Ministry Week

Last week was ministry week at Capernwray. Basically, it's like a local short term missions trip. My group went to a church called Calvary Chapel in Hamilton. The church was based out of a school because they didn't have a building. Their denomination teaches straight from the Bible all the time, passage by passage, which I thought was pretty cool.

Anyway, our group did a lot with the church. We went to the service Sunday, church scavenger hunt picnic that afternoon, led worship at the prayer meeting Monday, led a homegroup on Wednesday, youth group on Thursday, street evangelism on Friday, another picnic on Saturday, and took the whole church service the next Sunday.

Besides the church, we worked with the school. It was about age 5 to 12ish. We were split into groups at lunchtimes and led optional activities for the kids. I helped with drama games. It was crazy because the kids were crazy, but it was really fun. And the kids really enjoyed it. :)

We also did community service type stuff during the mornings and afternoons. The first day, we dropped off letters in people's mail boxes, then the next day we knocked on people's doors to see if they wanted any help with anything such as housework or yardwork. We got a few jobs to do, and I think the people we helped were really thankful for it. The point of that was just to show Jesus' love to people through helping them out with practical work.

Some of the most challenging things for me on ministry week were sharing my testimony and street evangelism. I did my testimony at the youth group and...well, let's just say I felt I had to be open with them, and it was hard. But I'm glad I did it. And street evangelism was just something I've never done before. We went on in partners and had a youth culture survey to get people to fill out. There were a couple questions in it to start conversations about God. The hardest thing was actually walking up to someone and starting to talk to them. But I think we genuinely got some people to think about God more carefully and seriously. And maybe to ask more questions.

Okay, now a funny story. Sunday night, the first Sunday, a bunch of us went out for supper for one girl's birthday. On the way home, we dropped off a couple people at their billets. But it as dark and we couldn't find the next one. So we're driving around in the country (four girls in a van) in the dark, passed the house, turned around...passed it again. Then we tried turning around on this random side road. Not a good plan. Our wheels got stuck in a ditch and we absolutely could not get that van out. After probably 15 minutes of trying to get out and failing miserably, we called the pastor of the church we were helping out (also my billet) to come tow us out. He laughed. 45 minutes later, we're out of the ditch. It was hilarious and quite a good story to tell later.

Anyway, that's all for now. I've just left for two week break. Might get to a computer again. We'll see. Heading to the South Island!! :D