This is a guest post by one of our faithful volunteers, Nikki Symasek. If you’ve been wondering what it would look like to serve with your family at Oak Tree, we can’t promise it will be easy (Nikki would be first to attest to the difficulties), but we can tell you that special things will follow! We hope you will be encouraged by her story as we were!
Our family has been serving at Oak Tree for some time now. We go together on Sunday afternoons to work in Bible Club and serve during the summer at Rock the Village. Both the ministry and the Village hold a very special place in our hearts.
One thing that we try to focus on in the treehouse is the presentation of the gospel through the “three circles”. These circles represent God creating the word perfect and sinless and beautiful, then man running from God and sinning - thus destroying His world, and finally, Jesus coming to restore it so we can live together with Him for eternity. As an adult, I was trying to memorize it perfectly like our “fearless leaders” perform it there in Oak Tree, and I never could get it quite right.
One day at home, we were outside with the kids and our 7 year old was playing with chalk working very intently. I walked over to her and asked her what she was doing. She said, “Look, Mom! The three circles! God made it, we broke it, Jesus saved it!” Y’all. I was slapped in the face with the simplicity of the gospel and how our kids pick it up often better than our complicated adult brains do.
Oak Tree has ministered to our family in so many ways... I could go on and on about how the kids in the Village accept my son who has a prosthetic often better than others; or how the kids did sweet cards of encouragement for one of my sons when he became seriously ill last year. But mostly, Jesus has used Oak Tree and the entire Village to remind me that when we pour ourselves out for Him - His rewards are innumerable.
If you’d like to serve with us, or have questions about how your family can plug in, let us know HERE!