Missions Trip! and Wild at Heart

Tomorrow morning at approximately 5:30 AM, I will be leaving in a 15-passenger van with the youth group for a missions trip to St. Louis. Briggs and I have been planning and prepping for this trip for a while now. I'm really excited and nervous all at the same time. This will be the first time I'll be on a missions trip where I'm a leader... second-in-charge basically to Briggs. I've been praying a lot for wisdom and discernment for myself and the other leaders while we're out there. I'm pumped to see how God is going to move in the students and how they will be challenged on a daily basis. Short-term missions leads to accelerated spiritual growth, and I have complete faith that this will be the case in St. Louis.

While we are there we're going to be doing service projects during the morning/afternoon, and towards the night we're leading a Bible club (VBS-like) for kids. I don't know much about the dynamics of the location, but I believe it's inner-city. I'm personally leading the teaching team with 2-3 other students. We're teaching a new Bible story each day (Noah's ark, David and Goliath, Shadrach/Meshach/Abednego, and Zaccheus). This is the hardest it's ever been to prepare a lesson... when you're teaching little kids, there are so many other dynamics you have to think about. We'll see how it goes and what I learn about children's ministry as well.

Please be praying for our team as we go out for the next week. Pray that we would be challenged to grow in different areas and that we'd all grow closer to God. Pray that would be a pure example of Christ to the people we minister to. Pray that we would find rest in Him when we are tired and don't feel like going anymore. Pray that we leaders will have discernment and wisdom in making decisions for the team. Pray for safety!

Thanks for taking a little bit of time to pray for us! It says in James that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. If we believe the Bible to be true, then we can have faith in the prayers of our fellow believers.

On a final un-related note, have you ever been presented with a decision that in every sense seemed completely straight-forward and right, but then there were "asterisks" or questions that seemed to prevent you from making the "right" decision? When or how do these "asterisks" lose weight in the decision? Or is that even possible? I feel that to truly live you have to take risks. This absolutely applies to our faith as well, but that's not the topic in question right now. If we always make the safe decision, will we ever be fully satisfied? In the book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge talks about the 3 desires of the man's heart: a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. Somedays I feel like I'm the brink of all three, while other days I feel like I'm not seeking those desires of a man's heart at all. And then somedays, I don't feel like I'm in charge of those categories at all.... that my schedule (or life in general) dictates a different kind of life. Maybe this is the adventure I have to live; that is, it's trying to figure out how to seek the true desires that come with being a man while working, interning, going to school, living life. Who really knows...

Unfortunately I won't be able to blog again until I'm back from St. Louis. Thanks again for the prayers and I can't wait to blog about how it went!
Until next time...