Day 4 -- Building Relationships and Serving Joyfully

It was a slow start today…harder to get out of bed, less energy at breakfast, lagging getting out the door. Tiredness always sets in at the end of the week, but that knowledge doesn't make it any easier to deal with during the day.

It was the last day of work projects, and even though it was hard to keep the energy up, everyone did a great job. The first team went back to Center City with Pastor John Davis, to do some street ministry at Drexel and UPenn. One of the BUMPers, Joe, had a cool encounter with an elderly Italian man who’d come from Sicily when he was younger. Joe spoke with the man, who explained that he was raised Catholic but when his mother died, he ceased believing in God and decided that a good God could not exist. As Joe spoke with him, he felt like the words he were saying were just coming to him. He felt like he somehow had managed to ask all the right questions to keep the conversation with this elderly Italian man going, and the last thing he said to the man as he was walking away was “But, if you don’t give God a chance, how do you know you won’t see your Mom again, if she’s in heaven?”

Joe later said he had no idea if that was the right thing to say or if he should have said it, but the words just popped into his head. The Italian man stopped walking away, came back, and got the information for the church. Joe said he had no idea what he was really doing during the conversation, but he felt like God was there and using his words and being present in the conversation, reaching out to this Italian man through him. 

The second team stayed in Feltonville with me, and we went to the Community Center to clear the library’s garden. The library garden is an outdoor space with tables, sculptures, a birdbath, and even a stray cat that the library takes care of. However, there were lots of weeds, overgrown brush, low-hanging tree branches, and general overgrowth in the garden, so we spent most of the morning clearing out the garden, trying to make it a nice place hat the library could use and that the kids could utilize. We cleared nearly thirty bags of trash and nature that morning, so it was a job well done.

The fruit of our work, and the cat :-) 

The third group went to South Philly, to help Pastor Will and Sarah. I wish I could comment more on what the South Philly people did every day in that park, but I was never able to go down L

The post-lunch afternoon in the church was relatively quiet and lethargic as the teams rested before our final worship time and prayer for VBS. Pastor John Davis came and spoke about the city. He shared two opposing views of the city found in the Bible: Jonah’s view of Nineveh and Jesus’s view of Jerusalem. Pastor John spoke about what living in Philadelphia was like, and some of the ministry opportunities he found here. He spoke of loving urban ministry because of the city’s density (the amount of people to be reached), its diversity (reaching people from every nation and tongue), and its depravity (reaching out to people in the midst of and despite sin).

The fourth day of VBS did present some challenges, but they were challenges that were met head-on with the energy and hard work of the teams, and by God’ grace there weren’t any huge issues. The kids were a little rowdy and a little more willing to push buttons on Thursday, but every potential issue was handled by the BUMPers with patience, tact, and love.

It’s always great for me to see the BUMPers change and grow from their first day in the (sometimes terrifying) trenches of VBS ministry and leadership. Rowdy kids were kept engaged, quiet kids opened up, sassy kids met their match, and the gospel was preached through the actions, and words, and love of the BUMPers.

Secret Agent Superstar