Family Mission Trip Overview

Thank you all for all of your prayers and support throughout this trip. You're prayers have meant so much to us on this trip.

Well, although the week started out rough and we were all a bit discouraged. The rain that blessed us daily put a damper on our activities. We were not sure exactly what God was thinking and what His plans were for the trip because, from the way it was looking, most of our activities would not have a good turn out.

God obviously did have fantastic plans for us. Although we had fewer children at the VBS we truly had an impact on the children. Many of them were questioning religion and hungry to learn more. We had one child at VBS accept Christ and four of the mothers. This alone was an incredible act of God's strength. At the VBS it was incredible to see the way that God worked through the children and youth that we brought with us on the trip. I will admit that i was skeptical about having young kids on the mission trip. These kids totally proved me wrong! They were ready and eager to let God work through their lives. They were excited and totally willing to do whatever needed to be done to help the kids that we had there. They were incredible with the children. They could have almost run it themselves! It is so cool to see how God can work through so small a person as long as they have a willing heart.

Although the rain made it harder for the construction team, they pushed forward. The hammered and nailed in the rain and worked through the afternoon when necessary. They had an obvious impact on the family of the small house that they built and on pastor Omar and his wife. Not only that but they also got the chance to reach out to the family next door to one of the houses. They helped them to fix their sagging roof and, though this, had the chance to witness to them and tell them about Jesus and Omar's church. The construction team planted a seed that Omar and his church will pursue.

The block parties were the area that we definitely had to be the most flexible and had to trust God and put our faith in him. Both block parties were planned at parks but had to be moved indoors to different facilities because of the rain. We were discouraged because we knew that this would hurt the attendance dramatically. Di spite our skepticism, God did incredible things. The first block party, which ended up being held at the church, drew mainly church members. On this night, although many of the attendees were already believers, there were eight people who accepted Christ. This was something we totally did not expect and knew was definitely God's hand in our work. The second block party drew more people from the community that did not attend church. God totally blew our expectations out of the water with this one. We were expecting a smaller turn out for this block party and we ended up having more people than we could have ever expected or hoped for in these circumstances. On that night we had 28 professions of faith! We were dumbfounded. God definitely worked in spite of and through the rain.