Evanga-kid and an Amazing Weekend

God blesses me on a regular basis through our kids. I'm finding more and more if I take the time to listen you can almost hear the voice of God speaking through them. The little observations, the off-the-cuff comments, and spontaneous songs.

We were out and about enjoying a beautiful day yesterday (I hope you all got that opportunity). After supper we decided to take a little bike ride and finish off with a little ice cream. While we sat enjoying our treat Janae says - out of the blue - "we got to make some new Christians." Terri and I discussed where she might have heard this phrase and we couldn't say that we had ever discussed evangelism so specifically with our 2 year old. Terri had explained that when I was in India I was helping to tell other people about Jesus but never talked about "making new Christians."

It's pretty motivating when your toddler expresses this kind of desire. It kind of makes you say, "Yeah, you're right sweetheart. We do need to make some new Christians." Coupled with studying the gospel of Luke, God has been encouraging and nudging me to take more courage, push on with more enthusiasm and really make the most of the days ahead. I pray He's doing that for you as well. If not, maybe you need to spend an afternoon or two with Janae the "evanga-kid."

This weekend had many other blessings as well. I know I've said it on many occasions but I'm not sure if I've ever included it on my blog - it's also been pretty awesome to see how God is working in the lives of the youth Terri and I are privileged to work with in our church. If you guys haven't taken the opportunity recently I encourage you to ask them what God is doing in their lives.

About the weekend... After their experience on the spring break missions trip a couple of the guys from my small group really wanted to share the challenge and blessing of giving roses to prostitutes with the rest of the group. I was blown away at the reception the idea got. Usually when it comes time to plan our small group times the guys want to do things like go-kart racing, eating, watching movies and that sort of thing. Last time when we sat down to plan one of them blurted out, "let's do something mission-ie or something." That's youth talk for doing something with some lasting significance. The idea of giving roses to prostitutes was one they really wanted to do as they knew many of them would need to embrace fears and preconceptions and do something to encourage some of the most discouraged people in our society.

Yet again it was quite an evening. We were greeted by a man with no pants saying, "they like it when you don't wear pants." Nearing met with a metal pipe (I guess some of the larger members of the group can be a little intimidating). Evaded and sworn at but thoroughly blessed by those who allowed us to get close enough to share the love of Christ with them. Obviously there's a story behind all these incidents and I assure you we were in no immediate danger as the stories may imply - just they all turned out to be the nearly humorously sad examples of how an invisible barrier of a couple blocks can keep you so sheltered (humorously sad - it's like when you are so grieve that you let out a little laugh because it's so sad that things can be a certain way that you really expect someone to jump out and say, "just kidding, the world's not actually like this).

The greatest blessing for me was to hear the conversations in the van before, during and following our evening. These guys are getting it! There beginning to see that there's more to life than cars, cell phones, ipods and video games. If you haven't also done so I encourage you to stop by and encourage Cory as he's given AMAZING leadership to this group. I guarantee you'll be blessed when he shares a little more about some of the other youth and how they are beginning to get it.