The comment was made during our devotional time tonight that we are tired, but a "good tired." Today was jammed packed with emotional labor, spiritual labor, and physical labor.
Our numbers grew about 100% at VBS today. As I mentioned, yesterday we spoke to a large group visiting the park, who came in full force this morning. We managed to tackle the large numbers (literally, in the case of some of the males), and the day went very well. Our youth gave some testimony this evening about kids who are asking hard questions, and parents encouraged us this evening that their children are learning and having fun.
Here are some pictures from VBS:
Here's a great example of God's providential work. Yesterday, we took the Cherry Park Director up on his offer to find us a service project. He ended up passing us a name for a lady who served a homeless/community outreach called Renew Our Community (ROC).
Now, back up a week or two to a conversation I had with Andy Stager, the minister of Hill City. Since our fellowship time with some smaller local churches fell through, we ended up agreeing to join Hill City for a "Bike Fixin Cookout" at one of their member's homes. It turns out the member was a man named John, who hosted Rachel, Tracy, and I on Saturday night. John is a bike mechanic, and explained to us that Rock Hill has a burgeoning cycling culture growing around a new velodrome (indoor race track for bikes) recently finished.
Back to helping out ROC today...our host took us to an outparcel on their property that was filled with furniture and pieces of office cubicles. She explained that they needed to reorganize and move the considerable amount of stuff to make room for a bicycle workshop. As you can easily imagine, for a homeless person a bicycle is a great gift, providing faster transportation than walking. ROC has received a pledge from the owner of a recycling location to donate the average 10 bikes that he receives each month, and the ministry needs a place to fix them up for their clients' use.
Here are some pictures:
Now, move forward to our supper with Hill City tonight. We didn't really know what we would be doing, but we knew that John and other HC folks had been collecting bikes to refurbish with some other friends from Rock Hill.
Have you connected the dots yet?
Before we ate, John stood up and announced that the ministry for which we had cleaned out that building was a ministry that he was leading. He had taken the initiative with ROC, and one of the biggest roadblocks to their progress had been finding the time and labor to clean out the space that they needed to establish their work. We had sort of put the pieces together before that point, but what an incredible act of providence that led us through a totally unrelated contact to clean out a room so a member of Hill City could help the community of Rock Hill! Our God is good.
Here are a couple views from supper tonight:
My mental energy is about exhausted for this evening, but here's one more exciting piece of news. The Schroeder men had to go back to John's house (the location of tonight's cookout) to pick up a left backpack. Upon their arrival, they discovered that one of the attendees tonight, who John and Hill City had been regularly inviting to their meetings, had admitted an interest in receiving Christ, and had the HC body pray with him tonight to accept God's offer of salvation.
Providential opportunities, large numbers at VBS, and a new citizen of the Kingdom of God... quite a bit to be thankful for.
Keep praying!
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