Philly

So I realize I have been slacking a little on the blogging, but you guys know me, it takes a nice quiet, distraction free chunk of time for me to sit down and really write.  Well, here I finally am and I’d like to share about my trip to Philly a month ago.

 

First of all, let me start out specifying that this was my very first AIM trip, and I had no idea what to expect.  Let me just say, God did not disappoint (as if He ever does, lol).  From the get go this trip was very interesting, one wrong thing happening after another, but you know what… I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Steve (my trainer/co-leader) and I showed up to find that one of our ministry partners had backed out and we had several ministry slots to fill.  Therefore we spent the entire first day calling up various ministries to find out if anyone had any needs for the week.  Thanks be to God we filled all of our slots that first day and had a full schedule ready for the team when they arrived two days later. 

 

Alright, so this youth group was exactly my type of group, loud, occasionally immature (love you guys!) but deep and hungry for God.  After a wonderful first day of talking/ministering to the homeless, we had our first debrief session in which all of them were encouraged to share where they saw God that day.  Every single one of them responded!  Not just with what they thought we wanted to hear, but with what they really had seen and felt.  I was so encouraged and could see God working already.

 

Throughout the rest of the week I saw them sit and interact with the homeless, plan a children’s ministry for inner city kids, go on prayer walks and end up taking a pregnant woman to a ministry we had found earlier in the week that takes in homeless single women and women with children.  This ministry is a wonderful ministry that teaches them how to make it on their own as well as giving them a temporary home.  They are allowed to stay as long as it takes to get on their feet and currently there are 32 women and 7 children living there.  It’s an amazing ministry and it was so wonderful to see these students bless the lives of the women there and see their lives changed in return. 

 

Since this was my first trip I did not lead most of it, but I was in charge of teaching two of the evening lessons.   As I’m sure you know, talking is not hard for me, but this wasn’t about what I could come up with, this was about what the Lord wanted to do.  Needless to say He just blew me away.  It reminded me once again that the best I could ever do in my own power is nothing compared to the smallest ounce of what the Lord can do.  Walls came crumbling down, the youth and the leaders opened up, and we got to see what God was doing in their hearts.  I still remember one of the youth spoke up when his friend had finished sharing what he was dealing with and said, “God needs to be your addiction, make Him what you crave most.  Let your soul be a refugee in Christ.”  This is a fairly quiet 17 year old boy who spoke up to someone he had never been close to in front of a group of his peers.  The fact that the Lord put something on his heart and he actually had the courage to speak up really humbled and awed me.

 

Many of these youth walked away changed, from one who had been afraid to be around the homeless and now counted several of them as friends, to a girl who saw the beauty and value in every single woman but herself until God showed her how HE saw her and made her come alive.  I feel like John (except on a smaller/non-Biblical scale, lol) when I say that God did so many other things as well but if I were to write them all down I would never finish, so I will just say that I was so blessed to be able to go on this trip and see the lives of these guys changed.  Thank you guys so much for being a part of this ministry.