Ministry in the Kaléo Program

April 19^th 2013

                This year in the Kaléo Program I have had more opportunities to serve in ministry than I have ever had in my entire life. Three of these areas have been in my church, on my mission’s trip and at the camp. At my church I was able to serve in different areas such as the children’s programs, reading scripture during the serves and mainly in the Wednesday night youth group. For most of the year, working in the youth group was challenging for me, it seemed as if I was just present during the youth group and I wasn’t connecting with the youth especially the girls in the youth. As one of the girl leaders I was struggling with relating to the junior high girls. But going every week eventually paid off. I was able to make a few good connections with the girls, I think that just showing up every week for eight months eventually showed the girls how much I really did care for them. God taught me a lot through this ministry. He taught me that to minister I don’t need to shove the gospel down people’s throats but that I need to just love them by being there for them no matter what.

                The next area of ministry was the mission’s trip. During the missions trip we were able to go to an organization called Potter’s Place. This was a place where people off the streets would go to get a meal, but also with the meal they would hear worship and a sermon. At Potter’s Place we were able to share testimonies during many of the services. It was crazy to see how eager those at Potter’s were to hear our testimonies. Many people were touched by our stories. Through this experience God has taught me just how powerful testimonies are.

                A third area of ministry has been camp ministry. This year I have had two opportunities to counsel during retreats. The first opportunity was the first time that I had ever counseled, so I think that during that weekend I learned what counseling was like. The next opportunity my eyes were opened to how broken the families are of the kid’s that come to camp, and how open they were for the love they received at camp. During this second retreat I was able to give some Bibles to the girls in my cabin. I have never seen anybody so excited to receive the word of God. That was so eye opening. I loved counseling so much.

                Overall, the ministry aspects of the program have stretched me beyond belief and have helped me to grow in my faith immensely. Ministry has definitely been one of my favorite aspects to the program. 

                April 11, 2013

After finishing the course, Camp and youth ministry, and being involved in camp and youth ministries throughout the year, I have come to really appreciate good programming  In the past I have not paid much attention to good programming but I can really see where it can be so very important. If you have good programming it shows the kids, “I love you,” and the kids will respond better. If you have a very poorly programmed event, the kids will zone out and not get much out of the event, except for maybe screwing around.

                During the Juniors retreat, I could see how well they programmed the weekend to fit around the kids. Form the messages, to the games, to the activities, and to the food; everything was planned into the interest of the kids. It helped a lot to give the kids the best experience they could have that weekend.

                I saw God work miraculously this weekend. I counseled a cabin of eight girls, many of whom were from some tough situations in their homes. But God worked in their hearts this weekend. They had so many questions about the Bible and Christianity, they were so open to Jesus. One of my girls, Makayla, even made the choice to follow Christ. At the end of the weekend I had the privilege to give most of the girls in my cabin Bibles. They absolutely loved them, and I pray that they will be able to learn and Know God’s love through his word. Overall, the weekend was amazing. 

 March 17th, 2013

Recently, about half of the Kaleo program and I returned from a two week missions trip in Downtown Vancouver. While we were there, we had the many opportunities to serve in all sorts of areas. Our trip was broken up into three different periods. For the first period we were able to serve at New Beginnings Baptist Church. For about the first 5 days of the trip we lived at New Beginnings, while also serving in their children’s and youth programs, and during the day we would to odds and ends construction work. The church would run a program called Say Yes. This was an after school program for k-6^th graders that would be held 3 days a week. In the program we were able to play with the kids, eat snacks with them, and help them with their homework.  It was great being able to connect with the kids from around the area. Some of the odds and ends construction we did was build a retaining wall and knocked down a wall to enlarge the Sunday school run to about twice the size.  The next 5 days we were working on the road side of East Hastings Street. There were worked at Potters Place Mission and there we held two services a day. At these services we would lead those in the audience in 30 minutes of worship and then 30 minute message. after we would serve food. During the meals we would talk to those in the audience, let them tell us their story of their life and pray for them. It was such a life changing experience. We then spent the last days of our trip at New Beginnings, on the second trip to New Beginnings we did many projects called home makeovers in which we would go into houses of people of the neighborhood, often times houses of single mothers, and do whatever they would like to have done in their house.

