Expectations

Hosea 4:1 revealed 3 expectations that God had for Israel: faithfulness, love/kindness for others, and a knowledge of God. Unfortunately, Israel didn't live up to them as much as God wanted them to.

1. Do you think these same expectations are for us today?
2. How are you living up to these expectations?
3. What other expectations might God have for his children?

God's love is powerful...

Hosea 3 was what we looked at last night. We saw how God's love has the power to redeems us, the power to remove sin from our lives, but it also requires complete trust and obedience on our part.

1. What did you think about how Hosea redeemed Gomer?
2. Hebrews 9:12 says that God has secured our redemption forever because of Jesus. What are your thoughts on this?
3. What kind of application can we get from Hosea 3 for our own lives?

Hosea 2

Hey guys! Last night we talked about Hosea 2. We studied how God punished and also pardoned (forgave) Israel. Also, we looked at the commitment God made with Israel and the 3 components of that commitment: it's permanent, personal, and powerful. What are your thoughts?

1. What did you think about chapter 2?
2. What are your reactions to the commitment God made with Israel? How is it like our commitment to him?
3. In general, what did you learn from Hosea 2?

Breakthrough!

Hey guys! I pray you are having an awesome week! Like I mentioned Wednesday at Breakthrough, I will start posting some comments and questions about our topic. I want to get your feedback and see what you think about what we're studying. As you know, we've just kicked off our "Little Guys with Big Mouths" series. I think God's got a lot to teach us.

Last week, in Hosea 1, we saw how Israel lost their identity and intimacy in God because of their unfaithfulness.

What did you think about this?
What did you think about how God told Hosea to get the people's attention (hint: Gomer)?
What do you think God was feeling through all of this?

Let me know what you think. I would love to hear anyting you got. Love you guys!

How great is our God!!!!

I am back in the real world and still trying to recuperate from the trip last week. I saw God do some amazing things last week and I realized how grateful I am to my father for letting me be a part of his work. How awesome it was to see God work through our youth last week to touch the lives of those in Iowa. Our kids really loved on the kids they ministered to and I KNOW seeds were planted. I look forward to hearing updates from Mindy and Jon concerning the kids we spent time with. They are prayed for constantly and I am confident that God will continue the work He began there.
Our church should truly be proud of our students. Through this one week they did more work for the kingdom than many believers do their entire lives. I know God is working in them as they are becoming more confident in their abilities. I can't wait to see how He continues to work things out in their lives as they let his appearance shine through.

Yesterday, Today and a little of tomorrow

We are going to update a little on yesterday's activities. We had a good day at the Center with camp and then we came back to the church to relax and prepare for the next day. We also got the opportunity to go to Winterset's town square and wander around down there. They have an old fashioned soda fountain in the local drugstore. We went to get malts, old fashioned cherry cokes and we all tried a new drink called the Green River. We think Josh was the only one that drank the whole thing. He actually got a second glass. But it was a fun introduction to the town.
After that, we went to "Studio 316", which is the church youth group's Wednesday night meeting. We had a time of praise and worship and then Nikki led the Bible study. As usual she did a great job. After church we came back to the church and finished preparations for the next day and just having some fun hanging out together.
So now we are preparing for our last day at the Center. It is a bittersweet time as we are all very tired and ready to come home, but also we all have grown attached to these kids. The group that was supposed to come next week canceled on Wednesday, so we are the kids last week of camp. It was so sad and some of us wanted to stay an extra week to do camp next week. But then we remembered how exhausted we all are and we decided it was not the best plan.
Tomorrow we are presenting the gospel. Obviously we are not going in too deep with the younger ones, but the 4th-12th graders are all going to hear the Gospel story tomorrow morning. We will be sharing with the 4th-6th graders at 10:30am and with the 7th-12th graders at 11:00am. If you are at a point to do so, please pray for us and the kids listening at those times. We really believe that God has been working in these kids and are praying to see some of them come to know Christ.
Tonight we did get to have a little fun. We went out to a center for at risk kids and were able to canoe, kayak, swim and play on this huge water slide. It was great to be able to relax and have some mindless fun.
We will be leaving shortly after we finish camp tomorrow at around 12:30. We are heading to Kingdom City, MO, which is just past Columbia, MO. Then we will drive the rest of the way on Saturday and be home to see you all!

