Hello everybody!
We had a busy day in Detroit today. We started our morning with Lori’s delicious breakfast that consisted of eggs, muffins, bagels, and my favorite, cereal. We then had our devotional time to spend some time with God. After that some groups went prayer walking and some groups did service of evangelism. My group went prayer walking and not even 5 minutes into the walk we met a wonderful old lady named Sheri. She had a relationship with Jesus and told us she needed prayer because she was going through a hard time with housing and we were even able to answer some her previous prayers. After lunch we went back to the building and had lunch. After lunch we did chores and prepped for our first day of Big A. Once we were prepped we had free time so I played basketball and hung out. Then before I knew it we were at Big A which was very very exciting. It was so awesome to see all the kids and even have kids come up to me to say hi and tell me they remembered me from last year. Big A was fun and exhausting all at the same time. When we got back from Big A Lorie had prepped a delicious chicken and mashed potatoes dinner for us and I ate plenty. After dinner we had worship and shared our stories of the day. Right now as I am writing this there is also a basketball game going on, so that is what pretty much everyone else is doing right now, or they are watching and cheering loud. But that’s it for now.
Jaxon
Hello and greetings everyone!
We had a very eventful day today as we started our first day of full ministry. This morning started with quite a late wake up call giving me 5 minutes to prepare myself for breakfast. I did give my complete effort to get out in time, but I did still end up being just a little bit late to our morning prayer before breakfast. Breakfast, as always, was absolutely amazing with it being prepared by our wonderful chef Lori. After breakfast finished, it was devotional time. Our devos this year are in the book of Phillipians, which is a book I haven’t read too much from, but it is one that I actually referenced in my blog post last year with the verse Philippians 4:13. Now, this year one thing I set out to do was to be fully intentional in my devo time with the Lord. The previous two years I haven’t been completely focused on the Lord while in my devo time, so this year, I wanted to be completely intentional with Him so I could get the most I could out of it with this being my last time in Detroit for the foreseeable future. (We’ll see where the Lord takes me in my walk after high school :)). Our conversations after we finished our alone devotional time were very fruitful, and during our devo we focused on the verse Romans 8:28 (And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose), and how it relates to Paul’s experience in prison. This was especially meaningful for me as that is one of my most favorite verses, and one that I try to remember on a daily basis, especially when something might not go the way I want it to or something bad happens.
After we finished with our devos, we transitioned to our morning ministry. My group ⸺consisting of Barbie, Ella, Caleb, and Micah⸺ had prayer walking the community around the building that we’re staying at for our first day. We walked around and prayed for a wide variety of things such as run down buildings that are in desperate need of repair, or the Detroit public school system and how underfunded and undereducated it is, or even just for the roads and sidewalks and other basic infrastructure. Now prayer walking used to be something I personally didn’t like too much as I’m a relatively introverted person and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing while praying for someone. Over the years I’ve been here however (and also much thanks to Amanda’s help), I realized that even if I say something wrong in a prayer, that it ultimately doesn’t matter because the Holy Spirit knows what’s on my heart and on my mind and will still bless the person or place or community that I’m praying for. While prayer walking, we did end up running into an organization that helped people who just got out of prison with adapting to the new and changed world that they were entering into. They weren’t completely faith based, but they did still have a heavier emphasis on Christ. For me, to see an organization like that help teach people who are oftentimes not remembered about how to use a phone or debit card or computer, it really opened my eyes to just how much good can be done in the world, and that there are communities that exist that sometimes I completely forget about. It’s an organization that will be in my prayers for plenty of time to come, especially after we found out that they’re looking for a new building after their old building got the roof ripped off of their gymnasium.
Once we got done prayer walking, we headed back to the building and had another delicious meal from Lori. After we ate, we had our final prep for Big A (the VBS we put on in Detroit), I took a tiny nap, and we were all ready to go for our first day of Big A. This year, instead of helping with planning games before we left, I’m part of the skit group and all the planning that comes with that. Now, with it being a circus theme, Kris and I both get the special role of ring leader and we narrate the story and keep everything going along. After the skit, we moved to our small group time. I was in the group of people that would be taking 11-14 year olds, and I was quite happy that I could go with this age group this year as last year I got swapped to the 7-10 year olds to accommodate Natalie switching from there to the 15 and up group. I had my group of 4, and the rest of Big A went alright, the discussion was ok, most of them weren’t too engaged in the game, and they all sat down and made the craft that we had. However, there were two big God moments that stepped out to me. The first is that when I pulled out my bible and asked who wanted to find the scripture and read it (they couldn’t remember what Jesus said to fish for instead of fish, so I decided to have them look in scripture for it), pretty much all of them all at once either reached for it or begged to be able to. It was so cool just to see them all want to read God’s word, no matter what their reason for it was. The second cool God moment I had to do with the small group discussion that we had. In our small group, no one was really paying too much attention to the story, and I did have to end up explaining a decent amount of it, but I made sure at the end to explain to them what being a fisher of men meant. I kinda assumed that nothing much would come from it and that it would be somewhat of a lost cause, but God proved otherwise. Later, during the craft, one of the Detroit Love leaders came over to talk to two of the students. She asked the first one what the story meant, and the kid didn’t have too much of a clue, but she turned to the second one, one of the ones that was in my group, and he just immediately rattled off pretty much exactly what it meant to be a fisher of men. In that moment, I was just reminded that God can turn any situation into a positive situation and that even if I think something is a lost cause, it can still be something so cool and beautiful. It actually reminded me of our discussion of Romans 8:28 in devos and how God works all things together for the good, which, is also such a cool God thing of how our devo discussion and a conversation at Big A almost lined up with what was essentially the same lesson.
After Big A finished, my team was on dinner prep. For dinner tonight, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and bread. Once again, we had another amazing, out of the park meal cooked by Lori, and I’m so looking forward to more of her food in the coming days. Once we were done with dinner, we had worship time and we also had a time to share our stories of the day, where we shared how we saw God working throughout the day. I shared my story of how that one student fully remembered what the meaning of what we talked about was because it was just so cool to see God work like that. Now, after this, we started a game of basketball (a regular occurrence during every free time opportunity we get), and I started writing this blog post once Jaxon got done with his part of the post. It’s been a great night relaxing, eating cake, and watching the basketball game going on, and I’m excited for the nights to come.
Finally, I just want to give a huge hello to all my family and friends. I miss you all greatly, and I can’t wait to see you when I get home. To my dad, I want to give you a belated happy fathers day. To my mom, I hope you’re enjoying the time alone that you have in the house for a lot of this week. I miss you so so so much, and I love you so incredibly much. Now, to my sister Maren, I hope you enjoy your time in Costa Rica, you better make the best of it as you don’t get an opportunity like that very often in your life, especially with your birthday coming up on Friday (only one away from being a legal adult after that!!). I love you so so much, see you in a week and a half when you get back. Remember to take lots of photos :)
Blessings to all of you,
Tyler Wallin
