But the greatest of these is love

“Can I talk to you after?” was the request. We stood to the side of the lunch hall which was filled with 60 loud, excited youth day to in Muskoka woods for March break camp. I agreed and we immediately went back to interacting and sitting with the kids. Later as the kids left the hall with the leaders we made our way down stairs to take a minute to talk away from the business. As we sat he looked at me in emptiness, he spoke to me of his frustrations of the weekend, of having the kids 24/7, of not enjoying it like he had hoped, of fear of not being able to look back on this weekend and having good memories but of only having memories of disappointment or stress and anxiousness and of it not really making a difference or an impact in the kids’ lives.

I sat their listening to him, remembering my own similar fears last year and tried to figure out what I could do to calm his fears and to encourage him in his work and efforts. It is a stressful time of running program and making sure everything runs smoothly, of having to watch the kids and lead them 24/7, from motivating them to tucking them and reminding them to shower and brush their teeth. There are not very many moments of deep conversation and you cannot plan for kid’s to open up during small group time or really hear and accept the gospel when it is shared. When it comes down to it there is very little, next to nothing we can do to impacting and make that change happen in our kid’s hearts besides being available, loving, always being the ready to speak truth in any given moment.

It is not about the plans, the program, the bible studies or small group times and games. All these things are good and are very important and we are held responsible to working faithfully to accomplish them but they are not the things that determine what we are working toward, rather it is all the little moments in-between that make all the difference. It’s when in patience you deal in love with the kids who talk till 2:30 a.m, it’s the cuddles you give before bed time, the conversation on the way to breakfast, it’s taking the time to make sure that the scary shadow is really just a tree and not a bear, the times when you help carry a tube up the hill, or walk a little slower and holding a hand instead of rushing ahead to the next thing. It’s when in love you can answer the same annoying question for the tenth time to the same kid, it’s in the self-control you show in having to shower last in the freezing cold water because the 6 kids before you used all the hot water, it’s in asking the hard questions not in fear of what they will think but in love because you desire for them to know the truth, it’s about taking the time to talk about things edging on inappropriate because they truly are curious and need someone safe to ask and receive the truth from. It’s about tying 15 kid’s skates before you tie your own, it is all about the love you demonstrate in the moments when it is not natural or easy.  

The little moments are the things that you will look back and remember. The impact the change, that is in God’s hands and we have to leave it there. We have to put God in His rightful spot and trust that because He is our Creator, Father, Savior, Lord, Redeemer that He is also moving where and how He wants. Our responsibility is to demonstrate the love which He has shown and empowered us with. We must be faithful to speak truth and then place all trust in Him that He will do the rest. When we seek for our own control this is impossible, but it is when we give up our own control and place it in the rightful hands of the One who fashioned our very beings that we can find joy, peace, and rest in the things He has called us to be faithful in. 

Preparing for March Break

"Are you serious", "I don't have enough time", "I'm so tired", "Help, I'm overwhelmed" are all very familiar expressions to my ears over the past week and a half and here we are down to two days until our March Break camp begins.

As a second year intern I am put into a new role of leading the first year interns in planning the entire week. This means in more simple language that I am alone with two of my peers are responsible for making sure they have thought through and have answers to every little detail involved in transforming a ware house sized gymnasium and planning and running a 6 hour daily program for 120 kids between the ages of 5-10 from three different communities in Toronto.

Up to this point my role has been to lead the planning process but what I have discovered is that my role is really to lead by example by modeling joy, excitement and passion even among the stress and pressure of needed to get everything done. I am very excited for this week and am anticipating big things. Our theme is Circus Petrium which is Latin for value. The gymnasium will be transformed into a circus and will be a fantastic atmosphere for the kids to have fun and to learn about the value they hold in the eyes of God.

Today I popped in to visit 6 stressed out but determined interns who where working away at creating posters, signs and decorations for next week. They were frustrated and overwhelmed but the sight of some Timmies donuts was a great encouragement. I spent the next couple hours with the painting and talking. My goal was to help them enjoy the process no matter how stressful it is. It was an encouraging time of hearing some of their stories and getting excited for the next week together.

Tonight I was also able to welcome a Missions team from Iowa who came all the way to help us run camp this week. I love having the opportunity to meet new faces and to share our vision and excitement with them, just as I hopefully am with you through this post.

As we continue to finish last minutes preparations please be praying for

• Peace and a calmness for our team. 
• Rachel, Jess and I as we lead the first year interns this week, especially for Rachel as she finds leading very difficult and is nervous. 
• The the interns running the programs
• Our Missions team, that it would be a time of learning, growth and blessing.
• For our streetleaders as many of them are first timers to March Break that they would be impacted by the message as well as they help to lead the kids.
• For the kid's who will be coming to camp for open hearts to receive the good news
• For safety for everyone.
• That above all else the Lord's name would be proclaimed and gloried in all we do.

I know not why....

God has been so incredible. He has continued to just reveal to me the beauty of the ways He is able to use me. He has so beautifully orchestrated the timing and happenings of different events and personally happenings in people’s lives around me. Today started ordinary, I had a coffee date set up with someone who I was wanting a year and a half to speak about certain things but also knew that time needed to be right. God has a way of showing me the exact moments and until that moments comes He does not allow me to speak.