                On this trip many things happened, one of the funny stories that sticks out to me the most is while we were working at Potters Place Mission on East Hastings. We were working in storage rooms of the mission, moving around food and organizing shelves. All of a sudden we see a mouse and in Levi’s interest to see what all the screaming was about he accidentally squished the mouse under his foot, a few minutes later we see another mouse this time Levi purposely squishes it and there is more screaming. Once all the excitement died down and we hadn’t seen a mouse in a little while, Denver lifts a box above his head to put it on the top shelf, suddenly, a mouse falls from the box and lands on his beard, scratches at his chin and falls down his shirt to the ground. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, everyone was screaming and laughing at the same time, it was great; nobody wanted to really touch the boxes after that incident.

                One of the most difficult moments for me during the whole trip was during one of the house makeovers. A few of us went to a house of a single mother and she wanted us to clean the upstairs of her apartment. We went to the upstairs and there was trash everywhere, just completely coating the floor and fruit flies swarming because of the trash. It was hard to see this home and as the children of the house were up there offering to help us I almost cried. It was one of the hardest things I had to see but learning that this mother, although a new Christian, didn’t know any different in her life and that is why she lived in such conditions it became easier, I was happy that we could help in any way possible.

                I could see God working in many ways during the trip. One of the ways I saw God working was through the power of testimony at Potters Place Mission. When anyone from our group went to the front to share their testimony everyone in the room became attentive. They could see themselves in each one of the testimonies and many times people in the crowd would say, I went through something similar in life, and through that they could see how God worked in and changed the life of the person giving the testimony and through that they could see hope in Jesus.  It was amazing. I think God also used me in the times of worship.

                God really confirmed in me my passion for leading worship.  There were many opportunities on the trip for Levi, Denver, and I to lead worship and I just had so much joy every time we would lead. There was one set in particular that I didn’t think went that well but after we finished a man from the congregation looked at us with tears in his eyes, and said thank you, thank you so much. It was amazing to see how God used us in that situation to touch that man’s heart. Altogether the missions trip was unforgettably spectacular. 

Almost Time for the Vancouver Missions Trip

11 February 2013

                Now that Perspectives in Missions is over and our missions trip being right around the corner I’m more than excited to go to Vancouver. I came to realize so much through this course that I hadn’t before and now it’s time to apply what we've learned from the class to a real life situation.

                Like I said before, I am so excited for this mission trip. I have been on a missions trip to Mexico before and know how life changing they can be. I’m so excited to see what God has in store for us and those we are going to serve when we get there.  I know that we will work in our hearts and that we will leave changed and I pray that God will leave a spark in the hearts of those we are going to serve.

                However, it won’t be all rainbows and butterflies. Leaders and others have been telling our team since day one that this trip is going to be a very breaking trip for us. We are going to see things that are going to rip us apart. One way that I am going to deal with this is first of all prayer for strength for our team as we witness the brokenness, and then when we are there also to be open with others in the team about the things that we will see and how they affected us. But overall I am excited for this trip. 

Missions Fest 2013 Experience

1/30/13

Missions Fest 2013 was a great experience. I initially learned a ton more about missions and discovered new missionary organizations that I had never heard about before. Going into this weekend I had no idea what to expect, I had never been to a missions fest and or even ever heard of it. Overall, the weekend was fantastic and these were some of my highlights.

                First off all, the day we arrived in Vancouver, we were able to explore a little around Granville Island. Never being in Vancouver before it was cool to have a little bit of a look into the culture of the city, it was so different from what I was used to seeing as I grew up in Minneapolis area. It made me pretty excited for my missions trip in downtown Vancouver that is coming up in a few weeks. Another part that was interesting to see was driving through East Hastings at night. This is where we will be doing a lot of our missions work and it was cool to see a glimpse of the culture before we go back there to work.

                Next, I loved seeing the booths and the seminars. One of my Favorite seminars of this weekend was a seminar on the Gideon Organization. I had heard about this organization but I had not known much about it. They speaker of this seminar also talked about sharing your faith in general. One of the things he said that stood out to me the most was that you don’t have to have a shocking/ life changing moment testimony for your testimony to be powerful. The fact that God has sustained you trough out your life and kept you from awful situations is powerful in itself. That was super encouraging to hear.

                I also visited a few booths and one that was super interesting was a booth called Ducan Africa. This organization trained people in Africa to make homemade guitars and to sell them for profit. I had never heard of an organization like this. It was so interesting. Overall, the weekend was amazing; I loved every minute of it.