BSM

today was the final day of our qca mission trip.  everyone got up at 7 and had breakfast and then the guys went to King’s Harvest to serve breakfast and hand out groceries.  it was pretty intense for them.  they served 216 people.  while they were out in the morning, the girls and I stayed out at the church and cleaned.  after cleaning, the girls headed out to Christian Friendliness.

Christian Friendliness is a ministry outreach for young girls.  our girls spent time hanging out with the girls that came for the activities.  some played games with them and some made crafts, but everyone had a good time.  the young girls clung to our girls and it was awesome for our girls to see how much these little girls just wanted attention and affection.  now, it was an experience getting there.  the directions were not thorough and we got lost a couple of times.  it was frustrating, but we made it and were only 30 minutes late.  after dropping off the girls, i went back to bettendorf to pick up pizza while hannah stayed with the girls in Moline.  

so i picked up pizza and got that started and when john and the guys got back from King’s Harvest, john took his car over to moline to pick up the girls.  once back, we enjoyed some pizza together and then took some time to debrief the week and what happened.

it was awesome to hear some of the stories and interactions and experiences that our students had this week, that have impacted their lives.  a lot of them felt convicted about so many people being in need in our own area, and they haven’t been taking the time to help out.  and through the skate ministry, we interacted with kids who need to hear about Jesus and it was awesome to see our students move out of their comfort zones and hand out gatorades to the kids at the skatepark and talk to them.  one of the other highlight experiences of the week was the group that was able to go to some fast food places and pay for random people’s food.  some people were resistant and asking “what’s the catch?” or “why do you want to do this?”  these questions provided awesome opportunity for us to be real and tell them why we were doing it and it’s all because we love Jesus and we wanted to reach out and show God’s love.  when some were resistant, our students would say something like, “when’s the next time someone’s going to offer to pay for your food?”  people were quick to let them buy after that realization.  during the week, the students were opened to ways they can serve our city and were convicted to take on that challenge to be active within our city and point to God within the city.

the goal… to love our city.  to serve our city.  to share God with our city.  in the bible, Nehemiah had such a passion for his hometown of Jerusalem, that his heart broke for the city and all he wanted to do was go back and rebuild the city.  this passion and heartache drove Nehemiah to do some amazing things.  read his story in the book of Nehemiah and see what it looks like to have a passion for your city and understand what extremes Nehemiah went to to serve his city.  

it’s my hope, that we as Christians claim our city and go to every extreme to point God out to the people in our city.  the Christians should be a city within the city.  we need to live in community and everything we say and do needs to point to God. let’s be the city within the Quad Cities, that points to the God of the city.

thanks for checking this out while on this trip.  please subscribe to our blog so you can get updates when new blog posts are written, and please drop us a comment.  thanks so much!

-bryan

today is the last full day.  i write to you from the deck overlooking the pool at the Morrison’s.  they were awesome enough to let us come over, eat their hot dogs, and swim in their refreshing pool.

we started out by going to a house to paint it for a lady.  at first we were really worried about getting it done, but everyone worked really hard and we were able to finish after staying a little longer than planned.  the house really did need a paint job badly and it was an awesome project and everyone worked hard and seemed to have a lot of fun.

from there, my group left and went to King’s Harvest.  there we served around 170 people.  it was really cool.  we interacted a lot more with this crowd than we were able to at the Salvation Army.  it seems that a lot of our students liked serving at King’s Harvest and it’s something that they seem to want to do on their own now.  while there, we met a guy named Russell.  he was alright.  i was kinda freaked out because after we were done serving, i saw him talking to the girls in our group.  so i got over there real quick because i didn’t know what was going on.  we actually had a really gooddiscussion with him.  he made a pretty bold challenge to our students.  in a nutshell… he asked “what are you willing to do to make a difference?  how far are you really willing to go?  yea… it’s nice that you came down here and put some food on my plate, but how is that going to change my circumstances?”  his challenge was clear.  while our sacrifice was nice and somewhat helpful, is it enough?  as we were having this conversation, my thoughts revolved around the guy that comes to Jesus asking how to inherit eternal live.  he tells Jesus that he’s kept the commandments since he was a child.  so Jesus responds by telling him to sell everything he has and give the sales money to the needy.  he walked away said because he had many things and didn’t want to give them up.  it is so easy to be selfish and horde our ‘things,’ but what are we willing to give up for Jesus.  this interaction impacted a lot of our students.

after serving and cleaning up, our crew went back to the house where we helped finish the paint job.  1 group then went out and bought more meals for people at fast food joints and the other 2 groups went to Aldi’s and bought some gatorade type drink, threw them in a cooler, and headed back to the skate park.  we spent the next hour handing out drinks and hanging with kids at the skatepark.  we ran into a guy out there that is friends with someone in our ministry.  it was cool for him to see us out there and to see what we are doing.  the guy we saw out there is actually going to Summer In The Son with us because his friend invited him.  so that’s cool.

