So Hannah and my friend Maddi have both started blogs. If you want to follow them (which you totally should), you can find their profiles in the Followers list on the side. I've mentioned Hannah numerous times and pretty much every single word out of her mouth is pure gold. Plus she's a lion. And Maddi is just plain hilarious and God has given her a strong calling for missions and to stay in Nicaragua with the Kolbs for a year. I'm looking forward to hearing the stories and how God will use her. Just throwing that out there!
Both of them have blogged stories about the past weekend, and so I gave in and decided to do it as well.
There is a youth conference that occurs one weekend every March called Sold Out. We worship, meet old friends, make new friends, go on outreaches, eat, play games, and basically just go crazy for a couple of days. It's always so much fun.
Permit me the luxury of setting the stage here. In preparing for this conference, we had a choice of outreaches to pick from. I usually sign up for street ministry and had signed up for it once again, but we later heard that there was another outreach for an organization called Living Water International, not to be confused with Living Waters which is much more painful and probably more chaotic. Basically it is an organization that focuses on missions. The outreach was intended for making care packages for missionaries. That sounded interesting, so when our group was asked for volunteers, my hand shot up into the air along with Maddi's. Tammy wrote our names down, and that was it.
Friday afternoon, we got to the conference and us leaders had to confirm which outreach we were attending. I was feeling pretty confident as I walked up to the table where we had to get specific bracelets to show which outreach to go on. I peered upside-down at the list of leaders and the outreaches we had signed up for. A frown creased my forehead.
Next to my name, in the "Outreaches" column, was "Street" instead of "LWI".
Well, now, this was unexpected.
I attempted to fix that, but to no avail. The girl with the list asked me, "You're on 'street', is that okay?" No, it kind of wasn't. Fumblingly, I tried to explain the situation, but there were a bunch of other people wanting to confirm their outreaches and I was getting bewildered and frustrated. Finally I just said, "Yes, it's fine," and walked off.
I was not happy. I was quite verbal about it, too. Look, I love street ministry. I do. It's something the Lord has really placed on my heart. It's one of the boldest, hardest things to do, and I love it and hate it for exactly that. Honestly though, I just simply didn't want to do it and I'm not really sure what was up with that. I think maybe I was just bored with it, or I wanted to do something different, or maybe even I was just too scared. Maybe all of them. But if the Lord wanted me to do it, than whatever. Friggin' fine.
We learned about a method of ministry called Treasure-Hunting. You take time to listen to the Lord and see if He has any words of knowledge or anything specific to look for.... like specific names, places to go, articles of clothing, things to pray for, etc. You write it down, and then you take the list/treasure map with you as you go and hunt for the treasured person God is leading you to. It was so scary to write everything down. I was getting some really intense, weird, dumb stuff, and all I could think of was, "Lord, I don't want to pray for this." I was afraid to go, which doesn't make sense because I've had experience with street ministry, but it makes sense when you think about the fact that Satan likes to try and scare us off from amazing things God has in mind.
What made things worse, though, was that we had to break into groups of three or four and compare papers to see if we had gotten anything similar. I didn't know the two girls with me, Elissa and Yasmeen, and it was just so embarrassing to read my words out loud. One of my words was "yellow flower" and one of theirs was "yellow", and they both got "mannequin". Elissa had "mall", and Yasmeen had "park" and "nail salon". We debated on where to go and just decided to start at a nearby mall, as the mannequins Elissa had pictured looked like the mannequins at this specific place.
It took a while to get there so I was joking around a lot to take the edge off of my nerves. "What are we going to do?" I said. "Find a mall inside of a nail salon? Find a nail salon inside of a park? Find a park inside of a mall?" We were all laughing as we walked inside of the mall. It was big. There was an ice rink, man. We were heading deeper into the mall when my gaze happened to fall on a small photography studio, set up in the middle of the mall.
It was set up to look like a park. There was a bench, and a white gazebo, and a background of a park/garden. And I'll eat my laptop with a fork and spoon if there weren't flowers, the majority of them yellow, arranged all over the place.
"Park," was all I could say, weakly. The other girls didn't hear.
"Park," I said a little more loudly. "Park. Park. Park. Park. PARK!"
"Huh?" Their heads swiveled simultaneously and we all stopped, taking it in. Knowing that this was exactly where God had brought us.
Problem was, there was no one in sight. It was completely empty. We stood there for a few minutes before deciding to come back later. We went from one end of the mall to another. Nothing.
We saw a vase of yellow flowers at the mall's information desk, and that a young lady was working the desk. Ah, what the heck. We went up to her and waited for her to look over at us. When she did, the other girls didn't say anything. I figured I wouldn't immediately alert her to the fact that we were on a mission from God, albeit a weird one. I opened my mouth with the coolest, most casual, most subtle conversation-starter.
