Last week my team got picked to go to an English kids camp that the church puts on to be camp councilors. Along with our team, Lauren, Hailey, Christa and Jenny came along to help as well, and Bri stayed home because she was feeling ill. We arrived at camp on Sunday evening in time for supper, we had enough time to settle in and get the camp set up. The camp was held in an old orphanage that closed down a few years ago. The main reason it finally closed down was because all but one (whose mother won’t release her guardianship) of the children got adopted, so cool right?! No it gets better, the church that we are working with this month; each and every one of those children was adopted by a member of that church. Yea now that’s amazing, shows you what a church community should really be like.
Church’s around the world may not have as many members as the ones back home, but heck they give me a renewed spirit when it comes to church. For a long time I never wanted to go to church again, the church I had grown up in had seriously made me question a lot about what a church is really about. If they are truly for God and preaching the gospel or if a church was supposed to put on a good face for the members, not share any of their problems and pretend to be "perfect". Also it felt a lot like if something was wrong you don’t fix it, you just get rid of it and that is not at all what the Bible and God tells us to do. I had seen the destruction a church can cause and I was speechless at the sight, I was done with the church. But then I went to The Miz City Church and wow, once again speechless, but this time by what a church can really do for its people and the community. What I wanted to see in a church, small congregation but from that comes the most intimate relationships with on another. With a Pastor that is the first one out the door at the end of the service and shakes the had of every single person that was there, remembering their names and asking a few quick questions about their lives. Once again when something isn’t sitting well with someone, they are able to approach the pastor with out any hesitation and ask questions about it and work through it instead of just getting rid of the problem. The Miz brought me to a new understanding of Church and actually made me want to go every Sunday. In the few short months that I had attended before I left, I made better connections and felt more at home than a church that I had been attending for 10 years. Amazing what I church can do for you. Not trying to say that my old church wasn’t good but just the fact that, that church didn’t work for me, we weren’t suited and we had different ideas and values in what a church should be.
Well I’m realizing now that this isn’t where my blog was supposed to go, I was going to tell you about my week at camp but I guess God had something else in mind! It’s funny how God works sometimes, so I guess I will have to write another blog to let you all know how the English camp went!
