Answers to Prayers
Monday night I prayed that God would show me and the girls connections between weeding gardens and serving Him and I also requested to meet new people. Tuesday as I/we spoke to the women at the garden Dorothy made a wonderful statement to us. She needs two knee replacements and can no longer work the garden. She told us what a blessing it was to have us there to pull weeds and help. She said that many times the weeds and work become too much and discourage growth and the desire to continue. As we did the weeding it allowed them to focus on growth and hope. I saw the weeds as a variety of things in our lives that discourage us or keep us from growing to our potential. At times when we were weeding we did not know what was a weed or what was a wanted plant. This showed me that we need fellowship with Christians to help us point out the weeds in our life that keep us from growing to our potential in Christ.
______________________
There have been moments in my week when I have had these same questions: Why are they weeding? What difference is this really making. Praise God for giving our girls the answer!
Riddle: What do you call two adults and two really fun girls, mixed with lots of laughs, meeting new people, getting lost, and very yummy food? A trip to the ER, that's what you call it. After I made my way to work with Tammy's group yesterday, I got a call from Kristy. She told me that Alyssa may have broken her thumb playing extreme dodgeball (she fell on it). I told her to put some ice on it to see if it responded. It didn't get any better, so I met them at the YMCA so we could get showered, then after a brief stop back at the church, I took Alyssa to the ER at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Kelsey went along for the ride, and Nikki - being the site director - came too. I never thought a trip to the ER could be that much fun. We were there for a few hours, and we laughed most of the time. Alyssa too, even though her pain level was a 9 on a scale from 1 to 10 (but you never would have known it by looking at her or talking to her).
It all started as we were checking in. Mario was the guy at the check-in desk. He asked the standard check-in questions, then he asked to take a look at her thumb. She held up her hand, which looked far from normal. Mario's response: "Whoa! Oh, my! We're going to take you back right now." with a clear sense of urgency on his face. We cracked up at how bad he freaked out at the sight of her thumb. I told him that he'd never make it as a doctor with those kinds of reactions. He informed us that he had, in fact, just applied to medical school. I told him that 'how to respond to injuries' would be covered in one of his classes, for sure. We saw a few more people before being taken to an examining room. We had a sign that hung outside our door that said "Quiet Zone." We were anything but quiet! We laughed and laughed very loudly. I wished I had had my notebook with me so I could write down everything that was said and done for posterity's sake.
One of the highlights was when I offered Kelsey a nickel to go ask someone what time the ER closed. We could hear when she asked the first person. We were all gathered at the door peeking around the corner. We couldn't see her, but we heard as she tried to ask, but she absolutely busted up midway through her sentence. We lost it! I haven't laughed that hard in a while. She did it again, this time asking one of her doctor's down the hall. When the doctor came back and found out that we had put her up to it, she said, "When she asked, I told her, 'Never,' but I was wondering, because she seemed like such a smart girl."
Alyssa's had two doctors. The first doctor met with her, then later another doctor came to show her the X-ray. As she looked at it with us, she didn't see a break or dislocation, so she took Alyssa's hand and really started to work on her thumb hard. Alyssa was in a lot of pain. Then we went back to the room and waited. Doctor #1 came back and said, "You have a dislocation. The other doctor, the pregnant one, wanted me to tell you that she's really sorry." Well, yeah! We got a laugh out of that, too. Apparently, they were all looking at the wrong joint. Hmmmm...
At one point, Doctor #2, the pregnant one, came back and was working on Alyssa's thumb again, this time trying to put it back in place. I said to her, "So I hear you're pregnant." She didn't respond right away. Then she realized that I was talking to her, and she said, "Oh, I thought you were talking to her [Alyssa]." I said, "NOOO!!!" She mentioned that if that were the case that I must not be that great of a youth pastor.
As we waited to be checked out, the door suddenly opened and a doctor rushed in and said, "Sorry. I have an urgent need for a SpongeBob video." Again, more laughs.
After all of the frivolity, I decided to take the girls out to a nice dinner, since we missed our dinner and evening activity. We ate at Max & Erma's and then, after a short visit to the pharmacy after a long drive to find it, we headed back to the church just in time for bed. I never thought that my personal 'fun' highlight of a mission trip would be a visit to the hospital, but it sure was. At least so far. Please be praying for Alyssa as she is still in quite a bit of pain today.
I didn't have much interaction with the work teams or leaders as a result of the aforementioned adventure. I did get to hang out with Tammy's group for a little while, though. They moved to a new site, Over the Rhine Community Housing. This is a group that provides low-income individuals with affordable, quality housing. They own 95 buildings with 220 units total. The girls were going to work outside, but since it was raining, they were taken to a warehouse/garage to clean and organize. When I got there, it seemed like they didn't have very much direction, as they couldn't really tell me what to do to help. I didn't like that. But none of them seemed bothered by it. They cleaned and moved stuff around with joy. They are much better at serving with a sense of joy than I am.
Another change has been with Lexi and Julia. Yesterday they stayed at the church to help paint. While that and the weeding has been OK, Tanda has sensed that maybe they would like some more interaction with some of the other students. I though at the beginning of the week that just having two students in the one group wasn't the best set-up, but we went with it. But today, with Alyssa staying back and one other student from another church going to a different site, we had the freedom to send Lexi and Julia out to City Cure to play with kids with Kristy's group. They seemed pretty excited about it.
For last night's evening activity, our group visited Tabernacle Baptist Church, then came back for club and church group time. I'm not sure what happened, if God was working on some students or if there was something else going on or what, but there were a few of our students crying. When they were approached and asked what was wrong, they didn't say anything. So please be praying for our students with this situation in mind. I don't know how to ask you to pray, because none of us adult leaders know really what is going on, but God does. So lift them up. I will keep their names confidential to protect them, in case they don't want it known that they were crying in front of everyone.
I'm going to go now to see how Tanda is doing back at the church (she stayed back to paint) and then will eat lunch and head out to City Cure to play with kids again. Darn. :-) We look forward to seeing you all soon. Don't forget to check out the pics...
No comments:
Post a Comment