Thursday, July 13, 2000

Kids Club 2000 -- second week

Dear Earnest Pray-ers,

Thank you for your intercession for the two weeks of Neighborhood Kids Club #14.  We witnessed the power of God moving among us.  Check out the website to see photos of all that happened.  Here are some highlights:

UNEXPECTED BREAKTHROUGHS

Kids Club is a kind of glue for the rest of the ministry year.  Somehow the joy-filled, wild, eventful days and loving, grace-based times together, create community that allows for relationships to develop stronger the rest of the year.  Upon this platform of earning kids trust, truth starts to have breakthrough opportunities.  It may take many years, and lots more time together, but eventually God wins the right to be heard. 

Vince comes from gangs, drugs and really difficult living situations.  He is the youngest of all adult siblings, and has seen the worst life can throw at a ghetto child.    People go to prison in his family, move alot, and live in neighborhoods that are the most dangerous in Phoenix.   He is sixteen.  I can only guess about how long we have known him. Perhaps, five or six years.  Our early memories are of a delightful but troubled kid.  He was hard to reach and not very communicative.   As time has gone on, there were years we thought we would lose him.  He had alot of reasons to stop coming to church.  Instead, he hung in there, being gone a little for jobs or his recent commitment to Junior Olympic boxing.  We were thrilled that instead of these, this summer, he chose to be available all day every day as part of the day crew.  He would be a leader in the second grade.  He was faithful and became a favorite with his kids.

Vince attended the final debrief, the last banquet night where the work crew (all 65) share about their Kids Club experience.  Though he hadn’t been with the group at night, when these young people share and bond, still he opened up.  He was second to last, hours after the others had given spiritual reports of life changes.  The usually unchatty youth, smiling and friendly, talked about his second graders and his lack of understanding of all this talk of foot-washing (more about that later).  His final statement was:

“You all seem to know God as if He was a friend or something. You treat your relationship with Him as if it was a personal thing.”  He paused.  “I want that”!   That was how Vince ended his sharing.  One older work crew boss led him to the Lord later that night.  We cried watching his sweet, tender heart, finally understanding what we have been sharing with him for years.  Vince represents the hundreds that will come behind him.  Kids who need someone to pursue them until they “get-it” and fall into the arms of a waiting God.

65 WORK CREW AND FOOT WASHING

We had a young work crew this year, young in the Lord and in age.  These kids come from every ethnicity and income strata.  They commit to living together and figuring out how to build community while doing the hardest work they have ever done.  Early on in the first week tempers flared, and some relationships suffered.  The tests were real.  Being “Jesus with skin on” was harder with each other than with the kids in Kids Club.

On the third night of the second week, a twice postponed worship service was begun.  The kids grumbled,  “Not tonight”, they echoed.  Their leaders began anyway, and the grumbles led to singing, and eventually willing hearts.  To emphasize the need to place each other above themselves, the symbolic act of washing each other’s feet followed.  The very act of humbling oneself to touch and minister this way, led many to reconcilliations and receiving acts of love.  Huge transformation and healing resulted.  Spontaneous worship spilled out of the group as the “unwanted” time together went on past midnight.

Here is a devotional from their Work Crew journal:

“Is Jesus real?  I mean really real?  Did a group of men just sort of get together and decide to pull off the biggest con trick of all time?  And did they write down some stories - quite alike, but too much alike?  And are they sitting on some fat cloud somewhere laughing themselves sick?

I could believe that.  But what would I do with all those people who talk to me in gentleness, those with Christ twinking in their eyes?  If He didn’t exist, how’d He get inside so many people?  Spend a day looking for Christ living in others.  He’s in the most unlikely people and places.  If Jesus isn’t real, then you’re going to have to exterminate thousands who live in Him.

I love it when people argue that there is no love, and then stand stupid before an act of love.  I love it when people argue that there is no mercy, and then whistle and glance the other way when an act of mercy looms in front of them.  I love it when people say there is no Christ, and frown and mumble at the life that lives in Jesus, who is stalking the world.” 

Lois A. Cheney

ON RUNNING THE RACE

We often talk about Kids Club using the metaphor of a marathon race.  As we prepare and begin the first few days, we recall why that metaphor works for us.  It is going to be a wild exhausting ride.  Two of our leaders, in particular, were personally very vulnerable going into these two weeks.  They wanted so much to run a good race, to finish and not have to quit.

Apart from the miraculous strengthening of the Lord, it would be humanly impossible for them to endure and to succeed.  And yet ... succeed they did!  Valiantly!  I wish you could have seen their faces as they ended with strength, doing the hard work of ministry in and through their weaknesses.

July 7 “My Utmost for His Highest” reads: 

“If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult.  The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome.  Do we so appreciate the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest?”

I received a beautiful thank you gift from one of the sixth graders in my Kids Club class.  Anna has grown up in Kids Club,  probably been here since she was three.  Inside a marvelously designed card was this poem:

God give us grit,
God give us grace
To not drop out until
We finish the race.

We are determined
To never resign
Until we’ve crossed
The finish line.

You may stop and rest awhile
But you must keep the track,
You may slow down at times
But you must not turn back.

Everyone grows discouraged—
Everyone deals with doubt,
But that does not give you
An excuse to drop out.

Anyone can quit the race—
It takes no courage to resign
But it takes everything you have
To cross the finish line.

“Thanks for keeping me on track, Kit.  I am staying on the track!”

Love, Anna

FOLLOWING UP

*The thirteen-year old runaway, who was found, is having the time of her life with one of our ministry families in Colorado. Pray for a permanent home for her.

*A foundation has come forward, hoping to underwrite a large part of the finances for Kids Club.  What a great answer to prayer.

*Quite a few kids told stories of abuse, violence and pain this Kids Club.  Each needs attention and follow-up.  Pray for the Lord’s intervention.  Pray for adequate counseling for those who are ready.

*Greet anyone who attends New Beginnings Community Church thanking them for opening their arms with love to us. 

KIDS CLUB QUOTES

Toward the end of Lake Day, with almost 500 of us playing, eating, boating, swimming, floating, loving each other ... an onlooker stopped one of our leaders.  Looking at our multi-ethnic, colorful group, he asked,  “Is that a family reunion?”

Debbi is a key member of our N.M. team.  She loves to recruit her friends to help do the many tasks of the ministry, especially those that need special talents and gifts, which Kids Club tends to.  She brings many, and loves to especially excite the ones who don’t “get” Christianity yet.  One friend, an artist and kid enthusiast, taught pottery using a potter’s wheel.  Her take home from Kids Club was profound.  “First”, she remarked, “the Church SHOULD  be doing what you are doing.  And if I could be convinced that this was what Christianity was all about, I might become one of those”.

After the Lake Day baptisms, Justine Garcia, a Kids Club lifer, remarked, ahead of a slew of others.  “Next year, I’m going to be baptized, and I’m first!”

Wayne was on a field trip.  It was time for a drink and bathroom break with the smaller children.  A little five year old was crying next to the drinking fountain.  The cold water hurt his teeth.  Wayne lifted up the child to see the problem, two terribly infected, decayed teeth.  “Let me hold you awhile, while the pain calms down”, Wayne said.  “If I could know your name we could get you some help”.  The child understood and soon calmed down, letting Wayne love him. “Do you know my name”?  Wayne asked.  The little guy nodded yes and said,  “Dad”.

God Bless you for standing in the gap in prayer for us.  As you can see, the prayers of a righteous man and woman avail much. 

We love you deeply for caring.

Kit

DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS