Our ESL classes are starting up today! Please please please pray for us! We're way more organized this time, but we honestly don't know what to expect with this next session (the Philadelphia libraries have cut funding for their classes so we may be getting a ton of people...) and one of our lead teachers can no longer help with the class. Thankfully we're recruiting some of the local Bible college students who are going to school for a degree in teaching ESL, so Lord willing that will be a huge help to us! Also our missions director caught a bug and is kind of down for the count today. Please lift us up- we want to share the love of Christ most of all and doesn't 1 Corinthians 13 talk about giving all our goods to feed the poor but if we don't have love than it profits nothing- and it can just be a big ugly noise too! Anyway, I'm learning that LOVE actually flows from God (1 John) and we cannot love truly without Him (and His love is shown in that He gave His Son- so His Love in us should produce gospel sharing!) Anyway...rambling- I need to actually go pray about ESL now so I'll update on how it went later!
So if I haven't mentioned it on here, my home church is Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia...I legit love my church. I've grown up there, literally, my family came to know the Lord shortly after I was born and I got thrown right into the nursery. I can remember fighting in the 3 year old class with some boy over a stuffed pink My Little Pony in sunday school (why did that boy want that My Little Pony??? as you can see, I'm still a little bitter). Anyway, but even recently, I've grown to just love my church more- our Pastor is such an incredible man of God. So humble. So submitted to the Word of God. Growing in just submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit. So real with just the work that the Lord is doing in his life and with his need for grace and growth still! And I really believe the Lord has continued to work and move and bless our church because of the heart of our pastors and elders (who have just this same heart as Pastor Joe!) and its incredible to see the whole church body growing in these areas also...yeah, so anyway. Calvary Philly has birthed other fellowships in the area over the years and one of them that is very recent is the Calvary Chapel in Germantown.
So a few weeks ago I got to help with an outreach that our church was partnering with the Germantown fellowship to do. It was an outreach to the Women in the neighborhood and also to a local Women's Shelter (they brought the women and their children to the outreach in vans). So somehow or other my friend Sara and I ended up planning a craft for the kids, planning a jewelry project for the teens, finding a movie for them, creating a lesson, and finding volunteers and supplies for nail painting for the teen girls...so needless to say, it was a hectic few days before it and definitely had some hectic moments in it...but it truly was all worth it!
So the plan was have the mom's go back with some older women who came from our church to have their nails done and have a break (and hopefully have a chance to be prayed for and hear the gospel one on one from someone who loves them with the love of Christ!) while Sara and I and our volunteers from our college group and sr high took care of the teens and kids!
We decided a few days before to do the Parting of the Red Sea as our lessons because for some crazy reason I had a MILLION fish stickers in my closet and still to do this day have no clue where they came from. So we had them make their own "red sea" so they could have a visual while we shared the story with them!
So while some did the craft, other played outside, and we let the older ones make "salvation bracelets" (colored bead bracelets that coordinate with the gospel- ex. red= blood of Christ)
The most incredible part is that a few Muslim women came from the shelter with their children. We ended up getting to share not only the story of how God parted the red sea to them (and these little girls paid more attention than any of the other kids!), they also got to make salvation bracelets and hear the gospel, and than we let the girls get their nails done where my friend Ellie (who only just got saved in September) shared the gospel with them again! The older muslim girl said to Ellie, "I wish that i could have this in writing so that I can tell all of my friends who don't know!" But she was hesitant to pray to accept Jesus. The best part is we found out a few weeks later from the pastor's wife that the mom got saved!!!
One of the highlights of the outreach for me was when we went around inviting women in the neighborhood out to the outreach, we came across a woman who had just had leg surgery and couldn't walk down to the church but she let my friend Beverly pray for her. Than Bev send me and another woman and a man to escort us back to their house to bring the outreach to them! Joan did the woman's nails and her and the man from the church spoke with her while I was able to share the story of how God used Moses to part the Red Sea and did the craft with the kids who were super attentive. There was also a 25 year old handicapped boy there who loved doing the craft...it was just so sweet to serve them in the name of Jesus. The one boy even colored me one of the Moses's and gave it to me to keep!
