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A Letter to Volunteers

Volunteers,

As an Oak Tree Staff Member, I want you to know how precious you are! Of course, you make a tremendous difference in the lives of children, teenagers, and adults every time you come to the Village. You come on days when you are tired and could easily stay home. You work selflessly, loving on those you are serving without reward.

But personally, I want you to know how much you minister to me.

I appreciate the emails that contain just a smiley face that lets me know you read my email and are excited about Reading Club tomorrow!

I appreciate the humorous response when I have sent you the wrong date three times for an event!

I appreciate you remembering to pray for our kids on the days that I forget.

I appreciate you reminding me that the gospel is the entire reason we are here.

I appreciate you answering my surveys when you really want to delete that email!

I appreciate you praying for me!

I appreciate you answering my desperate pleas for someone to read a book, lead a craft, or come early to help me set up for an event.

I appreciate you being the hands and feet of Christ to me!

~Halie Kawell

The Women of Marks Village

I wish everyone could know the joy of walking through the village with Teresa and Wanda and watching the Lord at work. We have a list of women who signed up for a visit at Rock the Village and we try to drop in on them and pray with them. Sometimes we get to see those women and sometimes we don't. But God always has women prepared for us to talk with and pray with. Never has a woman responded in a negative way, even if we just see her on the street and ask if she would like prayer. Each one is grateful for the love that God shows them through the healing touch of another woman and the power of God through prayer.

And not just the women. Children swarm to Teresa to ask if it is “church day”. Many times they join hands in our prayer circle and wait patiently while we pray over their mom or grandma or aunt. We pray outside and we pray out loud so that anyone nearby can see and hear. We even had a man chase us down one day and ask for prayer!

God has truly blessed Teresa with the gift of discernment and He reveals issues to her that each woman is struggling with and they respond openly. Wanda, with her gift of service and helps knows exactly what practical issues need dealing with and how to do it. They each seem to know exactly which questions to ask. I am blessed with the responsibility to pray as these conversations take place.

God is at work in the lives of the women of Marks Village! I'm so grateful to Him that I get to witness it.

Praise Him!

Becky

The Fruit of the Spirit

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  Against such things there is no law."  Galatians 5:22-23.

At Reading Club we have a very special time that we call "Family Time".  During these precious minutes we learn and grow as individuals and as a group.  One of the topics we have focused on during this time is the Fruit of the Spirit. What a blessing it is to be able to tell one of the kids that you just witnessed them displaying love, kindness, or goodness, and yes, even self control.  

These two plus hours with the children at Reading Club have seen me frustrated a times, but the Spirit has shown and given me patience for these times. There have been times it would have been more convenient to miss a Tuesday, but God desires, and these children need my faithfulness.  Over the last 12 months, the one fruit I could always count on experiencing, during my drive home from Reading Club, was joy.  In the early days of Reading Club, it was joy in trusting God that he was doing a good work through our time with the kids.  As the months went by it was joy from actually seeing the fruit growing in the kids as well as in myself.  

From all the reading buddies to "whosoever",  come and grow fruit with us!

~Margaret (Reading Buddy)

What Will God Do This Year?

We started Reading Club last fall with 14 children, grades 1-5, carefully chosen from a hundred possibilities.

Many of these children live in tough circumstances. They may have gone through a crisis with their families or experience need on a daily basis. They are often surrounded by danger. Some are hearing the name Noah, Moses and Abraham for the first time.

And we have been tasked by God to make them into disciples who love to read.

I wish I had the space to walk you through the past year and detail the program that God laid out for us to follow with these precious, loud, (sometimes) rambunctious children. I wish everyone who reads this could have been on that journey with us. In short, we have seen children transformed by the healing power of God through one-on-one mentoring with an adult who can be trusted to love and nurture them.

The year began with some chaos, and ended with these children creating three different book clubs in which to participate. They voted on the books, formed the groups, read their selections and discussed them with each other! This would have seemed impossible at the beginning, but nothing is impossible with God!