Just a quick note...

Hello to all. It has been a really long day, and our internet has not been very functional. So we are getting on really quickly to let you all know that we are still alive and had a pretty good day. We will blog about all of today's stuff tomorrow. Thank you again for all your prayers, please continue them. We will give a full blog and pictures tomorrow!!

Nathan and Patricia

Subway, the Rose and Golf Carts...Oh my!

So day two is complete! We definitely felt your prayers as we had an incredibly smoother day today. Yesterday was chaos, but today the kids were so well-behaved. Thank you so much for your prayers and thoughts throughout the day.

After camp, we went to a local Subway for lunch. The Center missionaries, John and Mindy have been building a relationship with the owner and workers. We were able to talk to them as they fixed our lunch. Please pray that the relationship will continue to grow.

When we finished lunch, we headed out to the Rose, which is a low-income assisted living center for senior adults (that is the pc term). We got to play games with several of the residents there. Ms. Ingrid drilled some of us in the art of chicken foot aka dominoes. The rest of us learned a new (but actually really old) game with Mr. Jerry called Sequence. It is a super awesome game that we are all addicted to now.

Some of Nikki's friends from her Iowa days invited us over for dinner tonight. They cooked barbeque pork sandwiches, FRESH corn on the cob, and fresh green beans from her garden. Then they let us play with all their toys. This included a Harley, a (small) trampoline, a tractor, and the best one ever...a golf cart. We all took turns riding/driving the golf cart. When we left, Tonya told us that she really enjoyed watching us have so much fun with something so simple.

We are getting ready to head off to bed...we are really tired, so it is pretty short tonight. We will upload more pictures tomorrow and give more info on our days to come.

Please continue to pray for all of our requests. We appreciate all the words of encouragement and the prayers in general as well as the individual prayers of our prayer partners. Thank you!

Katie-Katie the crazy-craft lady

To start off, we are answering a request for pictures of our safari hats. We aim to please.

Today was our first day at the Friendship Baptist Center. We had a total of 57 kids from ages 4 to 18. That was a lot of kids, but we think everything went pretty well. We rotate around four different stations including recreation, music, crafts and Bible study. The kids are divided into four age groups and we have four people working with each age group. Just in case you guys didn't know who was where, we are going to give you a breakdown:

4 year olds-Kindergarten: Lauren, Le-Anna, Will, Tarcela

1st-3rd grades: Justin, Trey, Caroline, Judy

4th-6th grades: Nathan, Victoria, Patricia, Joe

7th-12th grades: Logan, Josh, Randy, Nikki

Crafts: Katie-Katie, the crazy-craft lady & Jim

Recreation: Sarah & Bob

The kids are a lot of fun, but can be pretty challenging too. Please continue to pray for patience on our part and good behavior on the kids part.

After the day camp was over, we stuck around the Center to do some clean up. Logan definitely had the grossest job to do. He (with the use of gloves) stuck his hand in a drain to pull out all the leaves, and many other disgusting things, to remove the clog. Our safari hats are off to Logan, which we are all still wearing by the way. Nathan gave great assistance to the drain situation with popsicle sticks. The rest of us did various activities including pulling up old carpet, vacuuming, and sorting through new donations for the clothing closet. There were also a few guys that did yard work including mowing and weed whacking. Mr. Bob and Mr. Jim did all the mowing and Josh covered the weed whacking. There was quite a bit of weeding going on too.

We are so good at chores that we finished super early, which gave us the opportunity to prayer walk the neighborhood. We made a loop around the neighborhood, stopping on every corner to pray for the street we were about to walk down. We were also able to talk to several people in the neighborhood and tell them about different things offered at the Center.

We have had a nice relaxing evening at the church, with a little planning for tomorrow mixed in.

Here are the prayer requests for today:

1. Continue to pray for rest and energy for tomorrow.

2. Pray for the people that we talked with today, as well as those we didn't see but prayed for during our prayer walk. We are praying that we made an impact through our actions and attitudes as we walked through the neighborhood.

