Sunday June 21st, 2026

 Today for the blog, ya’ll get Aubree and Micah. Happy Fathers Day, to all the fathers!

We started the day off with walking around Downtown Detroit, viewing what the city has to offer with its landscape, murals, and community. We stopped at the Detroit river and saw the canal between Detroit and Canada. Aubree noticed the water was a pristine teal color. We noticed the different smells of the city, weed, burning trash, and the surprising nature smell. After around 2 hours of walking, we were headed back to our vehicles, when we ran into “Papa smurf” and Rick. They were two kind souls who gave us an insight of the city. Getting back to the building we got into our church clothes and headed off for church. 

Starting at 12 P.M, Peoples Missionary Baptist started their service. It was very different than Timberwood church, the constant worship in song, the pastor breaking out mid service in song, and the singing and dancing going on. Instead of 1 hour it was 2. There was a man who was shouting out, "Hallelujah”, “Praise the Lord”, and even “On my mama”. It was a very interesting and new experience.  

Back at the building we started prepping for our first day of Big A! Aubree was prepping for the preschool group and set up the puppet show they will be performing. The first puppet show will be of God creating the Heavens and the Earth. Micah on the other hand was working on the daily skit, which focused on the parable Jesus told about the Farmer and his seeds. After 45 ish minutes we got led into our devotionals. (We're in the book 1st John). We had a good discussion of the questions that was promptly given. After devotionals we were led in worship, singing “I Thank God” and “Make Room”. After worship and discussing our days we have free time. Where we are playing games together and Aubree and Micah are writing this blog. Now all caught up to the present there is nothing else to say except have a great night. 

Happy Father’s day,

Aubree and Micah

We Made It!

 Noah here! We are safely in Detroit after a smooth final day of travel from Elgin, IL.  Our time in Elgin last night was eventful and ended on a great note.

After dinner, Toby, Eli, Micah and I were exploring near our hotel after witnessing the most pristine double rainbow any of us had ever seen. What a gift! We stopped at Jimmy John's to see if we could pick up some end-of-the-day bread. We were in luck and they generously offered us 7 loaves of bread left over from the day! Perfect for some hungry teenagers.  Then, we pushed our luck even more and stopped at Panera to see if they might need our help taking their end of the day bread off their hands. Shockingly, they gave us a full box of leftover bagels....at least 40 beautiful, delicious, absolutely perfect bagels were all ours. God provided for us as we were going to be up and out of our hotel before the continental breakfast and would have had to stop somewhere for food. Instead, we were able to save $150 and time not having to purchase breakfast for our team. It was awesome! 

After after a fulfilling breakfast and lots of coffee, we were off. We made our traditional stop at Fruit Acres fruit stand Coloma, MI, where we picked up fresh cherries, blueberries and watermelon and two pies. We then drove the final stretch to Detroit and were at the Detroit Love building by lunch. We unpacked and settled into our bunks. The Detroit Love staff was so welcoming! The afternoon was spent doing a driving tour of downtown Detroit,prayer walking in the neighborhood were we put on our Big A vacation bible school and Heidi shared with us the history of Detroit. Lori fed us a wonderful dinner and we just finished worship and stories of how God has showed up for us so far. Its so cool to see how our team is working well together and I am excited to see how God will use us this week!

Please pray for great weather, unity as a team and that God would work in all of our hearts as we prepare for Big A. Thanks so much for your love and prayers already!

Love, Noah and Kris

First day of 2026 Detroit Trip

 After a day of travel, games, snacks, music and laughs, we have made it to our hotel. We enjoyed a nice walk at local park where it felt good to move our bodies and enjoy the sunshine. We then ate dinner and finished sharing our faith stories with each other. Seeing the connections between the team members has been a joy. I pray that God continues to knit us together to appreciate the uniqueness that each person brings to this team and that God uses it all. 

Thank you for your support and prayers. 

Day 8: 2025 (Final Day in Detroit)

 Hey wassup, coming at ya from Ashley and Ben from Detroit. Today was such an amazing day. We all slept pretty well last night. Team 2 was on breakfast duty so they had to wake up a little bit earlier but that's okay. We had pancakes, cereal and muffins. It was pretty good. Then after breakfast we had our devos. Today we were reading Philippians 3 : 1 - 11. This was a little bit of a struggle for me ( ben ) but it was really good to hear. It was so awesome to be able to talk about the different ways to explain the Gospel and the things that are not in comparison to a life with Christ (Ashley). Our group (Team 3) then went prayer walking around Cass Park which we did today because it was too rainy yesterday. Even though we got rained on we were able to meet a lot of people like Dan, Tony, and the men in the men's shelter who we were able to say grace for before their lunch. While we were praying, some of the other teams picked up some kids at the Digs project and all went to the park to play. Which is an answered prayer for our team because we have been praying over the parks and kids around the neighborhoods for them to use the parks and playgrounds. Then we all came back for lunch. After lunch we did Big A prep and chores. We all went shopping ( Mama Kottke ) Kris got a couple shirts and (Chickadee) Summer got a cup but nothing super cool. After a speedy shopping trip NATALIE spilled the whole bucket of orbeez right as we were walking out of the door to head to Big A. The orbeez went ALL down the stairs and ALL across the road. It was silly. Big A was smaller today because the daycare was not running so we were only able to pick up the kids from the Diggs. Ben was able to experience 15 and up today for the first time because none of his usual kids were there. Ashley was able to team up with Cooper today for 7-10 yr olds even though we only had 3 whole kids. It was a blast. Ashley and Natalie had the opportunity to teach the kids a new song and dance called the Hippo Song and it was a total hit. We added a new fruit to the fruit song, a pineapple. We (Ben and Ashley) could not star in a skit today because today was a bit different since it was the last day of Big A. Then we just came back to the building, ate pasta for dinner, had stories of the day, packed, and hung out for the night. We plan to leave at 6 AM. 

