Kairos

This is my summer. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to minister with and to these kids this summer. We took this group to M-Fuge in Kentucky last week and had a really great week of serving and learning and really being challenged by the Word. I had to opportunity to pray with a girl as she accepted Christ and had a lot of opportunities to pour into relationships with girls from our group and really see young girls that are thirsty for God. Bulleted highlights:

- group-wide predestination/free-will discussion
- challenging questions about the Trinity
- roofing (I got a sweet lanyard tan on my neck)
- getting to know the staff from the camp and talk to my leader about global missions
- camp cheers (!!)

Pretty much, it was incredible to see how God moved in the lives of these students. I would like to say with an honest heart that I anticipated and expected Him to move in such ways, but I had my doubts. In addition to the girl who became a Christian, we also had a boy give his life to full-time ministry. They are both 9th graders- woah! The sweetest time of it all for me, though, was when girls would come and pull me over to the side to talk and to pray over them. This week kinda radically opened some relationships for me with them and I'm super pumped to see how these relationships grow. Please pray that my heart and mouth would be overflowing with God's words and wisdom and not my own.

I definitely saw the depths of my heart this week as well. Riding in the middle school van might have driven me to the ends of my patience, but God is so faithful to pull us and stretch us and teach us, even if we are resistant to it.

Despite the post-camp craziness (still trying to recover) the past few days have been really great. Yesterday Landon and I got to go spend the day with Jay, Shantal, the girls and their whole extended family. We got to play with the kids, swim, grill out, and really enjoy being surrounded by a loving family. Even if I couldn't spend this weekend with MY fam, I was able to spend it with other families who adopted me in and loved on me.

A story that I have been reading through and thinking about is the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel. I have been so convicted about my heart in prayer. I remember being taught by a friend in high school to pray with expectation. If we do not pray with the certainty that God will move, we are limiting our view of God's nature. I feel like it's so important that when we pray, we do not let it become a passive activity that we can check off the list of things to do, but rather that we use these intimate moments of meeting with Him to "weep bitterly" and to pour into passionately knowing that God will remember you.