August Newsletter--Time for a Psychiatric Checkup?

Picture 1) 18 of us crammed into this crate during a realistic hostile rebel scenario.

Picture 2) Teens take a break from classes to play pillow basketball.

The past three months have me wondering if I’m due for a psychiatric checkup. For a week in North Carolina I met with West Africans, who were certainly crazy for planning prayer meetings at 6:30 a.m…right before the 7:00 one with the crazy people from every other region of the world. I donned pink war paint and spent three weeks with large groups of teenagers in Kansas, Nebraska, and Kentucky, even pelting teens with pillows as they shot baskets. I worked with two teens to share the Gospel with Louisville zoo animals—kids actually, but since one 5-Day Club® lesson was about Noah, we gave opportunities to act like favorite wildlife (which for this inner city group actually brought improved behavior). Then I moved out of my apartment and headed to Colorado, where 18 other missionaries and I crammed into a dark crate while our teachers pretended to be rebel forces, complete with realistic guns, bomb sound-effects, and burning objects. They let us out to sit for hours looking closely at their mouths and repeating odd sounds.

You’re probably wondering how this classifies as ministry. Well, the crazy morning prayers started out each day of the Child Evangelism Fellowship® International Conference, where we were challenged to remember because of God’s strength, “Time we spend on our knees is more important than time we spend in the office.”

I then taught teens how to teach children about God. We kept busy with classes and practicums from around 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., with breaks for pillow basketball, ultimate Frisbee, and decking out in war paint as part of the classroom competition between the flamingo and frog teams.

In 5-Day Clubs, many children who had not responded to the Gospel during a year of Good News Club® accepted Christ as Savior.

In Colorado, missionaries from several organizations gathered for training on responding to stress (hence the rebel forces), maintaining joy in foreign fields, and making sounds from foreign languages (hence the looking in mouths).

The craziness, long days, and over 80 hours in the car were worth it, not just because kids came to Christ or because I’m better prepared for ministry, but because I know each step on my path—the joyful, crazy, hard, and scary—is a gift God prepared especially for me.
Next up comes craziness in Canada as this September I start a year of French language school in Quebec.

Praise God That:
· Through Christian Youth in Action® I had the privilege to help train over 100 teens to share their faith effectively.
· I learned a lot from the wonderful CEF® team in Kentucky and successfully completed my internship.
· When the French language school I planned to attend in Senegal fell through at the last minute, God guided me to a missionary language school in Sherbrooke, Quebec (Word of Life Bethel) that accepted me last minute.

Please Pray That:
· I will learn French quickly and effectively and find joy in having my brain fried for about seven hours per day :)
· God will provide good community among the students and me at language school.