3. Pray for continued good behavior from the children. Today went well overall, so we need it to continue into the rest of the week.

4. Pray for our activities tomorrow. We are doing camp, but also going to a community called the Rose, which is a senior adult community. We are just going to hang out and play games with them.

5. We are also going to Subway for lunch tomorrow. This is a ministry that John and Mindy have established with the owner. Please pray that we can continue this ministry.

If we forgot anything, we will tell you tomorrow! Thanks for all your prayers!!!!

Nathan and Patricia

Arrival

Well, we have made it to Iowa safely. We are all in First Baptist Church Winterset, where we are staying. It was a long, but interesting journey here. We left early Saturday morning and finally arrived in Concordia, Missouri a few minutes after midnight. This was after a slight detour in St. Louis to see the Arch, which we did not get to go up into due to mechanical issues (meaning the pods were not operational and who wants to ride in non-operational pods?) We are going to try again on the way home, so wish us luck on our mechanical success.

We had orientation at the Friendship Baptist Center this afternoon when we arrived in Des Moines. It was exciting, but made us a little nervous too. Please pray that we will be confident in our abilities to share Christ's love with these children. Also, we thought it was neat that we have a Baptist Friendship House and there is a Friendship Baptist Center here. Perhaps someone can one day start the Center for Baptist Friendship.

Right now the two of us, Logan, Joe and Randy are wearing our Safari hats to prepare for our theme this week. We are having a safari theme with a different emphasis every day. Tomorrow our theme is "Arrival" and we are telling the story of Jesus' triumphal entry. (Yes, the title of our current post is not simplistic, it is a clever double meaning). Please pray that we will be able to tell the story well and help all of the kids understand the lesson.

Here are a few prayer requests:

Pray that we will all get enough sleep tonight and be alert tomorrow for our first day.

Pray that all of our attitudes will stay positive and we will uplift one another throughout the day.

Pray that there will be lots of children there and they will be ready to hear the lessons we have. Also, that we will not have any major behavioral problems this week.

Pray for our safe travel from the place we are staying to the Baptist Center and back again.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. More will come tomorrow!!!

Nathan and Patricia

Already?!!!

I am having trouble believing that it is already time for our trip to Iowa. We leave in a little over a week and I am getting mucho stressed. There are so many things for us to prepare before we drive off. However, I am super-excited. I can't wait to see what God wants to do through our MBC students. I KNOW that God has much for us to do. I truly look forward to loving on all of the children that God brings out of their homes to participate in Day Camp.
One thing I have learned is that when God is at work....Satan is as well. Please begin praying now for our missionaries as they prepare. Ask God to keep them from harm, illness, and discouragement. When God wants to use us, Satan will try anything he can to keep us from furthering the gospel. I refuse to let him keep our students from showing God's love to the people that they will come in contact with.

If our trip to Iowa isn't enough to keep us busy, next week we will begin VBS at MBC. We begin on Monday and most of our students will be leading in many different aspects. I am praying that God blesses the work done by so many with loads of young children. I think it will be a wonderful time to share Christ's love with our surrounding neighborhood. Hopefully we can post pictures of MBC students, in their Hawaiian shirts, participating in various activities during VBS.

There is lots going on and we will try to keep you updated as we work hard to....Know, Grow, and Go.

Nikki

....by our love

Last year the kids spent a week at the church with Josh on a mission trip. They hung sheet rock in a house off of St. Bernard. I had the privilege of seeing the owner come by to check on the work on the last day of work. She was thrilled. She threw her arms around the kids to let them know of her appreciation and then she requested pictures. I think that moment really impacted all of the students who had worked so hard. It impacted me too. I realized the importance of ministering in your own city. When I began planning for this summer and our events I knew that we could not forget the importance of serving in our own backyard. Therefore, we set aside 3 days at the end of June for a NOLA Mission trip.

The weekend went something like this:

The kids arrived Thursday night and we soon began preparing our dinner. They each made their own pizzas and they were so proud of their creations. Shortly after we began our Bible Study and we started to flesh out our theme for the weekend, 1 Corinthians 13. We spent some time that night just discussing how we love one another and we listed what love isn't.....rude, self-seeking, impatient, etc. I think we all began to question if we were really loving like Christ or not. One thing that stood out to all of us was being self-seeking. We all began to wonder if we were striving to sacrifice self for others or whether we were only interested in self.

