The week I have been waiting for all summer has come and gone. The past two weeks of training and the actual camp of WIRED will be two weeks that I will never, ever forget for the rest of my life. WIRED has been one of my favorite experiences of all time. From serving in the Wiregrass, to teaching a bible study for the first time, to every night of worship when hundreds of students surrendered to God. WIRED has truly touched my life in more ways than one and the time I have spent with my ministry tract team, along with my own church youth group is time that I will cherish forever.
My favorite part of the whole week was worship every night. There is nothing in this world I love more than good nights of worship. The band 33 Miles led worship every night. I had heard of them before WIRED, but now, I am very fond of them! Their attitude, passion for Christ, and overall music talent made the camp ten times better. The camp speaker for the week was Dave Edwards. He is one of my all time favorite speakers! I heard him speak at an Xtreme Conference in Panama City a couple of years ago and I instantly loved him. I was excited to hear he was coming to WIRED. He uses funny life experiences and comedy to hook people and uses all of that to relate it back to what he is talking about.
Next to worship, the dramas every morning in the morning worship were my second favorite. Each morning, some of the tract leaders would get together and do a skit, that connects and relates to the bible study we would do each day in our tract groups. They all basically centered around this one person. Sunday night's was mass chaos, but that's what it was suppose to be. To reinforce the whole them of being in rhythm with God, two tract leaders playing a guitar and bongo drums were playing in rhythm. While that was happening, all 55 other leaders ran up to the stage, making noise, playing other instruments out of rhythm with them. I played my harmonica! We all soon left, showing how they were in rhythm, while we weren't. It was a very good example. Monday morning's was the "Everything" drama from Lifehouse, and if you haven't seen that one, go look it up on YouTube. BEST ONE EVER. Tuesday's showed that slow fade in a Christian's relationship with God. Wednesday's showed how a Christian can be in the muddled middle and being comfortable in their sin. Thursday's was very much in your face. It demonstrated how the person was set and determined to get out of the muddled middle and surrender to God, by destroying all of their sin. Friday's showed how we need to see people in the world with God's love, once we have that intimate relationship with Him.
Chaperoning with Bethlehem was fun. I thought it would take some work, but we actually had more chaperones than girls staying in our room. haha. We stayed at First Baptist. A funny fact about staying at FBC: We had to use a shower trailer. haha. It was awful! I'm so grateful for my shower at home now. Really. I had to sleep on an air mattress all week, which wasn't that bad, but I missed my bed! Our youth group has good kids in it. They are crazy fun and wild, but good kids. I loved spending time with them.
Sunday:
It all began at 1 o'clock that day. As much as I wanted to tell myself that I wasn't nervous. I was. 10 of the 57 tract leaders met up at First Baptist in Dothan to begin preparing the rooms for the some of the youth and their chaperones to stay in. First off, FBC is pretty much huge, so disassembling all the rooms was a time consuming job! We spent about an hour doing that, had some chill time, then the thirteen churches that stayed their began arriving. All us tract leaders were basically tour guides that afternoon. We had to show them around, tell them the rules, etc. The "pizza blast" was set to kick off that night, which started the whole week off. After feeding all 760 kids (which was madness by the way) we split up into our ministry tract teams. There were around 15 social ministry teams, 20 children's ministry teams, and 20 something construction teams. I was blessed by being a leader and a part of a social ministry team, with 9 wonderful girls, a great youth pastor, and also a fabulous woman for a chaperone. We had a tract team meeting for a couple of hours to discuss the sites we would be going to throughout the week, the bible study, and just to get to know each other a little bit before the week began. We played games, answered ice breaker questions, and did other things for us to get better acquainted with one another. After that, it was the kick-off celebration concert with 33 Miles, which was great!
Monday:
First official day of camp. CRAZY BUSY! What can I say...I prayed alot that morning before our staff meeting. I prayed for God to grant me peace for the whole day. I needed to have that peace to teach the bible study and just to have that leader mindset for the day to come. Staff meetings every day at 7:30-KILLER. So early! haha. The first morning celebration was amazing. Once I stepped into that worship center, a sense of calmness and determination came over me, and I then knew that God was going to help me through this first day. The worship that morning was so powerful and it's exactly what I needed. God's presence was in that room and He was blessing everyone with His spirit. That morning, through a couple of songs, I just began to weep. And that was the first time in a while that I cried in a worship service. I knew that God was going to work in my life the whole week, as well as my whole tract team. The first site we went to was Westside Terrace, a nursing home in Dothan. We stayed there the whole day, just interacting with the residents. Throughout the morning and afternoon, the residents there touched our lives and we touched theirs as well, more than we could know. That morning they had a blueberry pancake social, so we went around to each room asking them if they wanted to come, then we helped serving and just talked with each resident. We soon helped with lunch also.
