Weeks Four & Five: Asking for More and Staying Alive

These last two weeks have been a little bit of a whirlwind for me. There was a lot to do and not a lot of rest, but it was all good work.

Starting on Monday, the 13th (Hollywood’s next horror film), I was up bright and early to assist with the Rotary club breakfast. North Carolina Senator Burr was brought in as a speaker. I helped bus dishes to the dish washing room. Events like this are very important to the church because it helps to establish the church as the center of the Kernersville community. The fact that the Rotary club regularly uses the church building for it meetings speaks volumes to how FCC is working to meet that goal.

For the rest of the week, there were two things on my mind: Wednesday’s lesson to the middle schoolers on language, speech and gossip, and the weekend mission trip to Florida also with the middle schoolers.

Wednesdays lesson kicked off the summer student series called Signs of Summer. The first sign was “Stop” and was talking about stopping using course language, gossip and starting to use our words to build people up. This is especially an important lesson for middle schoolers because they are just starting to know how to formulate words that are hurtful, but they are not always aware how harmful they are being. Getting them to start thinking about what they say and what power those words have is very important. Plus, it is easy to keep their attention when you are using a mirror, a garbage can, and a present as illustrations!

On Thursday, four other adults and I left with 16 or so middle schoolers and traveled to Florida Christian College to volunteer our time for physical labor. We were assigned some landscaping and painting jobs. It was a great trip! Everyone worked hard and long, even when the weather got hot around noon. I ended up quarterbacking the landscaping job, organizing kids into groups and arranging a system to complete our landscaping job. Everyone followed directions, there was very little complaining and we were able to get a lot of work done. In fact, our groups set the standard for what other groups will have to accomplish when they do the same job later in the summer. After two days of working, we went to Bush Gardens in Tamba Bay and had a day off. We left the next day (Monday) and arrived home late. It was a great trip and many of the students expressed interest in doing this trip again next year!

On Tuesday, I had to hit the ground running as far as work goes. I was helping the high schoolers with their Across the Street Ministry VBS, preparing a lesson on God’s Will for Wednesday and getting ready for the next weeks VBS.

The Across the Street Ministry is something very cool. The high schoolers work to create lessons, crafts, and other VBS and then travel across the street to the trailer park and minister to the kids over there. This park has a lot of underprivileged kids there, and the high schoolers do this VBS to minister to them and be a blessing to them. It is a great experience and the kids there love it. Tuesday evening, they also put on a free spaghetti dinner for the families across the street to give them a break from having to worry about food and to try to minister to the whole family.

Wednesday, I taught the high schoolers about “Yeild”ing to God’s will. It is the second sign in the summer series. Tim and I coupled this lesson with student testimonies about the ministry across the street to reinforce submitting to God’s will, and encourage more students to be involved.

Throughout the week, I have been helping get ready for the part I am playing in the children’s day-time VBS at the church. The first thing I helped with was create a poster for the missions offering.

The theme for this VBS is PandaMania and it is all about how God loves us and how me made his creating so beautiful and wild! I will be working with running the sound during the main sessions and assisting with teaching one of the break-out sessions.

Sunday was a different day from most. Over 50 high school students were leaving for Summer in the Son at KCU. I am teaching the high school class about ministering when you are young, but most of the kids left for SITS. So instead of having a class of 30+, there were about 15 in the class. So we made a circle and created more of a Bible study type atmosphere and discussed how they are minsters right now. I believe many of the students hadn’t thought about how they don’t have to be “minsters” in order to be in the ministry. Simply being a Christian makes them in the ministry.

This next week coming up includes another high school lesson, Children’s VBS, a middle school cookout, and the beginning of my week of vacation!