The next morning we were in for a treat. We loaded up the "Golden Corral" and made our way to St. Francis Villa, an assisted living facility in Metairie. We were shown around the facility by our new friend, Becky, and shortly after we joined the residents for coffee time. To sum up our morning....We had a blast. We met some interesting characters and we got to play "Wheel of Fortune". Victoria amazed many of the residents by how quickly she could put together a puzzle. Justin and Nathan spent most of the morning with a WWII vet who was 93. He told them many a story about the war. Brandon, Trey, and Josh were special helpers for the "Wheel of Fortune" game and they also met a special friend that gave up her "stories" (soap operas) to spend time with them. We were a hit! We also got the distinction of being the only volunteer group to participate in a fire drill. It was interesting....to say the least. We can't wait to go back soon.
Friday night Mrs. Terry was kind enough to bring us yummy dinner and then we made our way to the French Quarter for beignets, lots of pictures, and a ride on the ferry. We definitely got to live out love that evening when we spent the ferry ride with 127 students who were acting a bit obnoxious. I believe Trey and Nathan posed in every one of the pictures they took.

Saturday was a busy day! We loaded the cars for a work day at Global Maritime. The boys did an amazing job on the yard work and cleaning up debris piles outside the center. They worked really hard and I was very proud of them. It is rare to find a group that works so hard without complaining. (Not one complaint all day!) Victoria and I spent the day inside working with sorting donations and making baked goods for the workers from the cruise ships. There were tons of visitors at the center that day.
I don't think I have ever been part of a group that was bragged on as much as our students. All of the Staff of Global Maritime repeatedly told me how great our kids are and how hard working they are. I was later told that one of the staff members spoke with one of the cruise workers from Indonesia. It was his first visit to the center and he was amazed at the love shown him and the love our students shown while working. How awesome is it that our students stayed in our own city and yet had the opportunity to share Christ in Indonesia. What an awesome testimony of how our God works! Saturday night we spent some much deserved time on the Slip-N-Slide. I am not sure if the kids have more fun on that contraption or if the adults do.

On Sunday morning we attended worship and then we had a nice lunch at VooDoo Bar-B-Que before we went on our last excursion. Each student led us to their school where we had the wonderful opportunity to prayer walk. We asked God to give each student the courage and power to minister in their schools in the upcoming year. We prayed that each student would see numerous opportunities to witness and to love those around them. The afternoon was a meaningful experience. We ended our weekend with dinner at church prepared by Mrs. Ginger, Ms. Michelle, Ms. Katherine, and Ms. Elizabeth. The food was delicious and we were honored to have them fix up such a nice reception for us. The fellowship hall was decorated with New Orleans decor and the tables were lit with candles. Dinner was lovely!

All in all the weekend was amazing. One of the best parts of student ministry is watching as God works through your students and to recognize how He becomes evident to the students through His Word. I marveled at the fact that our big God uses His people for His service. I am humbled everyday as I realize He has allowed us all to be His hands and feet. It all comes back to one of the truths we thought over on Friday morning. We read John 13:34-35 which says, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have loved one another." If we are wanting to change the world with the love of Christ, we must love like Christ loves. To love others is not an option. We are not told to tolerate others. We are COMMANDED to love. Love often means giving of yourself to place others higher. We learned, this weekend, of the importance of self-sacrifice in order to love others. Our desire is that others will KNOW who we follow because of our love for one another.

Only the Beginning....

I am so excited that you decided to check in with the Student Ministry at Metairie Baptist Church. Our summer activities have begun and we are really busy. We just finished a mission experience in our city this weekend and now we are focusing on our upcoming mission trip to Iowa.
We want to give you a chance to keep up with what we are doing so check back on this site often. We will keep you posted on upcoming events and we will post pictures and messages of everything we do. Later this week we will give you a glimpse of our NOLA mission trip. Don't forget to come back and find out the details.

More to come.....