Readers,
It
would seem that I missed a week! I had great intentions of posting about my
first week house-sitting in my “Country Villa”, which is what I’m calling it.
But time has a bad habit of getting away from me and my trip to Oklahoma City
fell on me much faster than I anticipated.
I am so excited to share with you what
happened while we were in Oklahoma. God works in mighty and wonderful ways and
this week is proof of it. I have so much that I want to share that I think this
blog post will be spread over two weeks and two posts to make it manageable.
Some background: We started planning this
trip nine months ago. It takes a considerable of effort to coordinate a music and
missions trip for 30-some people, especially youth. We got in contact with some
really neat organizations and were poised to assist in several different areas.
May 20 –
tornados ripped through the Oklahoma City and Moore area, killing 9 people and
injuring at least 50 more. The devastation was widespread and terrible. We had
no idea any of this would happen when we started planning our trip. But God
knew. And God used us in ways that we could not have imagined. Here is a
breakdown of how our trip went.
Sunday, June 9, 2013 – We left from our church at 5:30 a.m. I’ll
admit, you, my readers, know how much I hate that time of the morning. I was
pretty grumpy. Within 3 hours we made it to Denton, TX to sing at a small local
church, Highland Baptist Church. We warmed up and sang for the morning service.
This was my first wake-up call. God grabbed my heart and said, “Hey you! Pay
attention! These ‘kids’, as you call them, do amazing things in my name. Pay
attention.” And so I started doing that, paying attention. We drove the rest of
the way to Oklahoma City and sang at a second church. I missed over half of the
concert due to a drive to the airport to pick up one of our sponsors. Can I
just say that driving through OKC might have been the most terrifying thing
that I did that week? But I made it there and back with minimal heart damage
and listened to the youth sing the second half of their program and this time I
paid attention. Really. I worshiped
that night like I had not done in a really long time. It was wonderful and
refreshing.
Monday, June 10, 2013 – We woke up bright and early to fix breakfast
for 25 teenagers. The church we stopped at the day before donated 18 pounds of
bacon to us. 18 pounds. Let me stress this again. Eighteen. Pounds. That’s more
than a small dog weighs. So we cooked some of it. A lot of it. And those teens
devoured it. Then the youth split into work teams and assisted with projects
around the church and at an organization called “Feed the Children”. The work
they did that day directly affected future ministry to tornado victims. I,
unfortunately, was not able to help that day. I worked on getting the kitchen
organized and making Wal-Mart runs. But it was through that day that I realized
something. I was not there to serve tornado victims, as much as I wanted to be.
I was there to serve teenagers so that they could make an impact in Oklahoma
and learn how to serve others. I’ve always called myself a behind-the-scenes kind
of person, but this trip put that to the test. I was so far behind the scenes
that I didn’t even feel like I was helping. But through this, God was still
telling me, “pay attention, pay attention”. So I struggled to do that. And I
started hearing amazing things.
I’ll leave more of the week for later. I
still have Tuesday through Friday to share and things haven’t gotten
interesting yet! Also, sorry that there is no foot picture this time, I only took one the whole week! So you'll have to wait until the last Choir Tour post to see it!
