Outreach to the Community

Over the last three weeks, I've found a certain new found enjoyment of reading the word first thing in the morning, and reading it as the last thing I do before I go to sleep. I've always enjoyed writing, but I've never been committed to try to keep a journal or diary. However I'm thinking that since I'm already up to I Kings after 3 weeks of reading starting from Leviticus, that a journal would be very beneficial to record my thoughts and meditations. I feel confident that I can do it consequently because I've already started that using this blog. The last two weeks I've been really concentrating on God, and through that I've found that without trying too hard my spiritual discipline has increased dramatically. The temptation of greed, lust, pride and the like are still there, but focusing on God makes them so much easier to overcome. Anyways this segment is entitled "Outreach to the Community". In the last week, I've been super motivated and super focused on mediating on God and his word, and getting myself more equipped spiritually. My mom and I have narrowed down about 3 colleges that I want to talk to involving Christian Services programs. Because thats where I'm being called to, I want to start injecting myself more into doing more outreach ministries while I'm still here in Detroit. Last week I returned to REAL church, a church I had been going to for a good amount of time during the winter and spring. I wanted to get involved a lot with them again. Mostly everyone recognized me and I was excited to be accepted and to start partnering with them. Last night, I went with them to do their weekly bread outreach. We meet at Avalon Bakery in midtown Detroit at 6 pm on Wednesday nights. Its fairly new so I'm happy I'm helping with it. Anyways the bread is donated to us by the bakery and we select teams to go to different neighborhoods and distribute it. It was a great way to get to know people and tell them what we are all about. Today I'm being invited by one of the guys from Real Church to have dinner with him and hang out, so I'm excited about that. Also I spent about an hour talking to the pastor last night, and we talked about spiritual training a little, basically my whole focus for the rest of the time I'm here. So I'm hoping that I can pick his brain over the next months and hopefully he'll give me some good advice and discipleship.

Over the last month, Josh and I have been getting a long great. Josh is a guy from Jimmy John's that I work with. He was going through a pretty rough period, with trying to get custody of his children and being able to see them and still trying to support himself. Anyways ever since I told him that I was praying for him he has said his life has been really good. So I've been pretty bold with him explaining my faith to him over the last several weeks. He's interested, and wants to be believe in a higher power but just needs more proof. I'm really encouraged that he is always willing to listen to me when I bring up my faith or Jesus or God. Yesterday I really said I was excited to see a Tigers baseball game with him, and we got talking about spiritual things again. I listened to his concerns and critics of Christianity. I know I am not a powerful speaker of apologetics, so I tried to give my points of view without trying to destroy every argument he made because I know God can defend himself. Anyways if he needs more proof then I'm going to pray that God reveals himself more to Josh. Jesus didn't belittle Thomas when he didn't believe his fellow disciples, but instead meet Thomas where he was. Also seeing how I've been dealing with my whole girlfriend situation, Josh has been encouraged to see that I'm making it through because of my faith in God. Anyways breakthrough occured last week. I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers and asked if he would be willing to read the Bible with me. He actually said that would be something he would want to do, because he's been trying to read the bible lately but its just hard for him to get into it and understand. Then he mentioned he was reading the New King James version and I think I understand. Its hard for anyone to understand the dialectic used then.

On Saturday night, our block had a block party. There was music playing all night, people grilling food and basically everyone just outside having a good time. Mike, Luke, Kat(Luke's fiance) and I went out to have a good time with them. A few of them knew Mike's name, but they all recognized us as the white guys. Anyways they welcomed us immediately and got us food from the grill and we just hung out for over an hour talking or playing football. At one point during the night, there were 3 little sisters, probably from ages 3-5, playing next to me. I started talking to them and before I knew it they were all attached to me. So I played with them for about an hour straight and I couldn't shake them, but it was a lot of fun.

Back in the fall and winter, Jon and I used to go to the Metropolitan United Methodist Church on Tuesday nights where CDC hosted a small little evening camp for kids from first to sixth grade. The kids were picked up in the CDC school bus and brought to the church. Then a local church on rotation would provide all the kids with a meal. Afterwards they would split up into groups according to their ages and then would go to 3 different classes. There was a bible study class, a study class, and an arts and crafts class. Jon and I were always involved in the study class, where the students would come and we would either help them read, do math, or help them with any real life homework they had. Each class was 30 minutes long. During the spring I stopped going consistently and now I haven't gone for a few months. At first it was because sometimes I worked or I had other obligations but now my schedule isn't hindering me from going anymore. So I'm going to reinsert myself and start going back regularly to help out. Those kids can be amazing sometimes, and other times a handful. Hopefully I can get more involved with CDC too as I'm trying to decrease the number of times I work late hours at Jimmy Johns.

Anyways pray that I'll continue to be bold in my exploits with outreach ministries and that God's hand would be working in guiding me to get spiritual training through experience, through school and through Church.