Selfish Christian?

Outreach

 

 

I have been a Christian all my life. I have talked to people about God, but they were people who already knew the Lord. Before coming to Kansas City I had never walked the streets and talked to people, I had never been inside a soup kitchen. I have never led anyone to the Lord. I grew up with a mother who would talk to everyone about God. By everyone I mean EVERYONE, waitresses, cashiers, random people shopping. When I was younger I was embarrassed by it, now I love that she was that kind of role model in my life.

 

Every Wednesday here at DTS we go to the Plaza, which is a part of Kansas City. A group of us goes to the soup kitchen, and the rest hit the streets to talk and pray with people. My first Wednesday going out I was apart of one of the groups that walked around talking and praying for people. I was with three other people. My partner and I went up to the first guy we saw and said that we were going around taking a survey about what people believe God to be. I didn't say anything at first. I let my partner do all the talking. I was nervous, but after a while I chimed in and ended up praying for the guy. After that we let the other two girls talk to someone. The final person I talked to by myself. I told her the exact same thing my partner did the first time, with the survey. She said she grew up catholic, but now doesn't believe in anything. She said that religion was for old people to help them get through loved ones dying. I asked her if she believed that the big bang was real. She said yes. So I asked her if she thought that the world and everything in it was an accident, if that meant she was an accident. She flat out said yes! I became speechless. I just wanted to hug her and tell her that God created her for a purpose and He loves her and has a plan for her life. My heart was broken. I was at a loss for words. All I could do is thank her for her time and tell her to have a good evening. I cried the entire way back to base.

The following week I was part of the group that went to the soup kitchen. We got there right after dinner was being served, so there was a bunch of people but they were all eating. Right after our group walked in the door a guy walked by and made a sexual comment about the girls in the group. Now I know how to handle that outside of Christ, but I am learning how to handle that inside of Christ. So I just looked at him and told him to have a great night. The staff told us that they needed help in the clothing closet. I jumped on the chance to be locked in the closet so I didn't have to talk to people and worry what they were going to say or do. So a few of us went to organize the clothes in the closet. I was struggling with my feelings towards the situation. I felt bad that I was locking myself away, not allowing God to work through me. After we helped in the closet, we went out to talk to people. By that time there was only a few people left. Everyone was cleaning up and getting ready to leave. So I decided to mop while praying over the place.

After we left the soup kitchen we walked to our bus. We were the first group back, so we decided to pray as a group. Like a good Christian I prayed for everyone in the soup kitchen, and the staff working it. I felt like a worthless human being at this point. My group prayed over me, and broke off things that were hindering me from sharing my faith with people.

A group from Minnesota came last weekend to do a 24 hour, 3 day evangelism  event. I was not looking forward to it. It took up my weekend, and they were making me do something I wasn't really that comfortable with. I was insecure about talking to people is what it all boiled down to. There were 10 sessions. Everyone had to do the first one and the last one. We also had to choose one to do in between. A few of us chose to do the 9pm-3am session. Which meant we would be going to the bar strip and talking to drunk people. Perfect! I love drunk people. So we met for our debrief to figure out our groups and pray. After that we went to the prayer room for 2 hours to get fueled up and ready to go out. We got to the bar strip called Power and Light District. Basically its a couple of streets that are just full of bars. We arrived at the Power and Light District around 12:30am. I teamed up with one of my roommates and a guy from IHOP. The guy from IHOP was what we would call socially awkward. He told us how God told him move down to Kansas city from Minnesota. It was an interesting story as a believer of signs and wonders. Not a great story to use to try and reach the unsaved drunk people walking on the streets of Kansas city. After about and hour of him scaring people off my roommate and I stepped up and starting talking to people and praying for them. In a way I am grateful for his awkwardness because if it wasn't for his inability to relate to people I wouldn't have stepped up. We ended up talking to a few people.

All in all it was a good experience. I challenge you all go to your local soup kitchen, or hook up with a evangelism group and get out of your comfort zone. Its not about how well you qualify or how well you know the Bible. God isn't looking for more pastors He is just looking for a people group who will just say "yes'.

"Here I am God, send me"

Extreme Encounters

Extreme Encounters

 

On the third weekend of our DTS (Discipleship Training School) we took place in what they call "extreme encounters weekend". Which is basically supposed to prepare us for outreach and bring up any issues we may have in our own hearts.

