It being The Summer Olympic season, i feel like it's only appropriate to say that MCR is in the final running stretch! In under 30 days all the MCR students will be graduating and the MCR year of 2012 will come to its end. Our students have already began to say, "Can you believe it!? We're about to graduate!" Followed by many, "I'm gonna miss..." MCR has become a family to all of us. We all have such vastly different personalities, backgrounds, and cultures...but we all came together for one purpose: "To Know God, And To Make Him Known." I do echo the words of our students. I will miss them and everything we did together this year. However, I can't wait to see what God will do next year, in and through MCR!
In this past month, we hosted a Crossroads Church Youth Missions Trip, and it went incredibly well! First off, the group was full of great and diverse personalities, and secondly, they came ready for ministry! It was exciting to see them each approach ministry in their own creative way, and then watch them grow in every ministry opportunity! One of the reasons I believe in mission trips so much, is because of what God does in those who go! We can only discover so much in a place of comfort. It's when we step outside that we find a world of possibilities at our grasp. In a place of comfort we are entertained, but in adventure we experience. Then, during those two weeks, on that missions trip, we experience many things that used to entertain us.
We took the team with us to all of our Micro Kid's sites, including a new one in Cetateni. They got to handle everything and our students translated for them. I personally love watching American teams hug on all of the kids. For these kids, it doesn't happen very often that a big group of people say "I love you" in more than one way. For many of these kids, this is probably the highlight of their year. However, what really puts a smile on my face, is when I hear a youth student say, "Those kids have so little, but they were so happy. I want to be like that and not worry about everything I don't have!" In those moments, you could tell that what had began in their heart was a desire to abandon "self" and live passionately for God. It's a seed that's planted in the lives of those students and will continue to grow over time!
The Crossroads Youth Mission Team also helped us In our ministry with the girl's home. Normally just the girls go, however, this time we took all the girls to a river for some fun and a barbecue! This was personally interesting for me because the home now has a guy. One of our policies we're given by the director of the girls home, is to not ask about their stories, and to encourage them to move past a victim mindset. So, I don't know know this guy's story, but would I really need to? Doesn't God care more about were he's taking us than where we've been? So all of us guys treated him like one of the guys, which must have been nice when you hang out with mostly girls all day. At the end of the day, he had even put in a special request to have me come to the girls house the next time we came.
We also hosted a food drive, and the youth got to pass out the food. The way we do this is first we great someone at their door. If they will receive us, we then come in and talk with them. After we talk with them, we then give food, and share Christ with them. We trust the youth students entirely with this process, and give them helpful hints if they need it. For some of the students, they were encouraged by hearing stories of Christians who have served and remained faithful to God in the worst of circumstances. For others, they shared their faith and led people in the sinner's prayer for the first time! Regardless of the outcome, it was evidently a life changing experience for our fellow Americans!
Though there were many other forms of ministry that the Crossroads Team partnered with us in, the last one I want to mention is the youth night. For two days MCR, and a few from the mission team, passed out fliers while i taught the rest a 7 min. long dance...I have no idea how we accomplished that. On the night we saw many first time faces and many familiar faces. Trey, a great musician on the trip, played a song he had written, the students did their dance, a few of them shared their testimony, and Pastor Jordy preached about salvation in Christ. In the end, Around six people gave their hearts to Christ! When we opened the altars, many more came down and recieved prayer.
It was a powerful two weeks of ministry! However, now it's time to get ready for the final strech. Up next we have Experience Master's, Beach Retreat, and then graduation. Keep all of this in your prayers. It's gonna come and fly by fast for us. It's bitter-sweet for me personally. I'll say goodbye to one home, but hello to the other. However, I known this is where I'm supposed to be, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. There's something very satisfing about knowing you're in God's will.
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