This past week I was able to be part of an outreach called Mission Colorado for our youth at the Springs Church here in Colorado Springs. There were thirteen or so teens on the trip and it was absolutely awesome.
For the first three days, we were privileged to put on a sports camp in the inner city for kids in the neighborhood around Hillside Community Center. We were able to teach them sports, perform skits, do crafts, share the gospel, and just love on these kids. It was such a big deal to the kids that we cared about them and that we truly loved them even though we barely knew them. Kids should never have to go through what these kids have and it was awesome to just bless them in any way we could.
Levi, Briel, Melissa, and I were on the VBS Skit team which was super fun. I got to play Bridgett, the tall and the hungry (which describes me perfectly for all who were wondering).
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| Our two mascots, Zipper and Kevin, and Sue the Plutonian |
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| Explaining the 6 days of creation in one of our VBS Skits |
During the afternoons, we were determined to do street evangelism or jut hand out flyers for Cross & the Switchblade or just more flyers for the sports camp. However, God had different plans in mind. It started to rain. It basically rained every day in the afternoon. A lot of us were discouraged since we really wanted to do our dramas but even while the team was dancing outside Chipotle we were able to share the love of Jesus by dancing and buying a guy a burrito.
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| It rained while we were wanting to do street evangelism in Downtown Colorado Springs. |
On the last day of the sports camp, after we had cleaned up everything we went to Manitou and instead of doing dramas like we had wanted we got to serve in a different way. The city had been flooded and several of the shop owners had lost almost everything. So we got to get in there and clean up. We ended up shoveling and sweeping and pushing mud out of the basement of a store called YoYo Loco. All the buildings on the street had people cleaning out the wreckage.
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| My job was emptying the buckets filled with mud into the river behind the shop. |
Our state has gone through so much within the last years from the fires to the shooting to the flooding. God had arranged for us to go do demolition in Southern Colorado Springs in a doctor's office which will be made into a Mexican restaurant in the years to come. We ripped out carpet and more carpet and lots of carpet. The next day we got to take out a wall. Mrs. Roberts [Levi's Mom] was a huge blessing! She took care of us with whatever we needed and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. She worked harder than all of us.
On Thursday was our demolition day. We got to go to a former doctor's office and basically take it apart. The first day we ripped out carpet and more carpet and cleaned up trash and ripped out carpet. Our hands were so sore afterwords but it was definitely worth it. The next day we got to tear down a wall which was everyone's favorite part. It was hard to take turns. We worked with a young man named Orlando who ended up coming to the show on Saturday. I think he was the doctor's son or something like that. The doctor who owned the place and wanted to make it a restaurant was apparently almost in tears because of the amount of work we got done.
During the week, we passed out flyers for The Cross & The Switchblade which was a production about the radical salvation of the ex-gang leader Nicky Cruz and the faith of David Wilkerson. This show was on Broadway and we ended up flying 80 something actors from New York to Colorado. I ended up watching the show all three times it played here. Several people were saved and God was waiting for every single one of them. This play and the actors are truly blessed and covered in the blood of Jesus. It was so awesome to to get to know them as they hung out at our church. It was really hard for me not to assume that the actors were the same people as their characters. I was able to pull a few strings and get some pictures with these guys. They were so encouraging and they make me want to live in New York.
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| Moses Ruperto, who played Nicky Cruz, and I. We were introduced three times so we just had to get a picture. |
Mission Colorado was such a blast and there's so much I could say about it and there are so many stories to tell but it's really hard to capture all that God did. We probably will never the full extent of how much we served until we reach eternity. We were blessed to be able to bless the people in our own city and to share the love of God which really is all that matters.
