are
of how God used YOU in the nations…
and in the lives of North American teens in America.
THANK YOU!!!
