1 Corinthians 15:10
With our second week at Exodus in the bag, the girls and I had a chance to rest and reflect this weekend.
Monday and Tuesday mainly consisted of preparation for the banquet on Tuesday night. To celebrate the kids' achievements, we planned a special Hollywood-theme dinner and awards ceremony held at Redeemer West Side. It was a great encouragement for the kids who were invited and a fun night full of Malecon food (of course), Exodus families, and sweet fellowship.
 |
| Intern-paparazzi |
Wednesday was, thankfully, a short day of data collecting. That night, we were able to attend CCF's small group! We discussed Sunday's message about the Holy Spirit more in depth. It was such a blessing to have a time of fellowship with the body of Christ during the week. Rich, the pastor, said how the Holy Spirit enables our affections toward Jesus. I happened to be reading 1 Corinthians 2 the next morning and was encouraged because it was about wisdom from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals the "deep things" of God to us - things we could not understand or accept on our own. I am so thankful for the Lord's Spirit who dwells in us!
I got to accompany Amy, the high school director, on her end of the year trips with the high schoolers. On Thursday, we went to Chinatown/Little Italy and it was quite an experience. This is a picture of some of the boys being entertained by the live crabs snapping at their sunglasses and cell phones.
Needless to say, our loud group of Dominican teenage boys got a lot of stares. We stopped and got pizza and were grossed out by all the fish (dead and alive) in all the Chinatown markets. On Friday, we intended to go to Governor's Island, but upon finding out it was closed, we went on the Staten Island Ferry instead. Martha and Mary Frances came along this time as well. Our group all stood outside on the front of the boat, with the wind nearly knocking the wind. It was beautiful day! There isn't a whole lot to do in Staten Island unless you have transportation, so we ended up stopping to get some food and then headed back.
Afterwards, the girls and I continued our tradition of eating at really awesome place on Friday night. This time it was S'Mac, an extravagant macaroni and cheese place in the Village. It was delicious and Martha instantly fell in love, as macaroni and cheese is her favorite meal.
Saturday happened to be CCF's picnic, so the girls and I made some brownies and headed over to Riverbank State Park for the festivities. That night I was invited to worship music practice, so I hauled Martha's guitar to the boxing gym, only to find out that I was the only instrumentalist besides Ruben on the drums. Since I hadn't played in quite awhile and don't have the best guitar skills in the world, I was a little concerned as to how I was going to pull it off. But I prayed a lot about it that night and the Lord granted me his peace.
The next morning I headed back to church a few hours before the service. For those of you who don't play guitar, you should know that my fingertips felt like they were on fire since I have no callouses due to not having played much recently. At that point, I was also starting to feel extremely inadequate. But I believe that God can do miracles and I believed that he could make my playing sound beautiful if it came down to it. However, he had other plans.
A church group from Pensacola, Florida was visiting and helped set up the building for the service. About a half an hour before we were supposed to start, the pastor and two of his boys joined our little worship team of three singers and a drummer and we had a full band! The Lord blessed my small act of handing over what control I thought I had to him and provided some talented musicians. I also managed to convince a guy from CCF to play guitar for the first two songs, so I only had to play on the last song. It was also my first time ever playing an electric guitar, which was a lot of fun.
That was just one small way the Lord very clearly illustrated how I need to continually rest in him and trust him to use my weaknesses to reveal his strength and power.
 |
| Richard - only the sweetest high schooler ever! |
Saturday happened to be CCF's picnic, so the girls and I made some brownies and headed over to Riverbank State Park for the festivities. That night I was invited to worship music practice, so I hauled Martha's guitar to the boxing gym, only to find out that I was the only instrumentalist besides Ruben on the drums. Since I hadn't played in quite awhile and don't have the best guitar skills in the world, I was a little concerned as to how I was going to pull it off. But I prayed a lot about it that night and the Lord granted me his peace.
The next morning I headed back to church a few hours before the service. For those of you who don't play guitar, you should know that my fingertips felt like they were on fire since I have no callouses due to not having played much recently. At that point, I was also starting to feel extremely inadequate. But I believe that God can do miracles and I believed that he could make my playing sound beautiful if it came down to it. However, he had other plans.
A church group from Pensacola, Florida was visiting and helped set up the building for the service. About a half an hour before we were supposed to start, the pastor and two of his boys joined our little worship team of three singers and a drummer and we had a full band! The Lord blessed my small act of handing over what control I thought I had to him and provided some talented musicians. I also managed to convince a guy from CCF to play guitar for the first two songs, so I only had to play on the last song. It was also my first time ever playing an electric guitar, which was a lot of fun.
That was just one small way the Lord very clearly illustrated how I need to continually rest in him and trust him to use my weaknesses to reveal his strength and power.
Praise be to the Lord who is our righteous, our holiness and our redemption.
Grace be with you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment