Sunday: Praise You in the Storm

Day Two!

Today was an awesome day full of activities and fun!
Today's tasks: Lead the worship service at Gloversville Free Methodist Church, host a family fun Day Carnival after the service, and prepare for tomorrow's VBS.

This morning something incredible happened. We woke up during a thunderstorm. As we drove to the church, discussing our options for the big event of the day; the family fun carnival, which was planned to take place outside, we began to feel slightly discouraged due to the fact that it was supposed to continue raining all day. As we arrived to the church in the pouring rain, we began to change some of our plans. Of course this was a little upsetting, due to the fact that church attendance was probably going to be lacking on a chilly, rainy Sunday morning and we wanted to have the family fun carnival reach as much of the community as possible. We all circled up outside of the church with Donn and Cyndie and discussed how we couldn't let the rain bring down our spirits. During a storm in our lives it's often easy to become discouraged and give up on things that we are striving for. Satan often tries to disrupt God's plan like he was trying to do this morning. However, we circled up and prayed to God to give us the energy and strength to continue moving forward and for the rain to disappear. After, we went into the service and worshipped our Heavenly Father in song, and sure enough right after that, the rain stopped and the sun came out! We were able to set up all activities outside and have a blast with the church members as well as other people from the community. It was incredible! I think that God has shown us the power of prayer today. When you are striving to do what God is calling for you, nothing can stop you if you simply believe that He will provide, and He always will. The turn out was great for this small church, and the families had a lovely time as well as the rest of the team.

Worship lead by our praise team

Younger children's Sunday school

Older children's Sunday school

Face painting

Cake eating contest

So much cake

The sun is here, yay!

It turns out that, while Gloversville is a very different place from Matthews and faces very different struggles, some things remain constant everywhere: young children are adorable, teens show both their abilities to have fun and demonstrate maturity, and everything we do is only fun because of the relationships we get to build with those who share in the activities with us. We are off to a quick start getting immersed in this community through today's church activities, but the real fellowship of community happens in the days other than Sunday and we know that there are people waiting to meet us who know a life very different than ours and we pray that God will make us open to new understandings of life through those people. Pray that we may somehow gain special access into the lives of this community through fun, games, music, and stories shared among the children and adults that show up for our Vacation Bible School.