Merissa here. We just finished our first official team meeting in San Diego, though we’ve had some great other bonding moments the past few days. This afternoon we sat on the grass (green grass!) and sunned ourselves while starting to share our life stories with each other. The more time we spend together, the more excited I am to be working with this team. Today, our orientation and training day, has been very encouraging and empowering.
One of the first things I noticed in driving through the city -- other than the palm trees, warm breeze, and beautiful sunlight, gifts from our Creator especially for us Minnesotans – was several buildings advertising psychic readings and holistic healings. There is also graffiti promoting violence or human-made peace. That, even more than the bars on every window, made me pray for God’s Truth to be revealed in this city. There are so many temptations and falsehoods to lead people astray, and it seems like in cities these things are condensed into a smaller area and more loudly advertised. San Diego, like every other place on earth, needs the light of Christ. The city looks beautiful and colorful and vibrant, which makes a jarring contrast with the spiritual blindness and oppression and futile idolatry that entraps too many of its people.
On our first day it seemed that, for me at least, it was easier to zone out than to step out of my comfort zone. The travel and novelty of day number one was somewhat exhausting, and it wasn’t always easy to work on connecting with people or investing in relationships with strangers whom we may never see again after this week. Yet, when we were welcomed into a group called College Life at the church where a lot will be happening this week, it was so beautiful to see God’s hand in the lives of all of these very different people. The devotion time and interaction with college-age people from West, Midwest, and East was so encouraging. Our great God, the Lord of the past and the King of our future, the one who brought us all here for this week and enables us to do any of what we do for Him, is the one we’re all living for, and He is always faithful. Hallelujah!
Today has been a wonderful preparation as we’ve laid the groundwork for the week. We were blessed to meet with the leaders of World Impact this morning, sitting outside the church in the sun. They shared World Impact’s vision with us and helped us understand why what we’re doing this week is important. By interacting during the Bible club with the children of these communities (and the youth, in the evening programs we’re invited to attend), we are helping them become a little more familiar with Jesus and what a life of discipleship is like. Also, helping them build relationships with each other and the Church, which is an amazingly valuable gift. Missionaries with World Impact have been living in the heart of cities for the past 40 years, focusing on evangelism and discipleship from within these neighborhoods. Their Christian schools, Bible clubs, inner-city seminaries, and church planting movements seek to spread the love of Christ by laying a foundation that gets families connected to the body of believers. Something that really stood out to me is the statement that the nations are coming to our cities. So by caring for our cities, we are reaching the nations. World Impact’s strategy is to build a foundation through evangelism (with missionaries living in the city, ministering to the whole family and ministering to the whole person), equipping (through fellowship, discipleship, and training church planters and pastors), and empowering (through establishing church plants and training people from the city to do what God calls them to do for the city).
This week, we are blessed to have the chance to build trust, not to be rich benefactors from a snowy land far away. We will have the opportunity to share the gospel about our Savior, not to be saviors. We are ministering to the poor, yes. (The apartments where we will do our Bible clubs are somewhat typical inner city projects, I guess. We won’t have a very good understanding of what the environment is like until Sunday, when we go out after church to talk to them and promote the clubs. The kids know World Impact is coming back, and they’re excited for Bible clubs to start up again.) But I think our understanding of poor will be challenged this week, since “World Impact defines the poor as people who turn to the Lord as the source of resources.” If that doesn’t make me poor, it makes me want to be!
We also had the chance to hear from Debbie, a representative of KidsGames, a worldwide movement to reach children and help them develop friendships through sports and relays, in prayerful hopes that that will get them and their families to want to come to church in order to see their friends. By giving these kids opportunities connect with each other at the same time as showing them the love of Christ, we will be helping them build friendships within their communities that could lead them to become involved with the Church (capital-C Church for Christ’s body of believers, since congregations often come together for activities like KidsGames or our Bible clubs this week). This is one of the best things we can give them this week. We’re praying for the chance to explicitly share the Truth with these children, since so many people make the initial decision to live for Christ when they are younger than 12 years old. But we’re also praying to be humble in knowing that we may just plant some seeds, or work some soil, or act as just one step on their way towards more familiarity with Jesus, the acceptance of Christ, and the Spirit’s ongoing work of sanctification. We’re all somewhere on that journey, and it will be up to the Lord how people will grow closer to Him this week.
Tonight, after a long day of planning, having fun and relaxing, we got to go to a Spanish service at the church. Half of us played with the kids outside during the sermon. The rest of us tried to understand the service (with the help of a few pseudo-translators) and were able to worship with the congregation. It’s powerful to see God at work in people who know Him by a different name, and we were all so blessed by the sweet and welcoming congregation members. In everything we’ve done so far, it has been so great to see how the people here welcome us and how God is giving us grace to be very loving with each other as well. Some of us are out of our comfort zones, some of us are exhausted, some of us are unsure of how we’ll be able to serve these kids. The good news (“gospel”) is that Christ has redeemed us and will be equipping us to glorify Him this week. That’s what matters, and it is humbling and exciting to know that He will be using us in ways that we can’t even imagine right now.
In preparing for the lessons our teams will lead at these clubs on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I was reading the Passion narrative in the gospels and I was struck by how Jesus’ purpose was very clearly to do the will of His Father. This week, we’ll get to teach the kids about the Easter story, play games with them, make crafts, love them, listen to them, pray for them. This, by God’s grace, will be our way of doing the will of Him who sent us. Please continue praying for us as we come to mind, that the Lord’s will would be done and that the children and families who are touched by World Impact’s ministry would have softened hearts to know our great and mighty God.
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