Stephen's Testimony on Appalachia 2012
The mission’s trip to Appalachia was amazing. This has been my fifth year going and I have to say that this is the best year yet. The trip up the mountain was just as crazy as ever, with us needing to get there early and do one last run-through of everything before we started. We had the Thompson group join us who helped Bartow last year.
This was our first year not working with Bartow, and most of us hadn’t worked with Thompson before, so it was kind of questionable whether or not our two groups would be able to mesh well. But once the VBS actually started, everything, all our hard work and preparation, showed as we were able to engage the kids and get them asking questions and keep them entertained. Both groups were able to work together to make sure the kids had the best possible time and learned about God’s word.
We started off the week a little rough but by the middle of the week we changed up the way we were doing things and the kids almost instantly opened up. It was so great to see the kids comfortable enough with us to ask questions, especially during the bible story. Because of how we did the bible story this year, as a skit instead of sitting them all down and telling them what happened, they were able to laugh and have fun with it, and get so much more into the story. I think this is the first year that we have had kids saying that the bible story was their favorite time of the day, and that in itself is amazing.
But on the fourth day the best thing happened. During the bible story the kids started asking deep questions, like how are God and Jesus the same person? Questions that many people, including myself, have trouble wrapping our heads around because our finite minds cannot fully understand the infinite God. We were able to actually able to minister to them and teach them about God, something that had never happened before. We were so happy when several of the kids in the group said they wanted to really know Jesus. It was such a touching moment. Also one of the older group, who we had somewhat gotten to the year before, accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He even wrote a touching letter to the whole group telling us how much we meant to him. I hated to leave because we connected with the kids so much more this year, and even on our fun day due to our success, we had some of the high school youth come with us to the waterfall, which we go to every year.
Once we were done with the VBS we would go and help one of the local pastors who works with foster kids repair and repaint his porch that really needed it. We would have to scrape off the layers of paint that was on it then paint over what we had just scraped off. It was hard work but the man was certainly happy that we were helping his out as he was injured to a degree that he had trouble operating outside of a wheelchair. It was great to help someone that really needed it, this man had for years helped us out and we were thankfully able to repay him.
Our success this year though goes to God, as he answered our prayers. Every night we had a meeting where everyone got together and we sang praises and listened to a sermon by the most engaging speaker I have heard at Appalachia. He spoke on how Jesus is Lord of all creation, and how much he loves us. Unfortunately though we forget this and we must go into his word as often as possible to remember everything that he has done for us. Also he spoke on how we shouldn’t be afraid to speak his word and pray with those that need it, as we should never be ashamed of our faith.
Afterwards we would split up into groups and pray, and our prayers were certainly answered. This year we prayed much more than we had before, and God certainly blessed us by giving us what we needed. An excellent quote the speaker used was by Martin Luther, leader of the reformation. “Spiritual progress means to always begin again…to embrace the love and kindness of God…and a daily exercise of our faith therein; entertaining no doubt of God’s love and kindness.” His love and kindness was shown to us through his granting of our prayers in that the kids would listen and believe.
~ All praise to him who takes away our sins
Stephen Edwards
