Short Term Missions...is it worth it?

Last week I shared with you the details of what our El Salvador mission team "did." More importantly, this week I want to share with you what impact this trip had on individuals from our team. I'm reminded that we are no human "doings" but "beings." It is not what we accomplish in a project but how does that project change us or those on the receiving end of the activity.

Chris Bair wrote this paragraph on how the trip and living with a El Salvadorian family impacted him.
"One observation and take -a-way for me is the love and acceptance I felt and experienced from Carlos and Lana and what I would consider to be the "Salvadorian" people. I had no interest in "Latino community" prior to this trip. Hey I nearly failed Spanish in college. I believe God indirectly confronted my prejudice for this people group. I think I noticed it right from the start of the trip with the Huber's. They could communicate and genuinely loved the people. I saw that and it was not until Monday night that I really started to feel comfortable with Carlos. I had so much fun finding out about him and his family and life experiences. By the end of the week I was calling their home my home and I could not wait to go home at night and talk with them. They really made this trip a blessing for me."

This is what Billy and Kris Huber wrote:
It was an awesome trip - truly blessed and directed by God. We felt His presence and leading throughout the trip. It was exhausting and challenging and wonderful. We hated to see the week come to an end and now feel a little like we're returning to a different world - a world that was so very familiar only a week ago now seems somehow strange and we feel a little out of place.

As I wrote in my journal this morning, "I feel like I want to gather everyone I know and care about together and go down to El Salvador and minister to people." It was a powerful, exciting and inspiring week and we return with much to think about and much to share. We're looking forward to processing and sharing with you.

Thanks for your support and encouragement for this trip. I anticipate that this will not only change the lives of those who went but will also have impact on Christ Community and specifically at the Sarpy Campus.

Lance Grush who was our missionary host while in El Salvador will be at the Sarpy Campus on November 16th for both services.

On the Journey,
Steve Walters
Campus Pastor

p.s. don't forget to turn your clocks back one hour Saturday night!

El Salvador: An Overview

"Smooth, challenging, stretching, fun, exhausting and exhilarating."

Those are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind after spending a week with this team in El Salvador. We saw God work in creative and miraculous ways meeting either the needs of our team or the needs within the church body there in El Salvador.

We had the privilege of spending October 12-19 in El Salvador with Lance Grush. Lance grew up at Christ Community Church and was called to missions during a CCC short term mission trip to Puerto Rico over 20 years ago.

We hit the proverbial floor running. Our flight came in Sunday afternoon and within an hour we were in hour host homes and then off to church. Then starting Monday and going all day Tuesday, Wednesday and then Thursday morning, we had the opportunity to teach ESL to students in 7th, 8th and 9th grade. In each of the 15+ classes we were able to give our testimony and then to have a college student from Lance's church present the Gospel and lead the class in prayer. We literally saw hundreds of students raise their hand indicating a decision to follow Christ and/or wanting to have a follow up conversation with somebody from the church.

Thursday afternoon found us going to the Remar orphanage outside of San Salvador.

Friday was a well deserved break with opportunity to debrief and evaluate the week.

Saturday had us preparing for an afternoon of us helping with "OWANSA" [AWANA for you gringos] by doing a puppet show for their opening program. Later that day we helped with the youth group meeting into the evening.

After a late dinner we packed and slept for a few hours until 3:00am Sunday. We then piled into the van and Fransisco [our driver for the week] drove us to the airport for our 6:45 flight to Houston.

I can say without hesitation that this was one of the smoothest trips with all of us having a great time together doing ministry. Thank you for your prayer and financial support. The only glitch I can think of was the inability to post a blog or two during the week either because of our full schedule and late nights or not having access to the internet at my host home.

I will post some thoughts and observations in the weeks to come.

Until then,

Dios Debendiga

[God Bless]

Why we do what we do

On September 28th Christ Community-Sarpy hosted a Car Show. There was a total of 317 that attended worship and/or the Children's Ministry that day. Not a huge increase in worship attendance that Sunday. To be honest, I was hoping there would be. Yes, I do have a tendency to focus on numbers. Pray for me.

However, what happened outside the walls of church humbled me. After counting, yes, counting how many cups we went through and being told that we ran out of food [we had planned for 400] it slowly dawned on me.I realized that on Sunday we had 100 additional people who came to the car show for the afternoon and didn't darken the proverbial "door of a church."

Another thought. We had over 20-25 volunteers helping Vaughan Wenzel run the Car Show. What got me excited is realizing that half of those helping have only been coming the Sarpy Campus since we started in February.

Keep praying for CC-Sarpy and for those who attend, whether they come inside the church or not!

On the Journey,

Steve Walters
Campus Pastor

Information Overload

This week I received the following information:

• Ninety-six percent put peanut butter on first when making a PBJ sandwich.
• One out of 350,000 Americans get electrocuted at some point in their lives.
• Approximately one out of every 55 Canadian women give birth in their car on the way to the hospital or clinic.

My first reaction to each statistic.

• How weird are those 4%?
• That is a lot of electricity.
• Is that because of universal health care?

My second reaction is realizing that we receive a lot of useless information and statistics each day. Whether it is from cable news, emails, websites, internet access through your cell phone, we have more information coming to us than we know what to do with.

Allow me to give you some kingdom impact information:

• 8 children made decisions last Sunday to be a follower of Christ.
• 52 cars participated in our first ever Car Show and we served 400 attending the show.
• 1 short term mission team from the Sarpy Campus is going to El Salvador October 12-19.
• 40% of those attending the Sarpy Campus were not part of Old Mill when we started in February.
• 60% of the adults attending are involved in a Journey Group.

This is information I can use. I can use it to pray for not only this multi site but also for the planning and preparation for our next multi site in the fall of 2009.

Steve Walters

CCC Sarpy - Campus Pastor