We had a list of things we could bring and things we could not bring. Anything that wasn't on the list we were not allowed to bring. The list included: one pair of pants, one shirt, one sweatshirt, two pairs of socks, one pair of shoes, one pair of shorts, a toothbrush, a sleeping bag, one hair tie, one pen, one notebook, a bible and a water bottle. Notice that there wasn't toothpaste, deodorant, toilet paper, makeup or anything else on the list. We had to be ready by 6:45 a.m. We met and immediately started walking outside towards our camping location. We met up with some IHOP people at the edge of our base. We warmed up by doing jumping jacks and lunges. We started walking to our "camp site" which was in the backyard of one the buildings on our base. We ate breakfast which was hard boiled eggs and peanut butter bread. We split into girls and guys and had to set up our tents. By tents I mean tarps, sticks and ropes. It was very interesting trying to set this all up with a bunch of females. 'Too many cooks' kind of thing. After 45 minutes we put together a very interesting sleeping arrangement. Our bathroom was a bucket with a garbage bag in it. The bucket was inside a really small tent for a little bit of privacy. We had one roll of toilet paper to last a group of almost 18 girls an entire weekend.....

 

 After our tents were made, we split up into our groups for the weekend. We were given a garbage bag full of our groups food for the weekend. We were told to plan our meals for the weekend out of the food that was in the bag. The items in the bag included rice, canned chicken, chili, saltine crackers, pepperoni, trail mix, carrots, celery, a few small containers of jiffy peanut butter, cereal, dry milk, sardines, and can of what was labeled as dog food, but turned out to be beef and potatoes. There also was a small bag of baking soda to brush our teeth with. Each member of the group had to eat everything that was in the bag. So no getting out of eating sardines, unfortunately.  We ended up making appetizers out of it. We put the sardines on the crackers and topped them off with the pepperoni. It ate as fast as I could and didn't try to keep it in my mouth that long. I may be a little high maintenance. Although I will try every form of food once. That's how I found out I like crab legs, sushi and shrimp. You never know what you will or will not like until you try it.

 

After our meal planning we had a few team building activities. Our group started in the section where one of our leaders was pretending to be a chief from a remote village that has never heard of God or Jesus. We had to try and preach the gospel to him. After explaining the creation, the death and resurrection of Jesus, His love for us and his eventual return the "chief" offered us food from his land. He opened the container and here are a bunch of shells with snails in them. At first site I thought they were alive. I freaked out just a little. I didn't want to offend the foreign chief, so I took it. We pulled it out of the shell. It was squishy. Out of the 6 people in our group, only 4 really ate it. One person spit it out, one person threw it in the woods. I swallowed it whole. I wasn't going to give it a chance to hit my taste buds. I downed a bunch of water after that. 

 

We had 4 group activities after that, and I knew I could handle anything after eating a snail. The other activities consisted of  trying to crawl through a big spider web with out any part of our bodies hitting the rope, getting through a maze, getting a golden egg (like Indiana Jones), and a plane food drop team effort. We set the record for the plane search and rescue. Go us!!!!

 

After our team building activities we took some alone time and wrote in our journal and read the Bible. We had some team building activities/games as an entire group. That was a blast. After all our activities we started to prepare dinner. We chose to do rice, chicken, one can of chili and some of the veggies. It was okay for camp food.

 

After dinner we gathered around the campfire and sang worship songs and prayed. We played a game that was kind of like Pictionary, but instead of drawing we made the item, name or situation out of clay. That was difficult. We ended up winning. Don't ask me how that happened because none of us really made anything good out of clay. We just knew each other enough to try and figure out what they were trying to make. Our prize was Oreos. Whhaaaaaaaat.

 

 

When our form of Pictionary was done we did a search and rescue mission. It was a lot of fun. we split into groups to try and locate a few kids that were being held captive by some of our leaders. We had a half hour to find them and bring them back to camp safely. It was fun, but annoying at the same time. we had about 26 people in the big group. Some of them didn't know how to work as a team. We did find the children and bring them back to camp. We went to bed around 11pm. I was so tired and it was getting cold. I believe the temp was about 38 degrees.  I am used to cold, but sleeping in 38 degree weather with nothing but a sleeping bag is a little too intense for this girl. Finally I was in my sleeping bag attempting to get comfortable. Then the whistle blew. We had to get up. They were trying to show us that on outreach we wont be getting much sleep and the sleep we will get will be broken up. So we sang some more random songs. We went back to bed shorty thereafter. Another 15 minutes went by and the whistle blew again! UGH I like my sleep. We stayed up for another 20 minutes. We went back to bed for the final time. I got a really bad nights sleep. I woke up a bunch of times, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't get warm, I was using my extra clothes as a pillow. People were snoring, I was getting kicked by people who were sleeping next to me. It was not a fun night to say the least. 

 

The following morning we woke up at 7am. Made breakfast, and prayed. Brushed our teeth with the baking soda. There were a few more team building activities. These ones were my favorite. We started off by shooting a bow and arrow. OMG love love love this. I totally felt like Katiss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I missed a few times but got one on the board. One of my team mates got all three arrows on the board. She's amazing. Next up was knife throwing!!!!! I'm not talking about kitchen knives here people. I'm talking crocodile Dundee type knives. "Now that's a knife". After getting my feel for it I did get a knife on the board. I was like a little kid on Christmas. I could do that all day long. Then there was ax throwing. Yep you heard me right. We were throwing axes!! Oh yeah buddy. I was so excited when my ex hit that board and stayed on it. Yep I loved it!! It made me want to go to the shooting range right then and there. Awww good times. After we were done with the activities we gathered for a short teaching by one of our amazing leaders. We started tearing down our tent, and packing things up.

