No Doubt about It!

"No doubt about it: children are a gift from the Lord" (Psalm 127:3).

One of our team members read this verse today during our debrief, and I heard it differently than I ever have before. To be honest, I think every other time I've read it or heard it I've thought, yeah, a gift I'm missing out on because I don't have children of my own. But today I thought, they really are. Thank you, God, that I get to work with this most precious gift all the time.

This month has been awesome. Tiring, hard, exhausting, emotional-- yes. But bottom line, it has been absolutely awesomely incredible. Each week has had its own highlights and its own challenges, but this fourth and final week was unlike any of the others on so many levels. We went into it knowing some of the challenges: we'd be short-staffed on Monday, we wouldn't be allowed to talk about Jesus, and the children we'd be serving would be some of the most at-risk kids we'd seen all month. But we couldn't have known the highlights, and we definitely couldn't have known how most of those highlights would be because of the challenges.

- The extra program day on Monday allowed Isaac, Danielle, and me to take more active roles in leading groups and activities. Leading groups meant that we got to know the kids better than we would have otherwise, and it was a blessing to each of us personally to watch those relationships grow throughout the week. I think that our personal connection to specific kids gave us extra energy and enthusiasm for our final week.

- I asked our volunteers how it had been for them not being allowed to speak about Jesus. They said they'd been struck by how much easier it is to talk about Jesus than it is to act like him-- and that they'd learned so much more about him in the process.

- We had braced ourselves for the challenges of working with kids in or at risk of being placed in foster care. We expected behavior issues and anger issues. But I don't think any of us expected kids who loved to be loved and loved to love back so readily and enthusiastically.

Today was the last day of "Brain Camp" (the program at the school). All week we've wondered what the school thought of our program. Today the vice principal came up to me and said "would you keep us in mind to do this again next year??" Oh lady, you have no idea how much we were hoping you'd say that!

We invited the kids to come to Padre Plaza tomorrow. I drew maps for every kid in the red group because they were so concerned that their parents might not let them come if they didn't know exactly where it was. I'm nervous that their parents still might not let them come. Pray with us that their parents will bring them, that they will come, that they will hear about Jesus, that they'll sign up to come to camp, that this will be the beginning of a long-term relationship with Jesus and with us.

There's another verse in the same chapter that says "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders' work is pointless" (v 1). That's been so true of our March Madness month. He's shown us again and again that he's in this, that he has been building this outreach and building the relationships with these children. We serve a big God. So we're asking him big things. Can you ask him with us? There's no doubt about it that he loves these kids even more than we do-- and that's saying a lot!