Day 5 - (Thursday) Raisin' the Roof of C1, Movie Night style

     Hey there! I hope this message meets you well! This is Stephen back as the blogger again! Thanks so much for reading and/or praying!

     We had maybe the most dragging morning today, probably due to the full day of adventure yesterday.   But that's okay, because today was amazing! The morning started very early at 5:30am for Brenda Denny and Kirk Denny as they drove Tyler Lynn to the airport for him to attend his cousin's wedding in Shelby, North Carolina. We started the day going to Change of 1 Ministry, where Donn assigned us different tasks for the day.  Today was the day for a movie night outside at Melchoir park, but since rain was forecasted for tonight, we changed the location to inside of Change of 1.  Before we went to do our jobs for the day, Ben Icard shared his very moving, real, and inspirational testimony of his tough and long life without Christ and his new amazing and transforming life with Jesus. Ben's testimony touched me and definitely many others without a doubt.
     Donn assigned many of us to go out and clean up trash around the city and talk to people, and even possibly invite people to the movie night.  Jeff Hall, Quinn, Aaron Cobb, and I stayed right outside of C1 during that time to play music (sadly without Tyler) to attract attention to C1.  We played some songs such as "How Great is Our God", "Set a Fire", "How He Loves" and some fun jazz songs, since Jeff  plays tenor saxophone.  The music pulled many people towards C1, and countless people rolled down their windows, waving and smiling as they drove by.  We even offered free pizza to those walking by during our music playing.  
      We felt a little shaky about having the movie night at C1 as a sudden change that day, even though Donn placed a notice about it in the newspaper.  Despite our attempts to tell people about the location change and invite more people, the fliers for handed out earlier in the week said the movie night would be at Melchoir Park.  I was part of a team that was deployed to Melchoir park at around 6:15 before the 7:00 movie to tell people about the change.  We stayed there, throwing the frisbee, for about 45 minutes.  To our amazement, no one was there for the movie.  When we came back to C1, we realized this really was a blessing.  Donn said that he would get another free movie service by the movie screening company since we couldn't do it at the park, and we got to have the original movie night at C1 anyway.  So we got an extra future music night, and we didn't miss anyone or inconvenience anyone about the wrong location.
       Later, we reorganized the C1 rooms to become a "movie theater".  After setting up a makeshift projector and projector screen that Donn has and 40ish chairs, we were ready.  When 6:45 rolled around, we seated almost all 40ish seats, and we were in awe!  We watched the movie "Soulsurfer", which was based on the true story of a Hawaiin surfer Bethany Hamilton, who competed in the USA Pro-finals surfing competition after losing her arm to a shark.  The movie was inspirational and obviously moved us in the room.  After the movie, Cyndie, Donn's wife, told us that an older man who went to church with her when she was about five years old, met her at the movie night and was asking Cyndie where to find a good church.  He said that he only knew to come to C1 that night because he saw something in the paper about it.  This was definitely confirmation to us that God used and planned this location change for His Glory and Purpose.  We have also grown much closer to the 1Gen Youth and they to us.  Donn has shared with us about their encouragement and maturity by seeing us here, and how God is moving in their lives and Donn's ministry.  God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called. God is awakening a generation for His Name, and if we keep submitting to Him and surrendering, we can be and have already been apart of that change through our efforts here.  This trip will hopefully encourage and inspire us to be used by God and follow our calling for our Lord in the entirety of our lives on earth.   
God Bless You All
~Stephen Fitch!