Days 42-59

Community
2 events that we did as a community were canoeing and a $5 prom. They were both extremely fun but also tiring as well. When we first went out on the bay side of Assateague to canoe, it turned into a giant battle of flipping canoes, throwing mud, and splashing water. It was such an awesome bonding experience. Afterwards we cooked burgers and hot dogs. You just can't go wrong with planning events at Assateague.
This last Saturday was the $5 prom. After getting home from work I went to the local church thrift store. It was perfect.. There were soo many weird outfits and clothes, and they were all so cheap. I ended up finding an outfit completely from girl's clothing. I'll probably post some pictures of it later on.


Prayer
I must say, our ministry teams do a great job of being creative and bringing new, exciting ways to serve God. Prayer team came up with a couple cool ideas the last few weeks. We decided to do a 24 hour prayer/fast from Saturday to Sunday. Each person was given a country in which they were to pray for specific missionaries doing ministry in that country. I decided to do the Philippine Islands where the Pedan family is serving. I chose the Pedans, because they reminded me a lot of my own family... The younger, missionary version of my family. My prayer time was from 1pm-2pm. We had a guide to help us pray for specific topics. I tried to stick to it as close as possible, but I realized that I was praying a lot longer than I had thought. Honestly, I thought an hour of prayer for something that was only just recently placed on my heart would be difficult, but it wasn't. I found it pretty cool that when one person finished praying the next person would join in prayer and they would be prayed for. Also, we were fasting for the entire length of the prayer. Callie thought that it would be a great idea to go food shopping the last few hours before breaking the fast, so a few of us went to Food Lion during that time. I don't think we could have done anything worse, to be honest. As I walked through the frozen food aisles, I saw "Hungry Man" food brand. Bad Day was also playing on the radio, and every single item of food looked more delicious than it ever has. It was my first time fasting so it was a pretty cool experience. Pretty much every time I felt the pain and weakness of hunger, I'd just reflect on Christ and how much more he suffered for me. Then my hunger didn't feel so bad.


Outreach
We had been practicing a set of dances for 3 weeks and were finally going to perform them on the beach. The first one was a workout dance by Beyonce called "Move Your Body". It was pretty cool, because the dance moves pretty much were named in the lyrics. Yet, I still found ways to mess up here and there during our performance. Our second dance was "Light Will Shine" by Hillsong United. I had never heard the song before the dance but I really like it. The dance includes a lot of cool references to being a light unto the world, and at one point we form a cross. Maybe if I have free time ill post the videos. There were small crowds that came to watch, but we also had a few Soulariums set up around us and those are usually pretty effective. Our last act consisted of holding up cards to the song "Grace Like Rain". I give a lot of credit to Marcus for pulling it together in the last minute. It was necessary in order for our outreach to transition to the gospel better. On top of that, all of the dancers were wearing the prayer shirts we made with 2 Timothy 1:6 written on it. All good ways of inspiring conversation. After we finished dancing, I went over to talk to a guy checking out the Soularium. Long story short, he is a journalist/professional photographer on a break at OCMD. He is a Christian and as I was talking to him, we were able to relate on several interesting topics. One was about how as Christians, sometimes we forget that we have to listen intently to the people we're sharing with, otherwise how do we expect them to listen to us when we present the gospel.


We decided to have a tie-dye/cookout outreach at our house. It was a pretty cool idea, but I felt like it was executed very oddly. At times I just didn't know what to do. At one point, Jesse and I decided to cross the street and ask random people if they were interested in free food and tie-dye. Of course most people were not. Finally, this older guy comes over, and kind of stops and stares at our house. We asked him if he was interested and he kind of said sure. He was more interested in our purpose, so we explained to him why we were doing this. He (Glenn) told us that he grew up in the church, had dreams of becoming a minister, and then turned from God, and became an open agnostic. For some reason every time me and Jesse team up for evangelizing, awesome things happen. We were able to answer all of this guy's questions and provide him insight into some stuff that he was skeptical about. I decided to give him a copy of "The Case For Christ". I figured that since he was a retired lawyer, that this book would be perfect for him. He was very kind and thankful, and I felt that the Holy Spirit had really been speaking through us. It was an awesome feeling.