Camp continues to go well!
Yesterday Josh and I were swimming with some campers and the swim turned into a slow motion fight scene. We would punch each other in slow motion and react as if we were acting it out in a movie. The guys were loving it and Josh and I had a blast. One of the guys is in my group so hopefully that opened the door to a conversation or two in the future to be able to share with him as a real friend.
God has already started tearing at the hearts of these kids. Darko, the camp leader, told the leaders this morning at our meeting a couple stories of conversations he's had with some of the kids and they were really inspiring. I won't share them here because they're very personal and I'd like to keep that here, but please continue to pray for the hearts of the kids here as God is doing major work on their minds and their hearts in accepting the truth that is being repeated to them here.
The Serbian leaders are going to be the people with the most opportunity to share the gospel and the Americans realize that. We are trying our best to have conversations but ultimately we have come to understand our purpose here is to love and support everything the Serbian leaders are saying by the way that we act.
Over the last couple of days I've stumbled across some passages in scripture that have been really helpful and I shared those with our small group this morning. They were out of the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 6, and 1 Corinthians chapter 13. They hit home to me because I have had a hard time not feeling frustrated here with the several boundaries here, when really I had a skewed understanding of what my job really is and what God wants me to do here, and that's to love them.
The 1 Corinthians passage really breaks down what love looks like. It was really interesting to me to read about Paul saying that even if he had the faith to move mountains and knew all the answers with every bit of biblical wisdom but didn't have love then his life would be worthless. Our job here isn't necessarily to speak with these kids, nor is it to share with them all of our biblical wisdom, though those are all good things. We have to start with loving them. If I can't love them then I don't love God and am not working through Him. Our prayer is to love these kids, then love them some more followed by a little bit of love covered in love sauce with love on top. That's our most effective way of reaching these kids. What comes out of that is for God to orchestrate and for us to follow.
The Matthew 6 passages talked about works that are done in secret. We shouldn't be worried about what we can tell people we've done or how many kids we've talked to or how many times we've shared the gospel or whatever, but rather work in secret and do things without expecting any credit from each other for it. Also, it talks about fasting and how to not sure discomfort when you fast so that other people don't even know that you're doing it. You're not doing it so that other people can see, you're doing it for God. The same thing has to be true for our work here at the camp. We shouldn't make our discomforts made known so that others know how much we're overcoming, but instead just do it because God knows what we're sacrificing and that's all that matters. We will be blessed in our secret suffering. We are working for God, not each other, and not the leaders. God knows our hearts and he sees all things. That's all we should be concerned with. I feel like this will help us with our natural sense of pride, and will encourage us to count our blessings qualitatively rather than quantitative.
Prayers are being answered and quickly. Beverly shared with us this morning a special part of her testimony and that she feels like God has really put on her heart to share it with the kids tonight at the big worship time. God has something special planned and we're dying to see what it is and who her message speaks to. Pray for her, her bravery in sharing, and that tonight would go how God has planned.
Today is water day; all the games will be water related. We have 1000 water balloons to fill before this afternoon so we've got to do that now. We love you all. Thank you for keeping up with this blog. Keep praying, we are seeing them answered every day.
Yesterday Josh and I were swimming with some campers and the swim turned into a slow motion fight scene. We would punch each other in slow motion and react as if we were acting it out in a movie. The guys were loving it and Josh and I had a blast. One of the guys is in my group so hopefully that opened the door to a conversation or two in the future to be able to share with him as a real friend.
God has already started tearing at the hearts of these kids. Darko, the camp leader, told the leaders this morning at our meeting a couple stories of conversations he's had with some of the kids and they were really inspiring. I won't share them here because they're very personal and I'd like to keep that here, but please continue to pray for the hearts of the kids here as God is doing major work on their minds and their hearts in accepting the truth that is being repeated to them here.
The Serbian leaders are going to be the people with the most opportunity to share the gospel and the Americans realize that. We are trying our best to have conversations but ultimately we have come to understand our purpose here is to love and support everything the Serbian leaders are saying by the way that we act.
Over the last couple of days I've stumbled across some passages in scripture that have been really helpful and I shared those with our small group this morning. They were out of the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 6, and 1 Corinthians chapter 13. They hit home to me because I have had a hard time not feeling frustrated here with the several boundaries here, when really I had a skewed understanding of what my job really is and what God wants me to do here, and that's to love them.
The 1 Corinthians passage really breaks down what love looks like. It was really interesting to me to read about Paul saying that even if he had the faith to move mountains and knew all the answers with every bit of biblical wisdom but didn't have love then his life would be worthless. Our job here isn't necessarily to speak with these kids, nor is it to share with them all of our biblical wisdom, though those are all good things. We have to start with loving them. If I can't love them then I don't love God and am not working through Him. Our prayer is to love these kids, then love them some more followed by a little bit of love covered in love sauce with love on top. That's our most effective way of reaching these kids. What comes out of that is for God to orchestrate and for us to follow.
The Matthew 6 passages talked about works that are done in secret. We shouldn't be worried about what we can tell people we've done or how many kids we've talked to or how many times we've shared the gospel or whatever, but rather work in secret and do things without expecting any credit from each other for it. Also, it talks about fasting and how to not sure discomfort when you fast so that other people don't even know that you're doing it. You're not doing it so that other people can see, you're doing it for God. The same thing has to be true for our work here at the camp. We shouldn't make our discomforts made known so that others know how much we're overcoming, but instead just do it because God knows what we're sacrificing and that's all that matters. We will be blessed in our secret suffering. We are working for God, not each other, and not the leaders. God knows our hearts and he sees all things. That's all we should be concerned with. I feel like this will help us with our natural sense of pride, and will encourage us to count our blessings qualitatively rather than quantitative.
Prayers are being answered and quickly. Beverly shared with us this morning a special part of her testimony and that she feels like God has really put on her heart to share it with the kids tonight at the big worship time. God has something special planned and we're dying to see what it is and who her message speaks to. Pray for her, her bravery in sharing, and that tonight would go how God has planned.
Today is water day; all the games will be water related. We have 1000 water balloons to fill before this afternoon so we've got to do that now. We love you all. Thank you for keeping up with this blog. Keep praying, we are seeing them answered every day.
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