we then headed to the church and grabbed some swim gear to head to the Morrison’s.  they opened their pool for us and heated up the grill.  it was a fun and relaxing evening.  we then showered and came back to the church where we debriefed from the day and then spent some time hanging out.  we spontaneously started to praise God for awhile, which was really cool, then we watched a couple of funny Benny Hinn videos on youtube that led to some cool discussion.

tomorrow is our last day, but it’s been an awesome week.  it’s opened our eyes to the needs in the Quad Cities.  hopefully we can now become a city within the city, that lives to reach out to the city.

day 3 is nearly over.  i’m trying to get this done earlier tonight to try and get into bed a lil earlier.  i’m starting to get tired and i especially struggle in the mornings.  usually i depend on a morning shower to get me goin, but the ymca wants us to shower during their ‘weakest’ hours which is 7-8 at night.  so in the mornings i’m depending on a pot of coffee to get me goin.

this morning was especially hard.  myself, jacob, and hannah, decided to be nice and sacrificial and we woke up early to make eggs, bacon, and pancakes for everyone.  i was really close to deciding that everyone didn’t need that nice of a breakfast, but… i arose, after 2 snooze button hits, but i still got up.  the church smelled amazing.  the aroma of bacon and pancake batter, with slight hint of fresh coffee in the background.  it was nice and everyone enjoyed a breakfast away from the norm of pop tarts and mini donuts.  jacob and i cranked out the eggs and pancakes.  my hannah did the bacon, and hannah t did the pancake batter.  it was delicious and well worth it.

after breakfast, we loaded up and went to a nursing home in bettendorf, on crow creek.  the residents were so excited as soon as we walked in the door.  we took a crew of them outside and we all planted some plants in little pots.  i think they were planting herbs such as parsley and things of that sort.  during that time, jacob busted out his guitar and started strumming.  once the planting was done, we started singing as jacob played and their faces lit up.  it was awesome.  one guy there named Guss was hilarious.  he laughed at everything and had a great personality.  mitch seemed to bond with a lady that he spent most of the time with.  guss’ friend dickey really got into singing with us.  that was a good start to the day.  the residents there just love the company and it was cool to see the joy on their faces as we spent that time with them.

after that we went to The Center on Brady over in Davenport.  The Center is a ministry that was birthed out of St. John’s Methodist Church across the alley from The Center.  it used to be a carpet or furniture store and is now a building that has an inside skate park (this is where Skate Church takes place), a cafe that serves food and coffee drinks, and a education program for teenagers.  they also host a lot of different events put on by the Quad City Prayer Center.  originally while with The Center, we were going to take a grill and some hot dogs to a corner in downtown (supposedly the corner with the most police calls in the last year) and hand out food.  evidently they had some drama last week with the people there and decided to put that on hold for a couple of weeks to let things cool down.  so instead we walked the area and picked up trash and prayed for the community.  one of the things we continue to pray regularly for is the Aug 8th event ‘Rock the River.’

after The Center, our groups disbanded again.  one went to ‘Hand in Hand’, one went to get started on the house we’ll hopefully finish painting tomorrow, and my group went to the Salvation Army shelter to serve meals.  that was awkward at times.  at first, it seemed like we were more of a complication to their process than a help.  we got there to setup and then had 2 hours to blow before serving the meal.  so we went to the outdoor skate park in davenport (i’ll come back to that experience in a sec).  once we returned to the Salvation Army, we did the final prep and set the food out.  we then prayed and then served the food to the families staying there.  it wasn’t quite what we expected.  we served about 15-20 people.  they were nice and polite and somewhat thankful, but it was really hard to have a conversation with them.  they just kept to a distance.  but it was ok.  we then cleaned up, did some dishes, took out the trash, and headed back to the church to eat and finish out the night.

now back to our skate park experience… we went to the skatepark in downtown davenport during some of our free time.  immediately we ran into a couple who does homeless ministry in davenport.  they were there handing out gatorades to the kids there.  they invited us to take some of their gatorades and hand them out with them.  if i knew we were going to have that much time, i would have loaded a cooler with gatorades and waters, but i’ll use that idea next time.  so we just walked around with these gatorades and talked to kids we handed them out to.  at the time there were about 50 or so people at the park.  some were elementary age, junior high, or high school, or older.  but it was really cool to just hang out with them and talk.  these kids were so ready for someone to just hang out with them and ask them questions that showed that someone else cared about them.  it was a cool experience and i’m definitely looking forward to going back with a cooler of drinks and just hanging out with them.  these kids at the skatepark are so open and easy to engage.  what they need is someone to come along side of them, show them they care.  these kids would definitely be open to Jesus… someone’s just got to tell them about him.