We had lunch ourselves, then we did our bible study. Monday's theme was on forgiveness and it went incredibly well. God's forgiveness is really too good to be true. When we forgive someone, we never really forget it. God forgives us of our sins and throws them into His sea of forgetfulness, but it's hard for us to realize that sometimes. Also, we often think that God will stop loving us or give up on us if we sin too much, just like how we would give up on someone that has disappointed us in the past or present. Realizing and truly accepting God's forgiveness is the first step in a meaningful walk with Him. And trusting God in everything is essential in our walk with Him. Giving your whole self to God and letting Him have every crevice of us is how we have that true walk with God, which leads to us being in rhythm with Him. After bible study, we went back to helping there. It was truly heartbreaking to see all the people there and how much they needed help. It was an amazing experience. One lady in particular, who was 105, was so awesome. Her wisdom, her attitude, I loved absolutely everything about her. After that afternoon, I knew that God was really using our team to impact lives and serve the community that day and the rest of the week.
Worship was great that night. 33 Miles rocked it out and Dave spoke on a good subject, which of course led back to the bible study we had that day and the opening celebration. He asked the question: What is keeping us from being in rhythm with God and following Christ fully? He gave four main reasons for what was preventing us from being in rhythm. The first one was our friends. If our friends aren't following Christ fully, we might not most of the time. They also may talk us out of it and influence us into stuff we don't necessarily want to do. Second, our love life. We get too caught up in our boyfriends or girlfriends and don't focus on what's important. Third, our faith. We may know the culture, but we never make the connection with God. A good quote that Dave said, "We all taste like chicken." When he said this, he was referring to that we all look like normal Christians sometimes, but we really are lacking in our relationship with God. The last thing he said was preventing us, is our problems. We try and make excuses for our relationship with God. We need to let our problems drive us back to Christ though, and make our return to him. We need to fully believe in Him and trust Him with everything. It was a great sermon for the first night, to really look at ourselves and our relationship with God. In the invitation, over a hundred students accepted Jesus into their heart or either fully surrendered to Him, by rededicating their lives to Him. It was an amazing thing to see.
Tuesday:
The first day went smoothly as it could be, but I knew that the second day would be even better. Little did I know what was to occur that day. Opening celebration went well again. It's really awesome to worship our God, before we get out into the community and serve Him in every way we can. After morning worship, we headed to Rehobeth Elementary School for the day. Our goals for the day were to wash every window, in several buildings and also take down the blinds in the windows to clean them. And boy were they nasty!! We split up, took room by room and got the windows done, as far as we knew. We took the blinds down, hosed them off and attempted to scrub the dirt and muck off. We were done with that by lunch. We went inside to eat lunch and to do our bible study. I could tell by the second bible study, that God was slowly but surely giving me more courage every day to teach it to these kids.
Tuesday's theme was the slow fade. It was all about taking those small compromises, that can eventually lead to bigger compromises, all coming back to sin. We talked about the things we delight in, such as music, friends, shopping, sports, etc. Then, we talked about what it means to delight in the law of the Lord. The bible study began to get really good at this part, where we started discussing our counsel in life and whether or not it is Godly or ungodly. To delight in the law of the Lord is to absorb that wise Godly counsel, infinitely. Sometimes, we have to limit our involvement with certain people, or even cut them out all together. I gave them some insight on my life at this point, explaining how it was hard for me to cut some people out of my life, that were influencing me in bad ways and I think they really related to that. We then talked about how all Christians can fall. Satan knows where our buttons are and he knows which levers to push to began that slow fade in us, to initiate the fall we can take. We have to be deep in God's Word, so we won't be tempted to fall and we have to indeed delight in the law of the Lord. Our counsel is what ultimately causes the slow fade. Also, we have to quit asked God where the line is. We need to trust Him and not ask Him "Is this good? Is this bad?" Asking Him how far we can go without sinning is basically doubting Him and shows that we don't have that deep, personal relationship with Him. The way we can keep from falling is to eliminate the ungodly counsel in our life, that can lead us away from Him.
