This morning started very early for our team of 60 teenagers and adults. We circled and prayed in the church parking lot before embarking on our journey to Gallup, NM. Our students are extremely excited and ready to be used by God in an incredible way. We have a great team who have really worked hard to prepare for this trip.
Usually travel days are pretty boring, but today was a different story. When we arrived in Vernon, TX one of the church buses started acting odd. We ended up leaving it in Amarillo to get fixed and had to rent two extra vehicles. Thanks to our incredible adult sponsors, everything worked out pretty smoothly.
Tonight our teenagers sang at Paramount Baptist Church's Saturday Night service. Our teens sang three songs they had rehearsed for the past few months. They really sounded great! They received several complements and encouragement from the congregation.
Tonight we are at Comfort Inn in Amarillo and tomorrow we will be singing again at Paramount for their 8:30am worship service. We have another long travel day tomorrow. Thank you for your prayers!
Things to pray for:
*Safe Travel
*Vehicles
*Concerts tomorrow at Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo and Grace Community Fellowship in Gallup, NM
*Preparation as we get ready to serve in the different locations around Gallup
Day Two | June 6, 2010
We had a great morning concert at Paramount Baptist in Amarillo. After we performed our music and explained our mission work we would be doing in Gallup, the congregation gave our team a standing ovation. This was a huge encouragement to our students and sponsors.
We began our way on what was supposed to be our six hour road trip to Gallup. It ended up taking a little longer than expected. In between Amarillo and Gallup, our team witnessed a car accident. We immediately stopped and our sponsor Randal Wooten went to check on the car. Luckily, they were ok and there were no injuries. We also had a student, Andrew Butterworth dislocate his shoulder on the bus right outside of Gallup. We took him to the emergency room and they set his shoulder back in place. He is back with the team and all is well. We arrived at Grace Community Fellowship Church around 6:45pm. We immediately began our preparation for our nighttime performance. We packed into the small sanctuary and sang to a full house-about 30 Adult, teens, and kids. Two of our students, John Michael and Alli Sosebbee, gave their testimonies and our students also did a stomp and a skit that were extremely effective-the audience loved them. Many of the natives said that they were coming back during the week to attend VBS and to the youth rally on Tuesday Night.
Afterwards we met with the missionaries, Jack and Jill Foster, and they briefed us on the week. We also reviewed and prepped for the next day. Our teens are excited to serve tomorrow. Thanks for your prayers!
Day Three | June 7, 2010
Today was our first full day of mission projects. One team headed to a community called Mariano Lake. In the morning they tutored and mentored children in the Elementary School. In the afternoon they walked over to the community building (Chapter House) and had a VBS with the neighborhood children. They walked door to door for about 30 minutes inviting kids to come and ended up with about 12 kids. At first the kids were very standoffish but slowly began to open up to the group.
Another team went to Grace Community Fellowship Church to do a VBS. Their first day was very successful with around 20 kids. In the afternoon they passed out flyers for the Tuesday Night Community Concert
The last team spent the morning touring the reservation. In the afternoon they went to the Ft Wingate Boarding Schools (Elementary-High School) to be briefed on their work and to do some tutoring. They were informed that they would only be able to work in the high school. This was a change we weren‚t expecting. However, our students are excited to be together and to work with other teens.
At night our entire group came together for a concert/ youth rally at Ft. Wingate High School. The performance included our worship band, choir, skit, and testimonies from both Jaycee Hobson and Jacob Geron. The high school students were a very hard audience, talking throughout most of the performance. Most of the students there come from broken homes and have rough backgrounds. At first this was discouraging to our students. They kept saying that even though the students talking, they still heard the message. This was true. After the performance, one girl came forward to talk. She was a Christian who had recently given her life to Christ. She said that she was being persecuted for her faith and that she only knew one other Christian in the whole school. We connected her with two of our older students, Shelby Geyer and Sky Daugherty. She said that the message was a huge encouragement to her.
Please continue to pray for our team and the different trials we are facing. Pray that we will continue to receive opportunities to minister to others and share the love of Christ. Thank you for praying.
Day Four | June 8, 2010
The week continues to get better and God continues to open new doors of ministry for our group. Our Mariano Lake Team had a great day. The kids are opening up more and more. We doubled in size from the day before, having around 24 kids. The Grace Community Team is also having great success. They also doubled in size, having around 40 kids. Our Ft. Wingate Team spent the morning doing various work projects
around Grace Community Church. They worked extremely hard and accomplished many of the projects. They went back to Ft. Wingate High School to hang out and tutor the students and continue to share their faith with them. However, they are still facing some opposition at the school. They spent an hour there with the students, but then had to leave. We all met at The Rock Spring Community Building (Chapter House) for a Youth Rally. We had a good response in the community. There were several families there along with many teens. As soon as we got there, our students went out to talk with the locals. Shortly after, we began
our concert. We sang, did stomp, performed a skit, and gave two testimonies, led by our very own Mikevin Singletary and Emerson Roberson. After the concert we fed the community Donna's world famous hotdogs. This gave our team a great opportunity just to talk with the people. We have wonderful students who are very eager to meet and share their faith with others. Several of our students were able to witness to others.
Please continue to pray for our team. I believe our teams have a great opportunity at Ft. Wingate, so pray that God would open new doors for ministry.