Welcome!
What happens when you take eleven young families with a passion for Jesus, give them a great children's musical, hand them a few VBS materials, and send them off to the inner city to minister to children?Ready or not, a small group of families from West Texas is about to find out, beginning on June 23, and this space will serve as a journal of our story.
Our group is a part of the Into All the World Campaign, a collective effort by members of the Highland Church in Abilene, Texas to send families on missions throughout the globe. While many of the mission groups will be traveling to such remote locales as Brazil, Africa, and Hawaii, our group will be making a two hour trip to the East to the inner city of Fort Worth, Texas.
We are comprised primarily of families with children in elementary school. Our kids have been hard at work for many weeks now preparing a children's musical called Tell All the World (written by two unbelievably creative members of our church), and the adults have been sorting through all sorts of cool-looking VBS materials, trying to come up with just the right ideas for telling an important story to some kids that we can't wait to meet.
We are preparing a Vacation Bible School for the kids at Open Arms Home, a facility that provides shelter and assistance to women and children fleeing domestic violence, and our kids will also be performing a musical for the Open Arms kids. In addition, our kids will also perform the same musical for children at the Fortress Church of Christ and at Christ's Haven.
Our plan is also to share lots of pizza and hot dogs and soft drinks and ice cream with these children and their families - probably putting on a few collective pounds in the process - and to just have lots of fun as we help our children to see (or, more likely, as our children help us to see) what it means to participate in the mission of Jesus in the world.
I can't promise posts every day between now and June 23, but I'm hoping to get in at least four or five posts, and - with any luck - we'll also post daily updates (and photos!) while we're in Fort Worth.
I'm also hoping that I can get a few additional members of our team to blog in this space. So hang on, there is much more to come...
- Matt
posted by Matt @ Wednesday, June 08, 2005
2 Comments:
To all of the kids on this trip:
What a blessing from the Lord to see your faces and hear your hearts in song a few Sundays ago in our worship! God is already working through you and as you sing about Him, He will be working on the hearts of all those who will hear you in Ft. Worth. Thank you for allowing God to use you in his mission of the love of Jesus. I see and hear Jesus in you!
Blessings, Mary Lee Mattis
I worked at Highland with your kids for a couple years, and now I'm teaching in Irving. I have some friends who work at Fortress, and if you guys don't mind, I would love to come see the musical when y'all perform it there. I'd love any details you can give me so that I can come over there and see the kids. You can leave a comment on my blog, or at the bottom of my page, there's a place where you can email me. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks!
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