More precious, however, is hearing them speak with growing spiritual and biblical literacy. This is particularly evident in the growing maturity of their questions about God and the Christian life. They are becoming disciples who love to read.

I can't wait to see what God does this year!

~Becky (Reading Buddy) 

 

 

Glimpses of Rock the Village from our Volunteers

Becky's story:

"One activity all the children particularly loved was the chance to write their own prayer, tie it to a helium-filled balloon and release the balloon into the air. We explained that it was a picture of when we talk to God. One of our boys was disappointed when his balloon failed to fly. Another boy ran to grab the balloon off the ground while still clinging to his own. I assumed the worst and went to intervene. Instead, he was enthusiastically tying his floating balloon to the failing one so that his balloon could carry the other one to heaven. While he tied, I explained to both boys that this is what it means to pray for each other, that we are carrying someone else's prayers to God! It was glorious to see God provide this picture for these precious boys, but the joy was completed by having an opportunity to tell the story to their parents and see the delight on their faces. God is at work in Marks Village!"

Megan's story: 

"I was able to give a first grader a Bible. She said that she knew some of the stories, but now she could ask her parents to read them to her. She was so excited. She asked me to show her one of my favorite parts, so I turned to Isaiah 43:4, "you are precious and honored in my sight, and I love you..." She placed her little hand print craft in it as a book mark and said that she would try to memorize that verse. It was a sweet moment. I pray she grows to know all the Word has for her."

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!

            

            

This summer our teen boys have headed off on an Urban Adventure, spending most of their days on Ruffner Mountain getting out of their comfort zones and learning about Christ. One of their fearless leaders, Curtis, was out of his comfort zone last week when they were all going to walk off the side of a mountain (otherwise known as repelling), but knew he was going to do it anyway! As he was putting on all of his gear and telling the boys that he was nervous, one of the rising 6th graders began to quote back to him the lessons they had been learning that week. "Walk by faith, not by sight" "You can do it Mr. Curtis" "Walk by faith" And Curtis walked by faith right off of the side of the mountain! 

Short-term Mission in a Long-term Context

Last week was our biggest Oak Tree event of the year: Rock the Village. We had somewhere around 200 kids and 50 adults in and out from Monday through Friday for a huge vacation Bible school! We were outside daily from 4-6pm worshipping, doing crafts, playing games, drumming on drums, doing Zumba, watching puppets and flannel graphs and having a marvelous time!

I relished the fact that many kids were hearing the gospel as many as four times each day, even the ones that didn’t appear to be listening. I marveled in anticipation of what God could and would do with his Word that week. And now, I am in the wonderful position to watch and wait. I will keep working and preparing for the next day, the next event, but really, my work isn’t the important part. God is working and I want a front-row seat.

One of the most interesting aspects of the week for me was that just over a year ago I was on a short-term mission trip to Guatemala.

Last year I was in a foreign context, speaking another language, with people I have never met and am unlikely to ever meet again. It was wonderful and difficult all at the same time.

This year, I was in my own foreign/familiar context, speaking the same language (minus a few slang terms I’m still learning), with many people that I have known for 3 years and others that I met and am likely to meet again. Despite being in my own bed at night, the whole week felt very much like a short-term trip. I completely ignored all home tasks: laundry, cooking, vacuuming and other things like make-up and curling my hair. I talked with fewer people on the phone and had little “me” time. I had one goal for the week: to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in every word and action. What a wonderful opportunity! Suddenly, for one week, taking an hour for devotions in the morning wasn’t excessive, it was necessary. And vacuuming, not so much.

I have appreciated a week of air-conditioning and much quieter work hours now, I have caught up on laundry and I’m wearing makeup, but I am still processing and appreciating the rare opportunity that I had last week. I got to go on a short-term mission trip in my long term context. God gave me a week to remember why I am there every other week of the year: to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in word and action. And God can handle both giving me the words to explain substitution to children and my normal, everyday to-do list.