Atlanta Mission Trip Day 3-4

By: Emily Wilson

June 23- The rest of the day went really well! Kid's day out was amazing and we as a team built so many good relatioinships with the kids. Some of them we had met the other day at MetroKids and they were overjoyed to see us! It was so great giving them a day where it was all about them, we were there just to love them and hug them and kiss them and tell them how beautiful they are. It's life changing... It made every one of us look at our own lives and realized how blessed we are. Below are some stories about what happened:

JASON:
"I was going out to the van to look for a kid and i asked who wanted to go with me and a little girl yelled "I do!" and jumped into my arms. Her name was Ashae. When we got into the church i was telling her stories about my daughter, Talea, and my son, Titus, and she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and asked "Could you be my daddy for today?" It just melted my heart and I was a puddle within. We played the rest of the day: rode piggyback, played on the playground, she even painted my big, bald head blue."

TREVOR RIDDEL:
"When we did MetroKids,I had this kid that was 4 years old and he introduced himself as D-Mac. I played with him all day and loved on him. then during kid's day out, we didn't know who we were gonna get but we did know that there was a van full of kids coming. As I was pulling kids out of the back of the van, I saw this kid poke his head up and reach his arms up with a huge smile on his face and it was D-Mac. As he reached up to me I saw his childlike heart and realized that I should have the same attitude for Christ. That's how we should be to our heavenly father, just like D-Mac, reaching up, wanting to be taken in safe arms and loved."

EMILY WILSON:
"So my story is a lot like Trevor's. During MetroKids, I played with a girl named Zakia. When the van pulled up I was the one who opened the door and she just jumped on me! She kept asking "Do you remember me!?" of course I did. She loved the attention I gave her and she couldn't believe she was getting to play with someone who was 10 years older than her. We talked about God a lot that day and she began to understand how much he loves her. As we were walking she was telling me all the people who loved her. "my mama loves me! my family loves me!" "Kia, who else loves you?" "ummm God loves me!" "that's right. Who else?" "YOU!" "That's right." When she told me that I loved her she hugged me real tight and that was my 'melt the heart' moment. These kids are wonderful. They are funny and adventurous and outgoing and they love attention. I am so blessed to have gotten the opportunity to spend time with them."


The second part of our night was spent reaching out to the homeless people. We went to 5-Point and broke into groups of 5 (each one with a boy so we were safe) and split up to go find people to talk to. So many people were greatfull for the food we brought and our prayers. Below are some stories about what happened:

Bailey:
"So we were about to be finished with Compassion night and we were on our way back to the van and we stopped at a bench. we decided to keep going a little farthur not knowing if we would find anyone, but then we come up to these 2 ladies with 2 sons, ages 6 and 1. As we talked to them we learned that their house burned down and they lost everything. A organization had put them up in a hotel for a week or two, but their last night was the night before. So they were out on the street looking for any support they could find: food, housing..ect.. We gave them 6 bags of food and they were so greatful and you could see it on their face. They asked if we would pray with them and we each took a turn. I was with their baby and he kept grabbing my hand and wanted to be hugged and cuddled. He seemed to look at you with total emptiness. We sat and talked with them for a while and we gave them the number for the dream center so we could help them the next day. They probably slept on the street last night. It was incredible to see the impact of a small hot dog and a bottle of water."

JESSICA BUCK:
"My group was walking and there were 2 guys sitting against a wall and we walked by the first time and they looked up at us with a look of desperation. You could tell they had been out there for a long time. We passed them not thinking they were homeless. One blew a kiss to me, it creeped me out at first, but then I just had a feeling in my heart that we should turn around. We started talking to them and asked if they wanted our food, they claimed they didn't, but after a while they took it. They began to warm up and Matt asked if we could pray for them and he said he would like that. One guy stopped us and said "My girl is in jail right now and gets out in 2 weeks and she's pregnant and it going to have her baby in 6 months and i am scared to death. I want her to clean up." We prayed for him and later that night i was thinking about it and realized that that man comes from a place where he doesn't have much, but he loves his girl and the baby and wants to clean up for her."

After Compassion night, which was around 10:30, we came back to the Dream Center for words of life. Ashley, MacKenzie, Meghan, Jessica, and Matt all went last night. Words of life is personally one of my favorite things we do. Again, the feeling of having the whole group right there with you is incredible. Even with people we have only known for a few days. We finished around 1:30 in the morning.. so bedtime came pretty late.

June 24- Today we got up all feeling like we could use a few more hours of sleep, but nonetheless had a good attitude and trekked to the dream center around 8:30. Today we participated in their Train Ministry. We stayed in our same groups as last night and we got on the train and rode it all the way to the airport. The idea is to talk to a stranger and see if God opens up an opportunity to share faith or words of encouragement. Jason had some pretty good talks as did MacKenzie, Anna, and Tucker. We didn't lose anyone on the train. One group accidently rode one station too far.. but they got back to us safe! No worries! Later tonight we are doing a block party for people in need and afterwards we were supposed to minister to the prostitutes, but we will do that tomorrow night. Instead of that, we are going to an outreach ministry that uses clean christian hip hop to witness to others. That's the plan for tonight. Check back tomorrow for more details on how it went!