Worship was again stinkin great, but also, this night was amazing all on it's own. The schedule for worship that night didn't go as planned, but no one would have wanted it any other way, because what it was changed everyone that was there that night. 33 Miles began it's worship, and it was intense. Just when Dave was suppose to come out and speak as he had usually done so far, he came out and asked the band to come back out and play a couple of more songs. I can't explain how that worship center felt. At the beginning chords and guitar strumming of Chris Tomlin's "Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)" I felt God's spirit overtaking me. Nothing can compare to an unbelievable night of worship for the King. God's presence was absolutely everywhere in that room. God was doing great things in Dothan, Alabama that night and was going to the rest of the week. The invitation was different this night, as it's main focus was on surrendering to ministry. Once again, over a hundred people responded and surrendered to ministry.
Wednesday:
By the third day, I basically had gotten used to everything. Wake up. Staff meeting. Opening celebration. Site. Bible study. Free time. Worship. Sleep. Rinse and repeat. haha. I had finally got into that routine. And just when I got into that routine, something happened to get everyone out of their routine. FIRE ALARM! lol. Right before morning celebration, the fire alarm at Ridgecrest went off. EVENTFUL! Rumors were flying about there was a real fire, someone pulled the alarm, or 33 Miles' fog from their stuff got into the vents, which caused it to go off. No one really knows! It was a fun 20 minutes of my life though. Morning celebration continued on after that, then we headed to our third site of the week! It was the Ashford Senior Center, in Ashford. We were there for 2 hours. And you know what we did for a solid 2 hours? Played B-I-N-G-O! Chyeahh. The people there were so cheerful and loved us to death. I can't believe that our cheeks didn't get pinched. Really. They told us about their grand-kids, kids, church home, and really anything else that came to their mind. They were good folks! We headed to a church in the area, after that, for lunch and our bible study.
The bible study for Wednesday was titled "the muddled middle". Basically, this whole bible study was about how we can often get fixated on our sin, get comfortable in it, and are stuck in that middle between being on fire for God or being on fire for the world. We may not realize it, but when we are in this muddled middle, Christians often get tagged with the word hypocrite. The study began with the discussion about how we feel about when people switch back in forth between sports teams. A prime example I used in this was Auburn and Alabama of course. We tend to look down on these people that can't make up their mind between teams, but why don't we when Christians go back and forth between the world and God? God reminds us that we aren't the only people to fall and He'll always be with us no matter what, but we have to stop straddling that fence between the world and Him. For many of us, the main problem is trying to recognize Jesus over our whole life and this is due to the tension between the god we want and the God who is. So how do we get off this fence? The goal is to be intimate with Jesus, without hesitation of who He is or what He's done. We must establish roadblocks in our lives for those days when our heart goes places that it shouldn't. These roadblocks will stop you from doing something, even if you want to and the next day, you'll be extremely grateful. Jesus will help us fight our battles!
We headed over to Somerset West Assisted Living that afternoon and just talked with the residents there and watched them draw. It's awesome the things you learn about a person by just sitting and talking with them. The lady that I was chatting with was a master at drawing. It was mindblowing how good she was. I would have never thought, by just getting to know her that she was extraordinary at drawing. It was great! I told her she needed to frame her artwork and that made her laugh. I loved Somerset.
After we were done for the day at site, we came back to Ridgecrest and I was already excited because the day when so incredibly well, but I was EXTRA excited after that. Know why? I was going to see Morgan the first time in a whole month Wednesday night!! I couldn't wait. Momma G's then worship. It was so good to catch up with Mo and I loved hearing some of her stories about Peru and all that she did there. It sounded amazing! Worship was real good that night. Dave discussed finding your rhythm after being caught up in that muddled middle. He said we have to realize the following things: 1. He is Christ. 2. He is in control. 3. He gets the last word in. 4. He is committed. A Momma's Love, nachos, talking to one of my most favorite people ever, and great worship service=best night ever.
Thursday:
I woke up thinking...is it really Thursday? Why is this week flying by so fast? CRAZINESS. Hit up the daily staff meeting as usual, and we started talking about the last day. It made me sad! I wanted WIRED to be on repeat the rest of my life. Morning celebration was awesome as usual also. We had been usually doing our bible study during our site lunch everyday, but Thursday, we did it before going to site. The theme for today was decision time. This focused on truly deciding whether you want to live fully for God or fully for the world, because the muddled middle is not the place to be. The first question asked was if any of us enjoyed being miserable. Are you kidding me? Who enjoys being miserable? No one. We are indeed miserable though, if we are in that middle, not on fire for God, and in rhythm with Him. When we get stuck in the middle, we have hope in God. The compromise must stop and obedience must start. We then must transform our minds. His word cleanses us and makes us new! We have to become rooted in the word. This will greatly affect our relationship with Him. We can't look at our quiet time, bible time, daily devotion, praying, etc. as the things we have to do, but as the things we get to do. We must also abide in Christ. We can't have joy, peace, love, patience, or other things like these unless Jesus has full control. When we are fully abiding in Christ and have the mindset like Him, He will lead us to serve others.
