On Friday night, there was a kick-off to the day of service where we just heard a little bit about what we would be doing, and a young pastor named Brooke Turner gave a message about service and evangelism and what it looks like in modern times. His message was seriously convicting, in such a good way. Instead of many of the messages we hear these days about how the church is failing and the world is hopeless, he did point out that the church is “missing the mark” (the definition he gave for sin), and that it was our responsibility to do something about it. And that it is TOTALLY possible for us to do that.
He talked about how for so long, the model of evangelism has looked like this:
Anyway, it was a great way to kick off the day of service. On Saturday morning, we got up really early and met at our church. We got into our groups, which went to different places around the city (about 6 places), and my group was going to the United Maori Mission, an organization that seeks to bring in troubled Maori men in need from across New Zealand and give them a place to live and have a safe environment. Our task was to clean, plaster, sand, and paint the hallways of their residence area. There were about 10 of us from YWAM, and one guy, Johnny, our fearless leader who had been a painter one summer a few years back.
We had a great time – it was a lot of hard work, but I realized that I really like doing things like that, like manual labor (which some of you will find hilarious to read because I have been notoriously lazy at times...) but yeah, I think it’s just the signing up part that I don’t like – I actually do like the work and can motivate myself to do it. I even used a power sander for the first time in my life – which I actually didn’t like – I just don’t think I was meant to operate dangerous machinery. Once I realized, “Wow, I could really sand my finger off”, I went back to the old sandpaper and elbow grease method, which worked just fine. And the painting was great too – all that practice of painting with Kendal on her clients’ houses...on my mom’s house when we did renovations... it really paid off. I was giving tips and teaching people about how to cut in on corners, how to roll most effectively, etc. So thank you Kendal for always being so generously willing to tell me I was doing it wrong... tough love pays off sometimes.
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