Trial and Error

Today (July 20th) was our first day in the parks! We are all thrown off from Georgia being on a different schedule, the consistent daylight, and I know it's strange for you people reading because of the time difference! So yes, July 20th (today for when I'm starting to type this), was our first day doing what we mainly came here to do: teach and hang out with the kids. We have two teams, and each team goes to a different park. Here's an example of what our parks look like, this is the Government Hill park (and our view from the playground):

I'm going to try my best to get a lot of pictures and stories from both teams, but we technically weren't supposed to take many pictures today... So I just had to sneak a few quick shots. Our Red Team is assigned to Russian Jack park, and our Green Team is at Government Hill. We met all sorts of kids, ranging from ages 4 weeks old to 17 years old. We had a BLAST! We were so busy playing games and chatting away, our time in the parks flew by!

One story really stood out today though, and it gave me a whole lot of hope for this week. Three girls from our crew were leading a Bible study for the teenage girls at the park, and they asked the girls if they were Christians. The girls replied saying no, they didn't really believe in anything- but we were nice people so they respected us and liked us enough to listen to us.

Is that not awesome? That's what we are trying to remember throughout this week when there may be a child, teenager, or even an adult that seems closed off or guarded. We want them to like us enough for being "nice people" so that we can earn the opportunity to share the Gospel with them later. By the end of this week, we may have those girls engaging and chiming in during the lesson, because God can do anything. 

We also split up and went on prayer walks around the neighborhood and prayed over houses, apartments, cars, and even people just walking down the sidewalk. (P.S. The weather is not too hot, not too cold, and no humidity what so ever, so LOTS of folks are on the sidewalk walking! It was really neat, we could definitely feel God's presence.

After playing in the parks and prayer walking, we got the opportunity to go sight see! We went to Eagle River, Mount Baldy, and a beach to watch the sunset (and skip rocks). It was all SO beautiful!

Jeremy even had the chance to minister at the ice cream truck. He started talking to the driver, and he ended up inviting her to our Park Party this week!  

Thank you for the prayers, I'm finishing this up as we are about to go eat breakfast and take on Day 2! LET'S GO!