Good Morning from Columbia, SC! Isn’t awesome that there are 3 different team from FBC/LifePark that are on mission trips at the same time?! Really cool stuff!
So our team in Columbia consists of 58 high school students and 9 adults from the LifePark Campus, and we arrived on Sunday, June 16 and will be here until Friday, June 21. There are four teams of students that are serving with either inner-city children, elderly/disabled people, or homeless folks. These site teams go to their various locations each day from 9am-1pm with a few goals in mind:
1. To reflect the love of Jesus to people.
2. To bless the staff or site we are working along side.
3. To share the message of Jesus with words and actions.
You should see our students and adults in action! It is so encouraging to see the next generation of Christians being bold and stepping out in their faith. Plus, they are having fun, lots of fun!
On Monday, and today, our students will set out for some afternoon servant evangelism opportunities. Students have the option of share the love of Christ through a few options:
1. Blessing Retail Workers: Our students take flowers or candy to those who work in retail and share with them the love of God in a very simple and tangible way.
2. Cold Water on a hot day: Students go to downtown Columbia with coolers full of ice water. They give the water out for free, blessing people in Jesus’s name, and looking for opportunities to talk about God.
3. Prayer Team: this team ventures to the mall or a park with note books in hand to ask people if they have any prayer requests. Some times students will pray for someone right then, or they will wait to pray for their requests later.
*These afternoon sites have shown our students a simple way of listening to the Holy Spirit and trusting that he will prepare them with what to say and do.
I also wanted to mention that 4 of our 5 nights we are enjoying music and preaching from our friends at Midtown fellowship, a Southern Baptist church in the city. Having such good ministry to our students allows them to be refueled and built up after a day of ministry. And after the worship time the students gather for nightly encouragement to each other, a debrief of the day, and small group prayer time.
The students and adults are serving with great attitudes and with passion, and it is cool to see and be a part of. I have heard so many stories of what God is doing…and I hear stories of how things are not perfectly smooth either. But I tell you, this is BIG what God is doing because he is giving our students a taste of the good life…the life that is meant to serve others and share about Jesus.
Please pray for us as we have Wednesday-Friday of serving. May God be honored and may the next generation be shaped! And as a great modern poet once said: SEND ME, I’LL GO! LEMME GO, LEMME GO!
With Joy, Paul Coleman
*Want to try something fun? Go to www.tagboard.com and type in SendCola2013 – this will allow you to see all of the social media movement from our students. Yep, we made our own hashtag!
E3 Global Teams 