I asked the students to wake up at 5:30am!! Yikes, but I was blown away, everyone was up and ready to go take showers at OC pool. We were so blessed to have such a great place to go clean up! Even more surprising is that I set a goal for the entire team to be showered and ready to go by 6:25 (that’s only 25 minutes), they were ready 2 minutes early! WOW, what a great start to a fun day of service.

When we got back to the church there was a team of loving people working hard making us an amazing hot breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and fruit salad! This was an amazing time to connect with people we usually don’t get to see as a youth group, and it was an amazing time to experience people serving us!

We had a time to reflect on God’s word and journal in the morning time. Col. 3:17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. We talked about how this trip is a very tangible experience to serve others but we all reflected on how we can do all things throughout all our days on this earth to the benefit and to glorify God.

We arrived at the mission around 10am and got right to it! We had a crew start painting and the rest began to empty out storage units that were previously donated but were up on their lease. Side note, this was an answer to prayer because to empty these units it would have taken much longer to empty these, meaning potential high rates to rent the units until they were empty. We just happened to have almost 20 people to help unload these and a project that would have taken over a week took 3 hours! ANSWER TO PRAYER? I think so!

We again enjoyed lunch and a time of connecting with the program guys!

After lunch the painters were back to it! Hard at work and it is looking great. One of the greatest events of the day for me took place after lunch. I met a gentleman that works through CityTeam as an outreach missionary in the surrounding communities with what they call Discovery Bible Study. The whole program is basically a discipleship program that gets people who are intimidated by churches or have no connections to Christian brothers and sisters to be involved in non-threatening studies of the Bible. The first part of this process is to saturate the area with prayer and petition for the Lord’s hand to be in bringing people to Christ by any means. So our task was to go and pray in Cornelius, Hillsboro, and Beaverton.

Our first stop was 45 minutes from the mission in Cornelius. We went into the project not really knowing what to do, in fact we didn’t even really know where we were going, but as we were entering the small community of Cornelius I noticed a church, and as we passed by I felt a pressing to possibly pray over that church. We parked near a park in the center of the community and began to walk silently to the park, we prayed out loud for God’s hand to be at work in the community and then anointed the bench with oil to symbolize God’s presence and the redemptive work and power of the cross.

We then continued to walk across the street and again not knowing where we were going to go next stopped at an elementary school. We prayed for the administrators, students, and staff and anointed the doorposts with oil so that the place would be blessed with the presence of Christ. We also prayed that the families of Cornelius would be strengthened and would begin to raise their kids in the truth of Jesus Christ.

We then stopped at the public services and law enforcement building and prayed for them as they serve to protect the community.

Then we made a trek to the community church that we passed on the way into Cornelius. I was thinking at first that we could just pray for the church outside their facility but felt a sense to go and pray for the staff, if they were in for the day. We were met at the door with a friendly face, the lead pastor’s son in law who was doing some paperwork. He invited us in, and while some of the students went to take a much needed bathroom break, I got to meet a new friend, the senior pastor. My heart filled with joy and my eyes with tears when after explaining what we wanted to do, this man confessed that he and his church were in thankful for much needed prayer. The pastor and his son in law (who was also the worship pastor) came out in front of the church and we proceeded to lay hands on them and pray for them and their church, for their impact in the poverty stricken and helpless / hopeless community of Cornelius. The Spirit spoke to me through these men and this experience and this is something that neither I nor the students will forget.