"Is there anything we can pray for you about?" was what came out.
Okay, time for Plan B.
It's hard to say who was more stunned--the poor girl, or Elissa and Yasmeen. They hadn't done much street ministry before and were expecting a much less abrasive approach. And the girl's jaw was down to her knees. Her eyes were huge.
Yeah, definitely time for Plan B. If only I knew what Plan B was.
The others intervened and we told her what we were doing. At one point she interrupted us and went to finish a phone call. I kind of wondered if she was faking the call, or if she was calling security (which seemed infinitely more likely), but we stood and waited. She hung up the phone and looked back at us. She then proceeded to say that she had turned from her church a year ago, but that she really missed it and being close to God and wanted to go back and have a community.
Ah, now we were getting somewhere. She didn't really want prayer, so I asked "Well, can I pray a blessing over you?" and got the wide-eyed stare again. Note: If someone doesn't want prayer, ask if you can bless them. Generally people find it hard to turn down a blessing. Plus you still get to share God's heart for them.
She did indeed agree to that. It was good stuff.
We headed back towards the photography set and while no one was working there, there was still plenty of people about. Elissa and I persuaded Yasmeen, who is thirteen, into praying for a woman (wearing a blouse with yellow flowers) by herself. It was so much fun to watch her and to see the woman's reaction do a complete 180. We actually thought the woman would be mad since initially she had had a frown on her face, but she ended up having a pretty smile. Also marital problems that Yasmeen prayed for.
We prayed for a couple more people. There was a woman who sat on a bench behind us, and I turned and casually asked if she wanted prayer without consulting the other two. She wanted prayer for good health. Then there was a little girl who ran by with a yellow flower in her hair. She was adorable. We struck up a conversation with her mom (who was wearing a yellow shirt) and found out that she was divorced. Her husband had an affair with a coworker and got her pregnant, so he left his wife and married the coworker instead.
We talked with her for a while. It was so awesome how open she was, and how much she loved her daughter. She spoke about how afraid she was that her daughter would be affected by not having a father figure, and how she hoped the Lord would somehow provide her with that. We showed her our treasure maps and pointed out the words that had led us to the mall, the photography set, and to her. We prayed over her for quite a while, and then I opened up my treasure map once more and showed her some lyrics I had written down that morning that I felt God reserved for her.
You are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life
And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars
But you are not alone in this
You are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand
And we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand
Timshel by Mumford & Sons
I didn't see the look on her face, but the others did. Yasmeen said later that she was on the verge of tears.
At this point, we were still hanging around outside of the photography set. Some people had come and were working on it, but we felt God wanted us to bless the photographer and couldn't tell which one it was. Turned out to be none of them. The photographer showed up later, after a long line had formed for children, including the girl with the yellow flower in her hair, to take pictures of them with a person dressed as the Easter Bunny. She immediately began working.
Well, damn.
I didn't want to just stay there forever. I also didn't want to leave. I thought about leaving a note, but none of us had pens or paper besides our treasure maps. After puzzling over it forEVER (praying for the other people in between puzzlement), I stood up and walked over to one of the girls working in the photography stand.
"Do you have a pen and paper I could borrow?" I asked. She gave me a strange look but humored me by giving me a pen and searching for paper. No paper. She handed me the cardboard back of a notepad. Alrighty then, good enough. I sat back down with the other girls and started praying, thinking, and writing. I explained the situation to the photographer, first apologizing for being weird, and then about the words "mall", "park", and "yellow flower" that had lead us to her. I prayed a general blessing over her, and some specific stuff. I don't remember it all. The other girls read it when I finished and signed their names. They had managed to figure out the photographer's name by sneaking looks at her nametag (her name was Paris), and Yasmeen decorated the cardboard note with Paris's name and some girly, nice-looking stuff.
Now for the delivery. I went and gave the pen back to the same girl. "Can you give this to Paris?" I asked, regarding the note.
"You can just give it to her," she replied.
Well. No. I mean, I could've, but she was busy and I felt a little too chicken to interrupt her. I almost did. But then I just set the note down and asked for it to be given to her when she had time.
The girl handed it to Paris right as I stepped away. Paris looked at me. I gave her a huge, sheepish smile, and fled.
We'll probably never hear from her or any of the other people again. Which is one of the saddest things about street ministry, because I'd like to know the rest of their stories. I'd like to hear what God does for them. I'd like to spend more time with most people we meet and to just simply hear them talk. I'd like to hear their struggles. I'd like to share my struggles with them.
It's hard. But it's okay, because God knows, and that is enough for us.
