Down to the Last Day

We have had two great clubs last night and Thursday night. The number of kids coming has been declining a little (37 Thursday, 32 last night), but that has actually been a blessing because many of our team members have had more opportunities to talk one-on-one with kids. We haven't had to work through too many distractions, and the kids are more attentive each day.


We were hoping to have an opportunity to get involved with some of the teens of White River too, and God provided it on Thursday evening when we were invited to play basketball with some teens in the local housing. We were invited back to play last night as well.


Yesterday evening, Ben Miers talked with a boy named Alex from his club and led him to Christ! This is the first time since we've been in South Dakota that we've had a child respond to the gospel and accept Christ as Savior in one of the clubs. We have been planting and watering lots of seeds, but it's exciting to be a part of the harvest and see God change a heart.


Last night we had our team devotions at a place called Emily Point; it's on a rise over the grassland and provided a great view of the setting sun over the White River area. We enjoyed the landscape, worshiping the God who created it all.

Today is our last day of clubs, and we have several prayer requests:
1. Clear communication of the gospel - we will be sharing the gospel through the Balls of Many Colors or the wordless book in each of the clubs tonight.

2. Barbecue - we are hosting a barbecue for kids and their families before clubs this evening, and we hope to have some good conversations with parents and kids.

3. Safety as we travel back home tomorrow

Mid-Week in White River

Monday and Tuesday we worked on projects around the church in the morning. We worked cleaning up around a shed that needs the siding replaced, setting posts for a trellis entryway to a prayer garden, and framing in for a concrete pad that will be poured tomorrow. We also cleaned up around a fire pit to make a seating area for our club of older kids and set up a volleyball net. This morning we finished up the posts for the trellis, repaired a flatbed trailer donated to the church, and hauled some landscaping rock donated by the city for the prayer garden.


Tuesday night we had around 45 kids split into the three clubs. It has been a little bit of challenging managing all of the kids in the same location, as opposed to having individual clubs in different parts of the community, but it has also been good to work as a team all together. It has been a little more difficult to spend one-on-one time with kids because of the size of the group, but we have had a few opportunities and hope for more.


We have enjoyed getting to know Pastor Harold, his wife, Mathel, and their grandson, Nathan, thirteen, who has been staying with them for part of the summer.


We moved our sightseeing day from Saturday to yesterday to alleviate some driving over the weekend (we are three and a half hours from Rushmore this year), and we will have clubs tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday. One group went to Rushmore and Wind Cave (fourth largest cave in the world), while a smaller group had the opportunity to return to Sharps Corner and reconnect with many of the people we met over the past two years. We discovered that Roy Cooper is working with the church now. He and his wife are living in the parsonage, and he is leading a Sunday morning Bible study, an addiction recovery group, and caring for the needs of the people. While this a new role for a cowboy, Roy feels this is where God wants him to be and he has been uniquely prepared. Praise God for this huge answer to prayer!


On behalf of the team, we all appreciate your prayer for us and the work God is doing in South Dakota. Here are a few prayer requests:

1. Opportunities for one-on-one conversations with kids and developing relationships with people - our time in clubs is precious, and we want to use it effectively; we also have a barbecue planned for tomorrow evening where we hope to be able to meet more families.

2. Clear communication of the gospel - we have been spending quite a bit of time for the past two days in planning ways to keep the kids engaged in the stories and memory verses; also, about half of our teaching students are new to 5 Day Clubs, so pray that they will continue to become acclimated and gain confidence.

3. Pastor Harold's health - he is a jack of all trades around the church, but he has low blood pressure and blood sugar level, which makes it hard for him to keep up with his rigorous schedule. He also looking to find a younger man to serve as an intern and share the ministry.

4. Additional opportunities to see God work - pray that distractions will be at a minimum and that we will be sensitive to God's leading and able to clearly see Him at work in and through us the rest of the week.

White River, SD

We arrived in White River, SD, Saturday evening around 9:30pm. We had a great day on Sunday with the church family during services in the mornings, then passing out flyers around town in the afternoon. Our first club yesterday evening went very well. We had 39 kids divided into two clubs, and we will add a third club tonight! We just got internet access today; I will add more and post pictures as we have time. Thanks for praying!

Change of Plans - Day 4

Today was originally scheduled to be our sightseeing day, but we decided to put those plans on hold to help out the church. In the morning, one group visited the family of Fernando, one of the younger leaders in the church; he is "crazy for Jesus", as he called himself, but his extended family is all catholic.
We had a unique opportunity to observe a combined service between all five of the baptist churches in Morelia; it was a small service, but all of the leaders of the churches were gathered together to discuss their coordinated missions strategy to reach the state of Michoacan. Eduardo told us later that because we were able to be there with him, along with the students from the BSU, these leaders were able to see what the BSU is doing. He has struggled to gain support from more than a couple local churches, and this was a big encouragement to him, because the state director promised him more support during this service.
We enjoyed a local fruit salad called "Gazpacho" and also did a little shopping in the local markets. In the afternoon we visited more families from the church; Steve and Ben had the opportunity to talk with a woman for about an hour who had lost her father, a leader in the church, not too long ago. Most of the families we visited were hurting in some way, and we were able to encourage them, pray for them, and invite them to return to church, as many had not attended in awhile.

