Brad spent Thursday through Sunday in Branchville Correctional Facility (an Indiana state prison) with a group of 46 (I think) other guys on a Kairos team. This is modeled similar to Tres Dias, Walk to Emmaus, etc. but it’s geared toward the gang members and negative leaders in the prison. This is the third one we’ve done at Branchville. It’s amazing to watch these 42 inmates come in on Thursday evening not too sure what to think about us or the program. Then leave Sunday evening hugging us and not wanting it to end. (the Kairos team is not too excited about it ending either) God can really do some amazing things when we get out of the way and just let Him use us to show people His love for them.
Cindy spent Sunday morning at our church in Boonville, Main Street General Baptist Church, playing with the orchestra from our other church, Christian Fellowship Church. Everybody had a great time. Cindy said the next time the orchestra’s self-esteem gets low they will go play at Main Street – the people were incredible.
(Brad) On Sunday someone mentioned to me that it was December 1st and then asked when we are leaving. It hit me, from now on when people ask that question I won’t be saying January, I’ll be saying next month. It’s getting closer.
When we started the process of putting together a support team we talked about how we should do it. We knew it would require quite a bit of traveling to speak at churches and we wanted to share our hearts with as many people as possible. Initially we thought the best approach would be to remove ourselves from all the other stuff we were involved with (Brad with prison ministry and Kairos and Cindy with the orchestra). As we thought about it we begin to understand it was our involvement with thses that had played a significant role in getting us where we are in our relationship with God leading to our move to Central America. With this in mind it seemed crazy to remove ourselves from what was playing a significant role in growing our relationship with God. So, we made the decision that Brad would stay involved with prison ministry and Cindy with the orchestra as much as possible. In fact, we marked on our calendar the major events for these activities and chose not to schedule speaking engagements for those weekends. Yes, it did mean reducing the number of opportunities we could share. However, we believe God is more interested in our relationship with Him than cramming in as many speaking engagements as possible.
Besides, who is better at putting together a support team – us or God? (Won’t bother to answer that one) What’s that principle Jesus laid out about putting God first and trusting Him to take care of the rest? Of yea, it’s found in Matt 6 and Luke 12.
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