TTYL- Benny BooBear and Ashley LOOK AT ME

Day 7: 2025

 My name is Caleb, when I was asked to write part of today's blog I had no clue what I was gonna write about. I sat and pondered to myself for a while reflecting on my trip so far and today I have seen God move in ways I couldn't imagine. I noticed two different times today how I could see God having an active presence. The first time being at Big A, I noticed today when the leaders were picking up kids how ecstatic they were to play with us and remembered our names. I saw how kids were bringing up previous days and were so excited to learn about the gospel. The second time also at Big A was when we were wrapping up our 15+ age group and DJ (A dude I met on this trip) led our prayer. The words that came out of his mouth left me speechless, I could see Jesus working through him and sharing his word through DJ. As we keep going through this trip I am excited to see how else God reveals himself to me. I am so grateful for the opportunity and ability to go on this trip and share the gospel with others. 

Day 6: 2025

 Hello, This is Amelia Reynolds. Where do I even start, this team and this week has been just a blessing to be honest and tonight made that even more sure. In this blog I'm going to talk about the way our team of students have connected not only this week but in the last 3 hours and it all started with a sin. One of our team members brought a phone and got caught. It was brought to the team's attention and we all felt betrayed and trust was broken. We were all sent to go pray not only on how to respond but how we are living in our own sin. We came back all of our hearts were heavy and so was the air. We started confessing our sins and struggles and it just kept flowing and flowing out of us. Then we prayed as a group and tears started flowing. And more and more people started to pray and cry and just confess. We started to worship and all of us kids were huddled together crying, sweating, singing, praising, it was an all around God moment the fact that we just sat there and got to be vulnerable and there was no judgment whatsoever. We got to experience this all together and it was honestly so beautiful. Then we shared stories of the day and where we saw god today and there were more tears and more just pure emotions. When i tell you there was not a dry eye tonight that is not an exaggeration, we got to experience all of these emotions together and just be with one another and it was beautiful and it was just pure raw feelings and it was just amazing. Seeing everyone just be together is something that we will never forget. This trip has been so eye opening and just flat out amazing. Hi family, I miss you guys. 

Sincerely Amelia Reynolds 

Hey guys, this is Micah Kibwaa.And  HOLY MOLY God has been moving. Our team and others had the Holy Spirit moving over all of us tonight (06/18/25). God was so present today in all of us. It started with a mistrust of a person bringing their phone on the trip. We are studying the book of Philippians and how in Philippians God used a tough time and made it for good. That's exactly what happened.We all got in a group and The Spirit knew we needed to talk, God really had us all in tears from the vulnerability, the reactions, and add ons from others that was so God. I even mentioned that the emotion and having tears FLOWING down my face were not emotions I would even show around my own family which sounds crazy. But the Spirit put me in the position of telling me these people I literally met less than four days ago felt like I've known them for my whole life. It was such a heartwarming feeling that was MOST DEFINITELY from God and I can’t thank Him enough. God has moved all of us so much this trip and I pray for every single person that they carry that feeling home. Not just Detroit but that we still have this posture in our heart. God brought us so much more together as a body in Christ and I can’t thank Him enough. 

It’s been great, miss you all.

Sincerely Micah Kibwaa.

Day 5: 2025

 Today's day 4 of being here and I could not be more happy I came on this trip. The day began as most do, waking up, hitting snooze, eating breakfast (which is DELICIOUS thank you Lori!) and getting ready for the day. During our prayer walk Chuck (one of the people helping us on this trip) had us stop and look around. We were told to look for something that stuck out to us, and how we can pray about it. Amelia (one of the lovely members of my group) noticed that one door had three locks. We were reminded of how fortunate we are to live in the place where we do, most days only locking our single lock in the evening. As well as how unfortunate it is that these people go to the grocery store and have to worry, even with three locks, that their house will be broken into. Jaw. Dropped. 

Big A (the VBS we help operate) was so much fun! We walk in and are greeted by all these smiling kids who just want us. They want to be loved and man do we love them. From a record breaking 63 jumps on the jump rope, to holding a little boy who didn’t want us to leave, we loved these kids in every way we could. This is all I have to write tonight, I’m hot and ready for a good shower. Please pray that God continues to work in, and through us, in everything we do. Thank you. 

   Sincerely, 

Amani Kibwaa :)

Soooooo today was a long day lots of crazy things happened number 1 Big A man that was a lot of fun! I work at a youth camp full of about 300 kids a week and there isn't even a close comparison of these kids to the ones at home. they are so open so loving and just want to share about their day with you and they love the big A. it might be songs games crafts doesn't matter these kids have a blast with each other and  it's a lot of fun to see a group of kids from the city in the projects all get together and just have fun. And learn about the lord and savior Jesus christ. Also I want to make a shout out to the Crew this group of people I have grown up with for years and years and have never seen them so into their faith and sharing it  a wonderful place to be and so glad i came just Hoping the lord uses me the best he can for the rest of it 

Cooper