The time came, she was honest and opened the doors for me to be honest in return, to say the hard things, to challenge her, to make her cry over past hurts and regrets but to be able to see that I had seen the truth through it all and had been there the whole time waiting. It was beautiful and the start of a friendship that has been a long time in coming through man obstacles and difficulties.

A young man who commonly asks me to talk and to be able to hear my advice again ask and I had to be patient and let God work slowly and to use me in a less enjoyable way but a profound way of Him working, not me.

5 minutes later entered my apartment to find my roommate in tears. It was time to be there for her. She shared relationship struggles and certain things that are seeking to steal, kill and destroy something that is good. Only because of the wisdom and advice and biblical truth I gleaned from a sermon last night at a church I randomly decided to go to for the first time I was able to speak truth into a very delicate and difficult circumstance. Evidence of the extraordinary timing of our Father.

Spend some time in prayer feeling drained and emotionally heavy from the many events of today.

2 hours later conflicts erupts. It has been kept silent for the past 2 months and a cookie sets it off. Eight girls are now forced to sit and work through things that have been building up but it is done maturely, yes with some tears but moved to a point of awareness and care for each other.

It’s almost bed time but one last person asks me to read something she wrote, things I do not know about her that she desires me to know. I read it, two pages of brokenness, of hurt, of things and people that the devil as used to seek to destroy her. I hurt by the end because of the pain I know it causes and see demonstrated throughout our lives together. I grab a pen and paper and am able to through paper to speak truth. To express my love for her and her worth not changing. To share with her the truth I know of the Father and His extravagant love for her, His precious daughter which for He gave His one and only Son’s live so that He might call her His again.

I do not understand how God can use me for such things, I only know that there is nothing to makes me feel more loved, precious, special or worthwhile then to be used by God to speak His words to who every He puts in my path. 

Sharing my story

I had been having a horrible day, was down on myself and felt like I was doing a horrible job as a leader and just as a person. Someone had earlier prayer for me that, I would be used to show the youth I work with the one true love of Christ and yet I stood on the side lines of the gym feeling unable. I didn't feel like I was making a difference but didn't know how I could either. That’s when he walked up to me.

He’s one of the most at risk kids we have at camp, pushing the limits, tough and acting even tougher than he is. His home life is full of bad habits and bad influence. Yet over time things change and a lot of his walls have already started to come down.

“Is it true that you were mean last year?” is what he asked me. I was caught off guard and also wondered what he wanted to hear as my response. “Who told you that?” I asked.

“The other kids.” he said trying to shrug it off.

“Well, I guess you’re lucky you came this year,” I said jokingly, but then taking it more seriously I told him it was a long story. He looked at me curiously and so I continued to explain to him how I was when I first came to camp a year and a half ago. How I was new to the city, scared of the kids and really worried about not being perfect. I explained that I was intimidated by the kids and sucked a disciplining and wasn't very good at having fun or just enjoy being with the kids.

I shared with him how God changed my heart to stay longer than just a summer to stay a year and how He continued changing my heart and making me a better leader. I was surprised he was listening so intently and not changing the subject to some made up crazy fighting story where he made another kid bleed like he normally does. Instead he just stood there looking at me and listening. I continued about how I was supposed to leave in May but how God used people in my life to tell me that He wanted me to stay and that I did and that this year is entirely different. Not that I am suddenly perfect but that I am a different and better and “less of a mean” leader then I had been the year before.

From a night where I felt weak, useless and unable to really do anything to make a difference God took it and used this little boy to ask a simple question out of curiosity to give me an opportunity to share my story of what God has done in my life with him. 

Being led by the Spirit within normal life

To be led by the Spirit is to not go ahead with our own plans or doing or not doing the things we think or desire to do. Rather it is to be in constant communication and in rhythm with the Spirit to instead be guided by what He says to do and what not to do.

It seemed somewhat superficial growing up thinking of a Spirit that would instruct or guide me. I have been trying to live a life that is more sensitive to the guiding of the Spirit in the ordinary moments of life, in the mundane rhythm to see them as opportunities of God. In the last few weeks I have been in a few very unique circumstances where I have thought one thing but have had a struggle within me to not go ahead with my own ideas but to wait and to follow the promptings of the Spirit instead. This to say my ideas where not bad or wrong, they were just not God’s plan or timing.

I wanted to share some of these times with you as they have impacted me greatly. Both happen to be with the same roommate. She has quite a history and twice in the last two weeks has reached an incredibly low place. Both times I was aware and also aware of the reasons that brought her to this place, the things that this would bring up within her, the lies that the devil often speaks within these moments and the harm and danger she could resort to because of it. First time I was aware but was in a different room, second time in the same room surrounded by many strong loving Christians on a prayer retreat. Both times I desired to go to her to hold her, to pray for her and to keep her from doing things that would hurt her, or cause regret later. But both times I could not because there was something greater saying “No, not yet. This isn't for you, you can’t stop this or fix it, stay where you are.” And so I would stay where I was and pray for her. First time I hear the bathroom door click and I know that she has gone to find a razor blade and I pray that she doesn't use it. Second time, I watch her leave and I pray she doesn't run.