I was definitely exhausted by the end of it but it was truly such a wonderful opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus and I love just proclaiming the glory of God to the world. He's so worthy of it. And we should never be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ- it's salvation! And with all that's been going on lately in the world between Osama Bin Laden being killed and the earthquakes and tornadoes and wars in the Middle East and rising gas prices...I'm so much more urgent for people to come to know the Lord because time is so short, Jesus Christ is coming back soon! And I'm excited for Jesus Christ to reign as King in Jerusalem on this earth one day...
I finished reading through Chronicles recently and one thing that really stood out to me was the heart of the men who followed David to see him be king in Israel. "All these, men of war, arrayed in battle order, came to Hebron with full intent to make David king over all Israel. Likewise, all the rest of Israel were of a single mind to make David king." 1 Chronicles 12:38 What is my full intent? What am I single minded on? Is it to see Jesus Christ be make king in the lives of those around me? I've been challenged...soon and very soon every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord! But how I long for my friends and family who aren't saved now to see His kingship and His Lordship while they still have a chance to choose Him...
So a few weeks ago I got to help with an outreach that our church was partnering with the Germantown fellowship to do. It was an outreach to the Women in the neighborhood and also to a local Women's Shelter (they brought the women and their children to the outreach in vans). So somehow or other my friend Sara and I ended up planning a craft for the kids, planning a jewelry project for the teens, finding a movie for them, creating a lesson, and finding volunteers and supplies for nail painting for the teen girls...so needless to say, it was a hectic few days before it and definitely had some hectic moments in it...but it truly was all worth it!
So the plan was have the mom's go back with some older women who came from our church to have their nails done and have a break (and hopefully have a chance to be prayed for and hear the gospel one on one from someone who loves them with the love of Christ!) while Sara and I and our volunteers from our college group and sr high took care of the teens and kids!
 |
| I dedicated a "page" to this project which you can find here |
We decided a few days before to do the Parting of the Red Sea as our lessons because for some crazy reason I had a MILLION fish stickers in my closet and still to do this day have no clue where they came from. So we had them make their own "red sea" so they could have a visual while we shared the story with them!
So while some did the craft, other played outside, and we let the older ones make "salvation bracelets" (colored bead bracelets that coordinate with the gospel- ex. red= blood of Christ)
The most incredible part is that a few Muslim women came from the shelter with their children. We ended up getting to share not only the story of how God parted the red sea to them (and these little girls paid more attention than any of the other kids!), they also got to make salvation bracelets and hear the gospel, and than we let the girls get their nails done where my friend Ellie (who only just got saved in September) shared the gospel with them again! The older muslim girl said to Ellie, "I wish that i could have this in writing so that I can tell all of my friends who don't know!" But she was hesitant to pray to accept Jesus. The best part is we found out a few weeks later from the pastor's wife that the mom got saved!!!
One of the highlights of the outreach for me was when we went around inviting women in the neighborhood out to the outreach, we came across a woman who had just had leg surgery and couldn't walk down to the church but she let my friend Beverly pray for her. Than Bev send me and another woman and a man to escort us back to their house to bring the outreach to them! Joan did the woman's nails and her and the man from the church spoke with her while I was able to share the story of how God used Moses to part the Red Sea and did the craft with the kids who were super attentive. There was also a 25 year old handicapped boy there who loved doing the craft...it was just so sweet to serve them in the name of Jesus. The one boy even colored me one of the Moses's and gave it to me to keep!
I was definitely exhausted by the end of it but it was truly such a wonderful opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus and I love just proclaiming the glory of God to the world. He's so worthy of it. And we should never be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ- it's salvation! And with all that's been going on lately in the world between Osama Bin Laden being killed and the earthquakes and tornadoes and wars in the Middle East and rising gas prices...I'm so much more urgent for people to come to know the Lord because time is so short, Jesus Christ is coming back soon! And I'm excited for Jesus Christ to reign as King in Jerusalem on this earth one day...
I finished reading through Chronicles recently and one thing that really stood out to me was the heart of the men who followed David to see him be king in Israel. "All these, men of war, arrayed in battle order, came to Hebron with full intent to make David king over all Israel. Likewise, all the rest of Israel were of a single mind to make David king." 1 Chronicles 12:38 What is my full intent? What am I single minded on? Is it to see Jesus Christ be make king in the lives of those around me? I've been challenged...soon and very soon every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord! But how I long for my friends and family who aren't saved now to see His kingship and His Lordship while they still have a chance to choose Him...
