Let’s start with the good news, this is an exert of a message I received from “wee Autumn.”
hiii Adam!!!! So I’m at the library in Killyleagh. Its pretty
sweethere. Its a small town, but bigger then we expected. We’ve
beendoing clean ups in the morning. yes. me. cleaning. like as in garbage.and
jellyfish. ewww. but thats okay, i don’t mind doing that, until iget home that
is. I really like my team, we get along really well. Timmy and Chris are
hilarious, Clements is funny too, but especiallyTimmy and Chris. Dont
worry though, I don’t like any of them. We’vebeen working at the drop in
center at night (where almost all the kidsgo out at some time during the night
to go and smoke) Carol (ourlocation manager) and Laura (our team leader)
said that the kidswouldnt like us and would ignore us or else ask us a lot about
our sexlives and stuff. but they really responded to us, they opened
rightup to us and talk to us a lot. Laura Maighread and I had a
goodconversation with a kid about christianity and rules and boundries. Another
kid who all the kids kindof look up to wants to become abornagain christian, so
thats really cool, because he has a lot ofinflunece at the drop in. I
really enjoy talking to all the kids,they are great. Today instead of
cleaning up we went to an old folkshome. It was cool, we sang and talked.
One of the workers therereminded me a lot of my aunt sandi and I had to fight
tears.
I’ve bought lots of make up so I can be all like…I
don’tknow…but its fun. I’ve had pretty good food so far, theres been
afew times that I haven’t liked it and I had to fake it and just eat itanyways.
I’m going to have to work really hard on not picking upswearing on this
trip, my group (and everybody else) swears a lot,cuse damn and ass are normal
words here, they were making fun of usfor saying butt, so I have to make sure
that I don’t pick that up, orelse my parents will kill me. oo and I have nice
showers, and they arelike 2 minutes away from the church we are staying at
(where we haveproper beds! go us) so thats about it, well actually this
isnt, butyou probably dont want to read anymore, sorry about the long email.
ohyeah…and the butt graber is on my team, and his girlfriend is onLisas team,
I still think about it like every time I look at him, andit makes me kind of
sick to my stomach, but I’m getting used to it.
I will agree with Autumn on the cussing thing. It’s pretty strange to hear the leaders say those words… I have to try not to cringe! Praise God for the good news, our students are being stretched and shaped. This fills me with happiness!
Last night we had a lot of kids at our drop in center. Basically, since there is nothing to do in town at night we just fling the doors open and they come since there isn’t much else to do. Of course, there is a sad component to it and a happy component to it. It is really sweet because we’ve created and opened a prayer room for them to go to. There are about 4-5 stations where they can guide themselves through some prayers and it has a lot of instructions. It’s incredible to see them dwell in there. There is a station called confession where they write out their confessions and ask for forgiveness of those sins, and then burn them to demonstrate that sins can be washed away. Of course, theologically speaking this isn’t 100% true since most of them don’t know Christ yet… but they do recognize they are sinners and need to be forgiven. God is good for showing them that. There are many kids asking deep spiritual questions here in 5mile… praise God for that. I am hoping that we are adequately showing these students that Jesus is real and he will meet you right where you are at. But it isn’t all a bed of roses. Last night I invited myself into a cluster of young teens, 11-14, who were outside on the park bench smoking in front of the church. While we made small talk and I told them about Michigan my little antenna went up at some of the stuff going on in the group. As I observed it some more I realized that they were pairing up sexual partners for the night. My head began spinning at this reality. In many ways 5miletown is Romans 1:18-32 in action.
Team news While the ministry and team times have been going fantastic, the informal times have been, at times, disastorous. Meals especially. It all came to a head when, after a great drop in time followed by fantastic pray within the team meeting, the leadership disolved and utter chaos ensued. One of the team leaders was trying to keep it under control and get the others into their nightly meeting… but the other 2 were sooooo into their water fight [running around the outside of the building at 11:00 PM with glass water jugs and screaming] that they just ignored her. For the first time, I had to step in and scold them. I didn’t want to but there was little choice left. They had made complete idiots of themselves again… and this time had jumped into dangerous territory. Feelings were being hurt, risks were being taken, neighbors were probably being annoyed…
So, despite everything I’ve tried to do to quietly influence and “just serve” but not lead, I dragged them into a heart to heart meeting. [Richie had earlier encouraged me to do this if I felt like they were screwing up.] I let them know that where they stood. The rest of the team wants to follow them, but they aren’t leading. They are a distration to our ministry. They are not delegating. On and on. My heart was ripped open since I didn’t want to do this. I want to be a follower here and learn from them! I know they were shocked at what I told them and I know that they continued to meet for quite some time, bringing in others to talk to them as the night went on. I hope I haven’t overstepped my boundries. I was just torn between the reality that they are in charge weighing versus they are leading us away from our goals and the potential long-term good we can do for 5mile. I was nearly sick after this meeting. Please pray for my team. We all want to follow these 3 leaders… it’s my prayer that they would embrace that role before it’s too late.
Today is more games and drop-in stuff. The Americans on our team are excited about David and Dawn [the US ProjectServe leaders] dropping in on us today or tommorow. I will definitely be going with them on Monday or Tuesday to see the rest of our group in their locations. I am hoping to do this on Monday so I can still have the day off with my team on Tuesday. I want to do some shopping, see a movie, and play like idiots too!
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