Busy and Excited!

Rob and I are busy working on several outreaches that our church is involved in, and I am getting so excited! We are doing some new things this year, and it's going to be great.

We are kicking off the week of June 25 with a 4-day VBS for the kids in the neighborhood. Friday, the 29th will be our very first youth/young adult concert and outreach. Saturday is our annual Hope for Warren/Detroit, which is a really fun day where people in the neighborhood we minister in come to hear the Gospel and receive free groceries and clothing. We will also have a moonwalk and basketball inflatable, games and face painting for kids and a free hot dog lunch for everyone.

This year there is a team of youth and young adults from Hampton VA coming to our church for their summer missions trip. Some of the team will be helping at our VBS while others minister elsewhere. They will also be ministering at our youth concert and Hope for Warren/Detroit. What a huge blessing for us!

The following week, we will be helping train a short-term missions team from our church that is going to Peru. I won't be going on the trip this year, but Rob and our oldest son will be going.

Speaking of the Peru trip, we applied for Nathan's passport in what we thought was plenty of time for the trip. We knew they were backed up, and they said that we would have it by May 25, 10 weeks from the date of application. Well, 10 weeks passed and no passport. I waited another week and decided to call the number that was given to us. The message basically said not to waste your time waiting for someone to help you unless you were traveling in 10-14 days! We've been so busy that I wasn't going to worry about it yet. However, the missions organization planning this trip (there will be teams from all over the U.S. making up a large team) needs the passport number to plan a second small flight in Peru. They were waiting on us. There was still no passport yesterday, so our team leader sent out an e-mail to the team to pray for the situation. Well, this morning my doorbell rang and I had to sign for a package from FedEx. It was the passport. I looked at the envelope, and it was sent yesterday for overnight delivery! If this is any indication of how the trip is going to go, it will be awesome! Thank you, Lord!

Our church is also involved in the Neighborhood Initiative of the Detroit Partnership, which is a 5-year partnership between 12 inner-city and 12 suburban churches whose goal is to "improve the quality of life of men, women, children and youth in [Detroit] neighborhoods." Today was the first major event of this initiative, "Love Fest '07." This was an outreach that took place simultaneously at 12 different Detroit locations! I didn't go, but Rob took photos at two of the locations.

That's it for now. I'm sorry if I'm rambling.... I wanted to check in when I had a few minutes so at least there is something new here! I'll try to post a little here and there, but it probably won't be much until the middle of July.

~Andrea

Missions Trip to Amatitlan, Guatemala

Whew!  I'm back from the craziness of planning Vacation Bible School and a short-term missions trip to Guatemala!

The trip was amazing!  It was a youth missions trip, although only one teen from our church went.  This summer youth missions trip is organized every year by a pastor in the stream of churches that our church is affiliated with.  This missions trip is done in conjunction with an evangelistic crusade every year in various countries.  It was very well-organized; the pastor who organized it worked with the local Amatitlan congregations for almost a year to set everything up.

We put together programs using skits, testimonies, clowns, puppets, etc.  We passed out bracelets that we had made before the trip with colored beads explaining the plan of salvation.  We also used bilingual tracts and passed out flyers for the evangelistic crusade being held the last 4 days of our trip.  After our skits and testimonies, we prayed for salvation and healing.  I am awed at how God worked!  Being a part of leading so many people to the Lord in one setting was awesome!

We ministered in streets, schools, soccer and basketball fields, some poor communities, and even a factory.  One of our pastors had organized a food drive by having churches send money (spare change donations) down to Guatemala a couple of months before the trip so that the Guatemalan churches could buy food ahead of time to pass out.  That was one of my favorite parts of the trip: ministering to the poor. 

I could write and write about this, but I won't since this is supposed to be a homeschooling blog!  I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to be a part of God's work in Amatitlan, Guatemala.  We partnered with the local congregations for this trip, and I know that they will continue to see fruit.  Thank you, Lord for this wonderful experience!

If you are interested in seeing pictures, they are available here.

~Andrea