Hey Everyone!
It's been a long time since I've posted! I wanted to tell everyone about our mission trip to Colorado. This post is probably going to be just a basic run-down of everything we did. All of the intimate details and stories will probably become their own, individual posts. There really is so much to write about and can't be contained in one post.
So, Justin and I went on a mission trip to Colorado with the youth choir from our church. I have been singing in the alto section with the girls and playing my guitar on one of the songs. Before we ever left for the mission trip, our music minister did something really awesome. One night, instead of having our usual practice, he had the kids break up into different groups and each group picked a scenario out of a pile. Our group picked a scenario about a homeless shelter in Denver and encountering a business man who was now homeless because he lost his IT job and his wife and family left him. It was very hard for me to even read the scenario out loud because it was something we very well could possibly encounter there. Our activity was for the kids to create their OWN skit based off of this scenario in just a couple of minutes. IT. WAS. AWESOME. The kids in my group incorporated a witnessing segment into the skit and showed how they would share Jesus with this man. So touching, so amazing. There were lots of other scenarios depicted in our skits...anything from nursing homes, to homeless shelters, to the churches where we would be singing, to the van ride on the way there and back and how we should interact with and treat each other. Total group-building stuff.
So anyway, just to tell ya'll real quick, I have never really been on a mission trip before. Ever since the very first time I went to Falls Creek to a college retreat in 1997 shortly after I was saved, I have felt a call to missions. There was a group that was commissioned to go to Utah and witness to the Mormons and I remember feeling that tug on my heart then. Ever since then, any time there is a video shown at church of a missionary's journey, I feel that same tug. I am tired of just sitting on the pew and enjoying the nice videos and hearing the nice stories...God didn't create me just to sit comfortable in a well-lit, air-conditioned church...He created each one of us to GO and TELL. So anyway...my heart is in Cambodia, but that is another story. I figured I should start local and do missions close around here before I just ventured out overseas. I don't want to be picky and limit God in that, but even going to Colorado was a walk of faith and trust for me. (Sniff, sniff) This is the first time I have ever left my babies for that long. Now that I've become a Mommy and my kiddos are so small, I have always been worried to leave them. Then, Dr. Bobby Kelly came and talked about "Anyone who does not hate his own father and mother, his own family, even his own life cannot be My disciple..." and he said God doesn't literally want us to hate our families or abandon them, but He wants us to LOVE GOD MORE. So, God has been working on my heart on that. My children are not mine...they do not belong to me...they belong to the Lord...my greatest fear is leaving them behind and possibly dying in the mission field, but what will they remember about me? What will they know that Mommy was doing when she lost her life? Loving God, loving others, and following God's call for my life...I would only pray they would do the same and that I would leave a legacy of love for the world behind for them.
So, on Saturday, March 17th, we departed at 6:40am. I am a crazy traveler because like some travelers, I have "bathroom issues", hehe! A "sensitive digestive system" is what my Sunday School teacher calls it, but my thing is just that I always have to know where the bathroom is. :) As long as the vehicle is moving, I am fine, but if we get locked down in bumper-to-bumper traffic and aren't moving for several minutes to an HOUR I could about go bonker nuts. God has really grown me in this area with a long family trip to Illinois and getting stuck in Kansas City traffic at noon, and then this 10-12 hour drive to Fort Collins. I can handle being in the car for long periods of time much better than ever now. I didn't freak out once on this trip! :) Not even when we blew a tire on the way! We were in the middle of a 3-van caravan and the church van in front of us with our kids in it, blew a tire! Oh dear, can we say "Jesus, take the wheel!" I can honestly say that I literally saw Jesus take the wheel in action! Praise God, that He protected everyone and guided the driver safely to a controlled stop on the side of the road. Within about 20-30 minutes we were back on the road! We were about a half hour ahead of schedule anyway, so this just put us right on time! :)