First time I was sitting on the other side of the room waiting for some kind of indicator that I could go to her. It came in her texting me, crying out for prayer. I went to her, she handed me the blade and said “I don’t need this, please pray with me.” Second time it didn't not come until much later, if fact I could go to her all evening. By the time it came to bed I knew still I was not to talk with her and so I offered to pray for her right before bed but it was rejected with hurt and anger. It’s confusing knowing that someone is hurting so greatly but also being so aware of that fact that it is not yours to step into until God allows. Some moments I was wondering what I was waiting for but it was very clear I was waiting for a green light if you will from God. Until then I had to trust that He had it under his sovereign control.

The next morning was tense she was hurting by the fact that I was not coming to her in her hurt, yet I knew I couldn't, not yet. We walked into the cafeteria and she walked over to me, “I need to talk to you!” I stopped, “may I Father, please may I now?” and I knew I could. I don’t know how to explain it but I had been given the okay, it’s not a voice but it kind of is. We sat down and she poured out her hurt, fears, the way she was being held captive and believing the lies. She knew they were lies yet denied the fact that she could not believe them. She confessed to know that God was for her and yet denied being able to go forward in His strength. I knew I could not do it for her, I could do nothing but point her to God and so I did. Calling out her lies and challenging to her to see beyond her feelings, to identify the lies and to live in the truth. I told her I would walk beside her as we counteracted the devil’s power. We together faced her fear, we turned around, got proper food to eat for the first time and days, we sat with the group and moved forward choosing to forgive the hurts, to not believe the lies of the day before and to live in the power of the most high king. In those few moments of talking with her I told her my desire, for her in 5 hours by the time we had our next group activity that she would be back to the joy filled girl I knew her to be, not the one bogged down by the lies. It’s wasn't a pray that I sent to God but He heard it anyways and He answered it to the fullest. If I had done things my way I know it would not have ended the same way it did in the beauty of God’s love, salvation and restoration. It is not about what I do not say anyways it is all about His power and sovereignty over and in our lives and the way and time He chooses to use us for His purposes. 

Stay, tonight I want you here.

I had my own plans, I don’t want to stay, I’m tired maybe I should just go home, there never seems to be a purpose in my being here, there’s enough leaders tonight, I can go. Yet that still small voice continues, “Stay, tonight I want you here”. I know that voice it is the one I that I am hearing more and more since that day I've been praying to be more aware and obedient to it. I know I should stay yet I’m still not sure why.

Ten minutes later and I’m still not sure why, maybe I heard something wrong. I pick up the phone for a bit, people wonder in and out of the room as I remain oblivious to who. A few moments late everyone is headed up stairs for dinner only one girl remains. I asked her if she is okay and she seems to snap out of being zoned out. Then it comes, one thing after another. Her teacher passed away last night which had let her in a state of frustrations, unknowns, and questions and pondering the meaning of life, what comes after death? We talked about future, present, struggles, uncertainties and God. We remained there for the next 2 hours, talking and discussing. I was able to encourage her and to challenge her forward as well as hearing more of her story and journey.

It unfolded into such a beautiful night of truth and friend being build. It is such a privilege it is to be in this young ladies life, she in unique, a bit of an odd ball, the girl who never walks normally but always dramatically just to make people laugh. Her goal in life is to make people smile and feel at home. I thank God for her and for His promptings for me to stay and be used and be blessed in this way. 

Snow day!

We were sitting for lunch when our community direction approached our team to inform us that our Executive Director said we had the option to cancel camp due to the “snow storm” that hit Toronto. As these words come out of his mouth everyone’s expressed changed from “cool”, to “wait, then we don’t get to see the kids!”. Needless to say we ran camp disregarding the weather, snow just makes it more fun.

We boiled up about 2 liters of hot chocolate and prepared for a snow ball fight. We did not think a lot of the kids would come but were pleasantly surprised by the numbers as they flooded into the doors. We canceled homework and canceled bible studies and decided to focus on fun, love and laughter. The streetleaders were told they were not required to come, yet one young man asked if he could come anyways expressing his desire to just be with us.

I spent most of my day in the kitchen serving hot chocolate with marshmallows as they kids came in freezing cold and covered in snow. It was such a fun atmosphere and created so many opportunities to just sit down and have intentional times with one or two kids. I said on the gym floor beside a little boy of the age of 7 who was feeling a little sad, we sat as he sipped his hot chocolate till he forgot all about what he was sad about. There was much chatter as we sat around the kitchen table talking and could hear the two groups of kids having their games of basketball going on in the gym.

As I was walking home at the end of the observing the gorgeous sun sight flooding the sky I started a praying thanking God for a few kids that stood out to be today. As the names came out one after another after another and another and I realized just how much love there is existing at our camp. How amazingly privileged I am to be able to say thank you God for my 25 kids by name, and for specific character traits and reasons.