Praying Small to Learn to Pray Big

    As I arrived at WeWillGo, I could already feel the prayerful presence. Crunching through rocks while the prayer went on with linked hands, I let out a happy sigh and felt my anticipation rise. For a beautiful half hour, the one hundred or so of us gathered came before God, truly "putting ourselves in the offering plate."
    After the last amen, we received instructions, divided up into groups, accepted a handful of chapters to read from the Holy Book, were handed a sheet with specific prayers to pray, and got sent out to the streets of Jackson, Mississippi.
    Okay, explanation time. The idea was to read the entire Bible in an hour, to this city where you can physically see the need for the Word. Honestly, I was a little bit hesitant when I first heard what I was going to be doing. I mean, reading the Bible when no one was listening? Reading the Bible when people driving by stopped to listen? That's pretty out-of-the-box stuff for this little white girl who quite enjoys The Box.
    But when I got myself situated on the side of a nearly empty road, took a preparation breath and started reading from Jeremiah, my words took on a power that I KNEW did not belong to me. The meaning behind the words that I was reading didn't matter too much to me. Just reading them was a cup of cold water not only for my spirit, but the city as well. I imagined the words reaching from Lamar Street up to the skies and blossoming, spreading far over the city, covering it with the love of Christ, changing as it bloomed.
   After a while, I handed off my worn pink and brown Bible, and started walking up and down the cracked asphalt, looking at abandoned, broken down houses. Growing up in "good" neighborhoods, I had never seen these sorts of buildings before: ones with burn marks on the ceilings from fires that homeless people had set inside the house to get warm; ones that had broken windows; ones that had overgrown lawns with beer bottles strewn all around; ones that quite possibly had been used for terrible acts of violence, prostitution, crack houses. Seeing them with my own eyes ingrained it into my brain: This really happens. This really happens a couple minutes from home. 
    But as I prayer walked, I began to see them with different, hopeful eyes. After all, the staff at WeWillGo has taken houses exactly like these and restored them into vessels for passing on the gift of grace. Why can't God reach down and redeem these, too?
    You see, he not only CAN. But he DOES.
    With the simple act of going out and babbling some written words on the street corners, many were blessed. People were stopped dead in their tracks by the word of the Lord; people heard the name of Jesus for the first time EVER; people learned how to pray; children stepped out of the protection of their parents into the eternal protection of their Father, to read and pray by themselves. The change was felt by all. 
    Coming back to the outdoors worship center, I was dared to pray bigger. Don't just pray for that house; pray for the street. Pray for Jackson. Pray for Rankin County. Pray for Mississippi. Pray for America. Pray for the world. Pray that God will save the whole thing!
    And he will.

You Know You're On The Short Term Mission Field When...

A little background:
This past week, I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Base Camp. This camp, operated out of a local church, gives youth the opportunity to go out into their community doing mission work. There were several different teams: Construction, Yard Work, Assisted Living, Critical Needs (who saw to making sure all of the teams had food to eat during the day, Journey (I'm really not sure what they did), Inner City Day Camp, and Hispanic Day Camp, which is where I was placed. The entire camp was so alive! We really felt like we were being the hands and feet of Jesus, getting out there and actually DOING something. I'm so grateful to have had this experience.

 Now. You know you're on the short term mission field when....

• Your eyes are opened to needs that you didn't even know existed
• The little things (smiles with teeth full of cavities, hugs, kisses, random dance parties) are the things that make your day-heck, your entire WEEK!
• There are about three little Hispanic kids that you wish you could adopt
• You wish that you could play with every kid at day camp, but the Lord calls you specifically to pour love into only a couple
• You're a little surprised when some black kids show up too, but you just figure that they need the love of Jesus just as much as the Hispanic kids do, so you love on them too.
• When the week starts, you're nervous about the language barrier
• But as time goes on, you find out that love is the universal language!
• Plus, you find a couple of kids who can speak Spanish and English, and they can act as your mini-translators. 
• You grow close to the people on your team who love the kids just as much as you do
• Seeing that you've put a smile on a child's face is the best feeling EVER
• On waterslide day, 8 kids come up to you at once saying, "Will you go with me? Please?" 
• You think speaking English in a funny accent will make the kids understand it. Yeah, no...
• During response time at worship, you write letters to some prisoners.
• You later find out that you wrote them to the prisoners at the jail right behind the park that you've been doing day camp at. How's that for the Lord's plan?
• When you're tired out, you have to remind yourself, "Hey, I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for THEM and HIM."
• You NEED worship every night so you can recharge
• You somehow, incredibly, get the chance to share the Gospel with some kids, one on one.
• You are amazed at how much stuff you can do in one day, and wonder how in the world you can just sit around the house all day back home
• Prayer is essential
• Battle scars: ant bites, sunburns, face paint in a glob on your arm, sore muscles from picking up children, a smile as big as the sun, and a heart softened by their innocence
• Your heart is broken when you learn that your kids know where the gangs fight and drink, and realize that they live with that every day
• There's that one kid that just wants to pick a fight. You need to love on him just as much.
• Somehow, 5 hours of sleep is enough to keep on going
• You hear a thousand stories of how small things like cleaning out a refrigerator have shown the love of Christ in the most powerful way.
• The Lord sends you people to laugh with, cry with, lean on
• You do crazy things, like get up in front of 150 people and dance like you've gone insane! (That was a serious lesson in obedience.)
• You're experiencing so much that you don't even have time to think!
• You fall in love with your kids and wish you didn't live two hours away.
• Making Kool-Aid is an art.
• When you get home, you have strep, pink eye, and a head cold. Not a coincidence. Totally worth it for being able to love on them for a couple days.
• You're so pumped up that you hate that hour of dead time
• You feel compassion for the most unexpected people
• Being by yourself is a curse and a delight: There are those times when you feel lonely. But when you do feel alone, you are forced to rely on the Lord, making you learn that he's the best friend you're ever going to have.
• Three and a half days are enough to know that you want to be a missionary for life.