Today and Tomorrow

Whew! The week is almost over. Today we worked on combining what we learned in our advanced Bible lesson class with what we learned in our worldview class to create applications in our Bible lessons that will really, well, apply to the children with which we'll be working. Since Tamara could easily inform me of the special challenges faced by inner-city children in Boston, we had a good time talking through and writing the different applications. As I was working on this, I realized how little I know about working with inner-city children. Sure, many of my fellow students will be having extreme culture shock as they travel to different countries - but working in the inner city will be plenty of culture shock for me! Thankfully, I'm not as thoroughly freaked out as I was last week (praise the Lord!), and I'm eager to see how God will both grow me and use me in this new environment. (I'm also looking forward to the classes next week which will further equip me for urban ministry.)

Highlights of the day include eating a massive salad, weeping and gnashing my teeth over Lazarus' death (I was Martha), evangelizing a cedar tree, discovering how much it would cost to feed 15,000 people with a meal from Mc Donalds (I'm trying to bring the feeding of the 5,000 - or ~15,000 if you count women and children - down to terms to which children can relate, hehe!), and listening to an excellent message on personal relationships from the president at our praise and worship time tonight. I also got to talk to my mom for more than 20 minutes this afternoon, which helped me tremendously, AND Sarah gave me an impromptu hug which totally made my evening.

Please pray for all of us as we have our Bible lesson practicums tomorrow. We are also leaving tomorrow afternoon for Open Air ministry to children in St. Louis. Please pray for safety, a good response from the children and that I'll get put in a team with either a tall guy, or a tough girl (I'm only partially joking there ;-)). This is the first time that I have ever done open air and I'm both terribly excited and extremely terrified (the latter statement is a bit of an exaggeration, but I thought it would be fun to see if I could think of two words that "flipped" the first letters in the words of my first statement...just ignore me). Hopefully, I'll have all sorts of stories showing how God worked through us!