We went to Wesley Manor that morning and going there, I already had a special connection with it. My great-grandmother was there before she died a couple of years ago. I had never been there before Thursday, but I knew she had been there, so I just felt that connection with that place. All of us divided up and did different things around the place. Some students went and helped with manicures, some made crafts with residents, some set up bowling for people to play, while me and another person called BINGO. That was fun! I love me some BINGO. After that, I walked around the whole place, interacting with residents. I saw one of my kids in a room, so I went to see who she was talking to. Little did I know the person I was about to meet would soon become one of my heroes. I met William Phillips. He was a man in his 80's, full of life and had a heart for God. He told me about his time in the military, his family, and other things that were interesting to me. One real interesting fact about Mr. Phillips, is that he had a passion for coins and everything about them. He had several coin books in his room. He used these coin books to minister to people in his own kind of way. He gave them to different people he came in contact with in his life. He is one of the sweetest, elderly men I have met. He gave me one of his coin books, full of coins and I will cherish it forever. On the outside of the coin book, there was a piece of tape which said, "God loves you and I love you." Receiving that almost made me cry. I'll never forget that man.
Gran's Home that afternoon. It is in a sketchy part of Dothan, but I enjoyed every second of that place. It is a very small nursing home type place with about five or so residents there. I had never heard of it before WIRED! We went in and played games the whole time with the people there. Monopoly, checkers, and of course dominoes went down. It was great getting to know the people there. It was finally hitting me that Friday was approaching and WIRED was coming to a close when we were done at Gran's Home that day.
Dave's sermon that night was remarkable. He explained how to stay faithful to God in our relationship with Him. We tend to put our faith in everything but God and we have to commit to that intimate, personal relationship with Him. We need to connect our life to the principles of God's word. There's is a principle for everything we face, in His word. Concentration on good choices in daily living is key to being in rhythm with Him. God's will is a ring and we can't break it to be with the world.
Friday:
Last day. I was exhausted by Friday, but I didn't want it to be the last day of WIRED 2010. WHY!! lol. Props on the last morning celebration. Good as always! The skit wasn't as good as the others were, but decent. The last bible study for the week was titled vision. The jest of the whole study today was that us as Christians can be great people in the world and we should aspire to be those great people, all while we love people in the world with all our hearts, just as Jesus did. We need to have that vision of Jesus to help us see lost people in the world as He does. So how do we begin to see through the eyes of Christ? Our growth in the relationship with God will take time and over this time, we will go through trials and experiences that will show us God's love, which will help us learn how to shower other people in the world with His love. As we grow in Christ, He broadens our interests. The time we spend growing in Christ will mature our relationship with Him and will lead to us gaining our spiritual glasses to see other people as He does. We won't see people through races or stereotypes, but as one people. Also, the world needs to see Christians who are nothing alike. From a cheerleader, to a goth, or a jock. We need to show them that Christians are everyone and that we love everyone in the world. They will then want to hear the gospel.
The most captivating place we went to all week was on Friday. We went to the Ark, which is basically a halfway house. Never would I thought that Dothan had a place like that. It was truly a wake up call. The building was the old Flowers Hospital, which was creepy all by itself. Oh goodness! We went down to the old morgue....scariest place I've ever been in my life. I felt like I was on those shows on Discovery Channel where the people try and look for the ghosts. lol. CRAZYYYY! Oh and let me tell you what we did there. There were multiple boxes of trail mix in the morgue. We moved them up to the thrift store. Weird, huh? I need to know why food was in the morgue. Odd. We were there to serve though...so I didn't ask questions! We saw where all the men slept and went through the rehab type program and we went and prayed over their beds. It was an experience for sure. I enjoyed it! After the Ark, we headed downtown to do a prayer walk. That was great! Me and two of my girls went to the police department and prayed for them, then headed to the civic center to pray for them as well. Others went to the courthouse, the Dothan Eagle, WTVY, and other related places.
The closing celebration was nothing more than EPIC!! 33 Miles played the best they did all week and Dave spoke great again. Going back to the theme of vision for the day, he talked about how to gain that vision. By responding properly to God, we will speak with honor and respect others, loving them to our full ability. We need to repent positively. Don't stay down when you fail. We can quickly realize our mistakes. God doesn't count our falls, but the steps we take during them. We lastly have to receive our purpose in His will.
WIRED 2011 FTW!!