talk to you tomorrow.

day two is nearly complete and i will be hitting my mattress head first upon completion of this post.

all three of our groups started out this morning going to the Lydia Home again.  it was the last day to help out there.  while there, we did more yard work for some area families, painted for the Lydia Home, and also did some weeding for them.  we were going to go back to Dorothy’s and put some brick in for her to border her flower bed, but she was unable to find the brick she wanted.  so she pointed us to a house to help by doing some yard work for them.

early afternoon, a group left to go serve lunch at King’s Harvest.  they had some cool experiences.  they enjoyed it more than the Salvation Army experience.  the people that they served at King’s Harvest were homeless and lined up outside where the food was being served, where as the people that were served at Salvation Army actually were staying there.  

after King’s Harvest, that group took some cash and went out and just gave to people.  they went to the Srub n’ Pub on state street and paid for some people’s laundry and helped people take it out to their car.  they went to McDonald’s and just started paying for people’s meals.  when they paid for someone’s meal they would give them a little card with our mission trip phrase “Love God + Others” and on the back of the card would be our  website.  in McDonald’s they ran into some guys who responded to receiving a card by asking “can I have your number with that?”  to which our girls quickly responded “NO.”  but he said he may show up at one of our events.  if anything can get a guy to come to church, it’s a girl!  as they were driving around, they saw a construction crew.  so they went and bought some cold sodas and went back and gave them t the construction workers who were excited for the treat.  overall, I think they handed out about 150 cards with our info on it.  it’s so exciting and inspiring to see our students get so pumped about doing things like this.  this was the highlight for this group so far for the week.

one of the other groups went to check out the house we will be painting in the next couple of days.  there was a guy that showed up to show them how to set up and move the scaffolding.  they then went to LeClaire Park to pray for the aug. 8th ‘Rock the River’ event.  LeClaire Park is the site for the event and we felt it would be awesome to pray for the location at the location now.  they then went to Salvation Army to prep and serve dinner.

the last group, my group, went to ‘Hand in Hand’ today.  a good portion of the kids there have some sort of disability.  some are down-syndrome and some just have really bad temper issues. jacob and i spent the time outside with the preschool kids playing in the sand box.  at first they were pretty shy and resistant to us, but soon warmed up to us and started playing with us.  we buried feet in the sand and built really janky sand castles only to be destroyed by toddlers.  a couple of brothers that were there were awesome.  one loved shovels and he would go around stealing shovels from everyone else and then yell out how many shovels he had.  ”I hav thfree shovels!”  he got pretty excited.  his brother got a real kick out of covering himself in sand.  i also convinced him that there was buried treasure in the sandbox, so he responded by equipping both hands with shovels and commenced digging immediately.  i’m pretty sure he’ll show up tomorrow and continue the excavation project.  the girls went into the baby part of the day care and seemed to have a blast playing with the babies.  i made it in there after all the preschool kids had been picked up and one of the girls saw her dad coming into the building through the window and responded by almost shattering the window out of mere excitement.  her little sister was quite fond of a giraffe toy which she usually had in her mouth at all times.

we then returned for dinner where Hannah’s crew made everyone a delicious meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and garlic bread w/ cheese.  after dinner we once again made our daily commute to the ymca to cleanse ourselves from the nastiness of the day.

after dinner, we enjoyed some fancy guitar playing and singing.  the hit of the night was Love Story, the one about Romeo and Juliet that streams across radio stations and itunes everywhere.  

we then had a good time exchanging stories and experiences and talking about God moving through the things we are doing.  it’s so awesome to see what’s happening.  what i mean is… when you go off to a mission trip that is normally away from your community, you serve for a short while and while you are there you have somewhat of a short experience there and the responses and the reactions of that service time, drift away after a short while.  sure you may have done something huge for someone’s life at the moment, but once you get back, the impact that it’s had on your life somewhat tends to fade away with the surroundings that were there that are now replaced by routine, comfort, and normality.  here we are, serving in our city, impacting the people that we live in community with.  people who receive cards from us or simply see students working and wearing our tshirts with Bettendorf Student Ministry on the back, can look at that and identify us in the community of this city.  hopefully what we are doing is creating an identity for Jesus in our community that is also reflecting our identity as a local group of students who love Jesus.  what we are doing has potential to leave a lasting impression on people here that will hopefully have more interaction with us simply because we are neighbors and live in the same city.

before going to bed, i must leave you with a final pic of a friend we made.  his life was over before we even met him, but his memory will live in infamy.  here’s to you, Sparky the Squirrel.  good night everyone, talk to ya tomorrow.