 

We did one last team building activity before we were done. We all had to stand on two small things of wood and walk as a team. One of our team members that was having issues all weekend had a really hard time with working as a team, but other then that it was actually really fun. Then finally we were done!!! We walked back to our building, some of us ran. A hot shower, and my bunk bed never felt so good. I was so thankful for my pillow.

 

All in all it was a great weekend. God didn't really bring up anything new that I wasn't already aware of. He is good at using other people to expose the crap in your life. God is so good.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Holy Ghost Hijacked

                                   Holy Ghost Hijacked

    Hello everyone, welcome to my blog. I have never done something like this, so bare with me.

 

Well, to start out I am guessing you are all wondering why I chose to name my blog "Holy Ghost Hijacked". This may take some time to explain. It all started ten years ago, but for your sake it starts way before that. I have been a Christian all my life. I have known God and loved him ever since I can remember. Ten years ago my mom brought me down to Kansas City for a women's conference that the International House Of Prayer (IHOP). That's when I heard about a summer teen internship they were hosting. I went later that year and I instantly knew I wanted to move down here. My best friend and I agreed we wanted to do a longer internship after we graduated from high school. When the time came to apply for the internship my best friend got accepted right away. I however was dating a guy at the time. The internship was six months long. I asked him what he thought about me going down. His exact words were "if you go down to Kansas City we wont be dating any more, I don't do long distance". Me being the stupid 18 year old that I was, stayed back in Minnesota to be with him. Needless to say that relationship did NOT turn out that great.

 

After we broke up I started living a very selfish life style. I drank, slept around and pretty much only allowed God into my life when I needed something. I had two different groups of friends. One that I went to the bars with and knew me for a girl who loved to have fun and drink. Then the other group of friends knew my belief in God. The two groups of friends never interacted with each other. I didn't want my party friends to think I was a "bible thumper", and I didn't want my church friends to think I was this party animal who didn't have her life together. I only had a few people who knew both sides of my life. I could trust them with everything.

 

I lived like that for a few years. When I turned 23 I was working in Grafton Wisconsin for three months. I had met a guy out there and ended up dating him for 3 1/2 years. We had a lot of ups and downs. More downs then anything, but I'm not the kind of person that quits. When I commit to something I am determined to see it through. Which isn't always a good thing. In the middle of all this my Dad was given 6 weeks to live. We didn't have the best relationship. Growing up I remember lots of good times with him, but as soon as I hit teen years things changed. We weren't on speaking terms at the time I found out about his diagnosis. I had been meaning to talk to him about everything I felt but didn't know how. Now I had no choice, but how do you tell a dying man you feel like he wasn't a good father for more than half your life?? I prayed and prayed hard. I gave God full control over the situation with my dad and He ran with it. Not only did He restore things with my dad before he passed away, but He changed me forever. He started working on my heart in that moment. My boyfriend at the time and I were still together. We were doing great, until one night we sat down and had a hard talk. I was living in Minnesota and he was living in Wisconsin. The plan was for him to move to Minnesota to be with me as I didn't want to move out of Minnesota. We ended up talking about it and he told me that he didn't want to move. I told him I didn't want to resent him for taking me away from my family when I wasn't ready. Long story short we decided to break up. It wasn't easy but God gave me complete peace about it.

 

After that I sat and asked God "okay....now what??". I felt like he was telling me to go back to school so I started a semester of college with a major in nursing. Meanwhile my mom (God bless her) kept bringing up the fact that I have always wanted to go to Kansas City and that now is the perfect time. I was thinking to myself "No, I'm too old, that dream died a long time ago." It took an email from my first pastors wife to spark my interest in coming down. That same pastor - Mark Anderson - is now the director of YWAM KC. I had always wanted to do an internship through IHOP but I had never thought of doing anything with YWAM. I'm not a missionary. Or so I thought. I asked her what the difference is between the internships. Basically YWAM trains you how to be a missionary and then sends you out on an outreach. I liked the fact that I would get to leave the country. So I prayed and asked God for a sign. Without getting into too much detail for one blog God provided the money to come down in the most random ways. I am so happy He did, because I know for the first time in my life that I am exactly where I belong.

 

So the name "Holy Ghost Hijacked" comes from the fact that God pretty much took over my life because CLEARLY He knew better then I did.

 

Thanks for those of you who are reading this. Hope you enjoyed the first of many blogs.