This was also my very first time to see the Rocky Mountains and very first time to Colorado. When you get to Limon, CO on I-70 you can begin seeing mountains in the distance. I will never forget that for the rest of my life. As soon as we crossed the state line I began seeing evergreens. In the West I could see the mountains...blue...purple...beautiful. I knew it was gonna be beautiful and before I could even see them, every time I thought about it, my tummy flipped just like it does when you're in love and dating. Every time I thought about God showing me His beauty like that, my tummy did flips and I got butterflies! I was so excited! God did not disappoint. The mountains were GORGEOUS. The first couple of days were a bit overcast and the cloud cover hid the mountains a bit, but the rest of our week was sunny, clear, and blue skies! :) I just cried thinking about the verses in the Bible that talk about the mountains. The song I had in my head all week was, "I lift my eyes up, up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from You, Maker of heaven, Creator of the Earth..." I thought about what it meant to have a faith that can move mountains and I thought about how big God is and how He could probably reach down and just scoot the Rocky Mountain chain over with His finger! :)
Anyway, the first thing we did was sing for the Spanish Mission. We stayed at Immanuel Community Church in Fort Collins, and on Saturday nights, the Spanish Mission comes in and does their church service there. The entire service was in Spanish with a translator and that is the first time I have been able to be a part of something like that. We sang songs and some of them were familiar to us, so there we were singing them in English right alongside the church who was singing them in Spanish...absolutely beautiful! First time I've ever done that...at that moment it didn't matter if we were Hispanic or American...it just mattered that we were all Christians and believers glorifying one God together. :)
After that, we went out for ice cream, pop, and fries at McDonald's. My first observation about Coloradians? Is that what you call 'em? Anyway, people from Colorado, is that they definitely looked different, and I don't mean that in a bad way...I just mean that they all looked outdoorsy, and mountainy, and fit, and like athletic people who exercise, and just like they're very active. We were near a college town or college campus so most of them looked like young college students. So anyway, after our long drive there and long day, we were all TIRED. So, we aired up our mattresses and zonked out back at the church!
On Sunday morning, we got to go to Sunday School with the youth group from Immanuel Community Church! That was a fun and awesome experience! Their group just got back from their third trip to Joplin, Missouri to help with tornado clean-up, so we got to hear about their experience and hear some awesome testimonies. The Sunday School class I got to sit-in on was a group of 11th-12th grade boys and girls who were learning about apologetics and how to defend their faith. Their leaders felt compelled to teach on that subject and equip their kids with the tools they need to make it in the world after they graduate...to learn how to defend their faith so they might not become swayed by every wind of doctrine that is out there when they leave home. Very cool. Then, we got to be a part of their worship service and lead a few songs, but also to hear a sermon from their children's pastor. I must say that the entire environment at Immanuel Community was very open, very safe, very honest, very transparent, and very.........real. Everyone felt safe enough to be real, be who they were, and to share what they were struggling with. It was very challenging to say the least.
That afternoon we went to the homeless ministry in downtown Denver to sing. Before we went in the door, our ministers talked to the kids about what they might see and what they might encounter when they walked in the door. On the way there, the kids practiced sharing their testimonies with each other on the vans. Our kids did such a good job at smiling, ministering, and just talking to everyone there. I was so proud of them. I must say it was very difficult for me to sing while we were at the homeless ministry. I thought about the skit we had practiced at home about going to a homeless shelter...it was one thing to talk about it, but it was another thing to experience it. There was a man leading worship there and he was singing things like, "All who are thirsty, all who are weak, come to the fountain, dip your heart in the stream of life, let the pain and the sorrow, be washed away, in the waves of His mercy as deep cries out to deep..." and "This is my daily bread...Lord You are...this is my daily bread..." and looking into the faces of people who had nothing but Jesus to depend on as their heavenly bread of life and water...ugh...tears just ran down my face the whole time. Also, in one of the songs the choir sings, it's called "No Greater Love" and it talks about "For the city, for the world we pray..." and then, "To the city, to the streets we go..." and I'm like "We're in the city we've been praying for and we're looking at the last and the least that we were sent to..." Balling, balling.....it was amazing. They passed around a prayer request sheet for the people to write their prayer requests on, and I was so proud of our kids because many of them wrote down prayer requests too and they said, "I pray that many will be saved through our singing..." or "through our songs" or "I pray that the Gospel will be heard in Denver..." So cool...That evening we rushed to a church service in Broomfield. We did a full concert for this church and afterward they fed us a banquet spread fit for royalty! It was AWESOME.
