Tuesday, July 18, 2017

  Tuesday, July 18, 2017

DC Mission Trip-Day 3

Bobby Peterson

As I write about yesterday,  I believe it is important to give some context of how amazing these high school students are.  I have been so impressed by their generosity, intentionality, friendliness and hunger to know more of our Heavenly Father.  They bring an excitement to our mission with Kids Konnection,  but also bring life to everywhere they go.  It's incredible to see by day 3 that we are bonding and encountering Jesus together on a daily basis.  It honestly reminds me of Jesus and his disciples.  There was something so authentic and incredible about their relationships with each other that were filled with honor and life.  Our kids are maintaining that with each other.  I am excited we still have a couple of days left together but incredibly excited to see these relationships expand beyond D.C.

    Onto Yesterday.  Yesterday we were feeling the consequences of running our team time so late, mental and physical fatigue. Everyone had a tired look on their face as we boarded our bus to go to the national spy museum.  But as we got off the bus and entered the spy museum everything changed.  There was a certain burst of energy that came forth from our students.  They were pumped to do the spy museum and it showed as we came up with our own secret spy names.  This museum is AWESOME.  Their activities, exercises, games, and overall the design of the museum was fantastic.  You could learn about Revolutionary War spies, to World War spies, all the way to current spies.  It was definitely a fan favorite from our group.
    After the museum we headed off to lunch at buffalo wild wings for some lunch.  Needless to say that was also a fan favorite within our group.  These lunches offer an awesome time of great community with our students.  They bring certain qualities out of each other that resemble what Jesus did with the many people he had met with in the new testament.  Jesus always called the Gold out of people.  He always spoke life and never death with his words and our guys are grasping these truths day in and day out.
    After lunch we headed out to Kids Konnection.  It was another amazing day with these incredibly loving kids.  These kids are filled with joy despite their circumstances.  They run and laugh and play with so much excitement that it's tough to leave them everyday.  Yesterday the kids of Anacostia had an action packed day.  Hamp Sisson led an awesome game of Sharks and Minnows that had all of our students and the kids involved.  It was incredible to see the kids connecting with our students.  After the games we sat down and were entertained with music and skits that engaged the kids on every level.  From peel the banana, to bushy tail, to skits about Jesus' miracles, the kids had a blast!  Our theme verse of yesterday was John 10:11 "I am the good Shepherd, the good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep."  The kids then did a craft creating sheep with cotton balls and crazy google eyes.  We loved having those kids memorizing those verses and realizing how great our God is!
    After Kids Konnection we came back to Washington Seminar Center and cleaned up before heading to a quick dinner, and then to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.  The memorials were breathtaking for me and our students.  I have never been to D.C. but being a history major I had all kinds of emotions when seeing these incredible monuments and memorials.  Seeing the Vietnam memorial and the 55,000 names of deaths from our military on this monument was breathtaking for our leaders and our students.
  After our tour of the monuments Mac Thomson shared his testimony with our group during team time.  Our guys felt so encouraged by Mac that we encouraged Mac for about 20 minutes.  Mac's testimony consisted of talking about the struggles of having friends who are christians and aren't christians.  He expressed the love he had for both of them and that sharing his faith with both of groups of guys is something he is looking to do.  Mac did an incredible job sharing and we are excited for more testimonies for the week.  God is doing some amazing things within our group and we are excited for more !

We will update again tomorrow!

Blessings,
  Bobby Peterson