Change of Plans - Day 3

This morning began bright and early with Brian and Debi joining Eduardo on his 6:00am radio show. He broadcasts a show every weekday where he shares the gospel and teaches through the Bible to 80,000 listeners. Later in the morning we met at the church to visit a few of the families that had not attended in awhile (because it was during the day, we only had a few families at home that we could meet with). We met with one man and his three teenage children, and his son David came to the service in the evening. We also talked with more people around the church and shared the gospel.

During the evening service we were able to share a few songs and lead worship together with some of the guys from the church, Mallory and Ben shared testimonies, I preached, and Steve and Ben prayed for the church. After the service we treated the church to pizza and enjoyed the opportunity to fellowship with the people.

Brian and I talked at length with Eduardo and Eleazer, one of the deacons in the church responsible for evangelism, about the condition of the church. The church has been without a pastor for four years, and disunity is a very big problem, with several families vying for control over the direction of the church. Pray for unity among the people and that God would provide a godly pastor among the three candidates they are considering.

Today our devotion was from Mark 7:1-23 looking at the difference between following man's traditions vs. God's commands. As it relates to missions, we have several things that are "traditions" of how to plan for and accomplish missions, but when it comes down to it, we are commanded to preach the gospel and make disciples. The gospel must clearly communicated so that it can be heard and relationships must be formed in order to foster growth, but methodology is secondary. We have been seeing God move us to a dependence on Him instead of our plans and a realization that the most effective means of sharing the gospel may not be the one we were planning for, but instead the one for which God was preparing us all along.

Change of Plans - Day 2

We spent most of the morning and afternoon passing out gospels of John in Spanish to people around the church. We also used the Ball of Many Colors soccer balls to share the gospel. Our plans for 5 Day Clubs were completely put on hold, but we were able to communicate with individuals on the street through translators. It was an experience that stretched us, especially as some of our students had their first opportunity to share the gospel with someone through a translator. Ben Miers and I encountered a student named Brian that spoke English, and we were able to talk with him about his beliefs in relativism and Buddhism, and he was interested in reading more in the gospel of John about Jesus. While the culture is predominantly what I am calling secular Catholic, the people are very open to hearing and reading the gospel. The picture of the boy at the table is an especially poignant; he was an obviously hungry street kid who came into the restaurant where we were eating and sat down in the corner. We gave him a piece of pizza and a gospel of John; during the next 45 minutes that we were at the restaurant he did not touch the slice of pizza, but intently read the Bible.

We will be continuing to share the gospel in this way over the next few days, so please pray for openness among the people we encounter, confidence and clarity as our students share, and opportunities for the local believers to follow-up with those we come in contact with.

While we shared the gospel, we also invited people to play soccer with us in the afternoon. The kids from the orphanage came, along with a couple of guys that we invited earlier in the day. Brian shared the gospel using the soccer ball. We were also able to talk more with Krista and Brianna, two American college students from Michigan who are serving at the orphanage for six months, from June through December.

Please continue to pray for us and for the church and the BSU. I have entitled this series “Change of Plans” because we have only served in a small part of what we had been preparing for; however, God had been preparing us for what He would do, and He has changed our plans for His glory. We look forward to continuing to see Him work.

Change of Plans - Day 1

We began our first day of ministry at 10:00am. The church we are working with, Bethel Iglesia Bautista, is looking for a pastor... again. Apparently the church has struggled to find good leadership for the past four years. It wasn't prudent for us to try to do 5 Day Clubs through the church, because there would be no opportunity to follow up with those children and their families. We did however, go to an orphanage where we were able to do a small club, hang out with the kids, and tell the story of the wordless book through bracelets the kids made. Several of our students had the opportunity to converse with the kids at the orphanage in Spanish.

In the evening we participated in a service at the church. Steve and Harrison accompanied with guitar, Robin and Ryan shared testimonies, and Brian preached. After the service we were told by Eduardo, director of the BSU and lay leader of the church, that this was a very encouraging service to the people, so much so that they want to do another service Friday evening.

Because of the situation of the church, our plans have been up in the air - but God has been working, and He is using us to help rebuild and rejuvenate this broken flock. I cannot help but remember Jesus response when He saw that crowds, that He had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd. Pray for this church, that God would bring the right man to lead them, that our time here would continue to be encouraging to them, and that as we have the opportunity to visit with people that we can share the message of hope and restoration of the gospel - both to those who hear for the first time, and those who may be disheartened.

On our way to Morelia

We have been in Mexico for less than 24 hours; currently we are waiting at a bus station in Guadalajara for the Calvary group to join us so that we can finish our journey to Morelia. The trip has been fairly uneventful so far, but there are a few highlights: we lost a couple bottles of body spray to airport security, but suffered no additional seizures or searches. We met a guy on our flight from Chicago to Dallas who works with the Jesus People and had been at Cornerstone and was headed back home. We had a minor issue with our hotel reservation last night, but the concierge was kind enough to give us our rooms and it was worked out this morning. God blessed us with the opportunity to meet Heber at the airport, who is the cousin of one of our translators in Morelia. He helped us reach our hotel, get dinner, work out the reservation issue, do some sightseeing around Guadalajara today, and get our group and Calvary to the bus station.

This will be our third late night in a row as we have been traveling: getting dinner and settled in at Chicago, a late arrival and hotel check-in at Guadalajara, and tonight the Calvary team will be joining us shortly for a 7:30pm bus to Morelia… which should put us into Morelia around 11:00pm. We have been able to get some rest in the mornings so far, but our clubs begin tomorrow, so please pray for good rest for us on the bus and tonight. We have enjoyed the trip, but we are tired of travelling and ready to arrive and begin ministry!