On Monday we met Mick from The Pursuit Church in Fort Collins. They are a new church plant, about 18-months old with about 150 people. Last year, they had an Easter egg hunt as an evangelism, outreach tool. They didn't advertise very much, but 800 kids still showed up in the SLEET. This time, we filled 15,000 Easter eggs for them and Mick asked us to pray over each egg. He asked that we pray for each person and each family that would touch those eggs. We filled Easter eggs for 4 hours! So, now we are praying for good weather for the Easter egg hunt this year! After we filled Easter eggs, we practiced witnessing to each other with the Evangecube and then we went to the park for street ministry. Our heart and desire was to begin a game of flag/tag football and pray that some strangers might join us! :) Well, it turned out to be quite chilly that day and there weren't many people at the park. We ended up doing our skits in the park and while we didn't get to talk to anyone, many people stopped to watch and I'm sure they were ministered to.
On Tuesday, we sang for an adult care facility and it was an awesome blessing! Then, we met Mick and the pastor of The Pursuit Church at Fossil Creek Park in Fort Collins to begin canvassing the surrounding neighborhoods. We got instruction to distribute and hang doorhangers advertising the Easter egg hunt and Easter services. We canvassed for over an hour and would you know it that I met a lady from Enid, Oklahoma! Well, sorry, she wasn't from Enid, but she had lived in Enid before when she and her husband were stationed at Vance AFB! :) What are the chances that out of ALL the houses we canvassed at that I would walk up to two ladies and one of them would know where Enid was! Pretty cool. Anyway...after canvassing, we went to Extreme Sports Challenge for a little fun. They had all these indoor sport, obstacle course type games and challenges to do. The kids wore themselves out on that and then we went out to eat at Casa Bonita. It's an all-you-can-eat Mexican restaurant where each table has a flag on it, and if you raise your flag your waiter brings you whatever you want. They also had a diving show there and everything, pretty neat.
On Wednesday, a group of us went canvassing again while the majority of the group stayed back and did service projects at the church. They ranged from cleaning up yards, to helping a few elderly clean up their homes, to cleaning the church we were staying at. We had one more performance at an adult care facility, and then that evening we had youth and church with the youth group from Immanuel Community. WAY FUN! We played some really fun games, participated in some awesome worship with their youth praise band, and heard an awesome sermon from their youth pastor about contending for the faith.
On Thursday, a group of us went canvassing to finish up, while the rest of the group finished up more service projects and canvassing for ICC. After that, we went to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. We were supposed to go tubing that day, but it was so hot and we found out later that the tubing place was closed because it was too slushy. It was definitely one of the warmer weeks that Fort Collins had seen. Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park were BEAUTIFUL. Seeing God's creation in that light was AMAZING. We hiked up to Bear Lake, which was frozen, and walked a few trails. So peaceful and beautiful. My husband and I found a bench on the lake in some trees to sit on. We watched the sunset there. Everything was so still and so beautiful. From now on, if I ever get stressed out, I am gonna transport myself back to that bench. It was breathtaking and the sunset was so beautiful.
On Friday, we went to Eldora to ski. I didn't ski, but a lot of our kids did. It was VERY HOT there. The ski instructors warned about the dry air and the sun. They said the humidity was only 8% and the chance of getting sunburned and eye damage was very high. A few of our kids still got sunburned even though they had sunblock on, but no major injuries. :)
On Saturday, we drove home safely! It was an amazing trip! Please be praying for The Pursuit Church of Fort Collins and praying that the weather is good for their Easter egg hunt. I am hearing in the news now about some wildfires southwest of Denver, so I am praying about that and maybe that they can get some moisture out there!
More mission trip stories to come!
