Why we do what we do

'Send Me' - Live at MHC | Ballard from Mars Hill Church on Vimeo.

My house is trashed

Everywhere I look, I see piles of clothes, suitcases, bags of toiletries, boxes of missions items....

We are trying to fit most, if not all, of our clothes in carry-ons for our upcoming 10-day missions trip. My niece had a great idea: Instead of spending a lot of money on special compacting travel bags, try putting clothes in Zip-Loc bags and sitting on them to squeeze all of the air out while zipping. She was able to fit an entire outfit in one gallon size bag. We tried it, and it definitely seems to save space. We decided to make it even more more compact by slightly opening the bag and using a straw to remove as much excess air as possible (I learned this trick from my grandma years ago). Jordan fit 10 T-shirts into a 2.5-gallon bag. Nathan decided to put outfits for each day into a 1-gallon bag and date it (another of my niece's ideas). That is a bit too much for me! I will be happy just to squeeze as much as possible into a carry-on.

I am getting really excited for our trip! We have a great team of youth going. We start our team training for this trip tonight, so prayers are appreciated. I will give more details about the trip when we get back.

Have a wonderful and blessed day!

A Quick Update

We have been busy planning and serving at Vacation Bible School and Hope for Warren/Detroit (a large annual outreach to the community), which is the reason for my prolonged absence here. We had a wonderful week of outreach last week! I will blog about it as soon as I have time and get pics uploaded.

We are preparing to lead a group of youth on a short-term missions trip to Mexico later this month. I am so excited! Because of this, I probably will not be actively blogging here until August. I will try to get my outreach post up before we leave.

Blessings,

Deep Justice and Short-Term Missions

Fuller's Center for Youth and Family Ministry is offering a free draft version of Deep Justice and Short-term Missions Curriculum, by Kara Powell and Fuller's Center for Youth and Family Ministry, for a limited time. There are three downloads available: BEFORE with leader's guide (pdf), DURING (pdf) and AFTER (pdf). I downloaded the draft of this curriculum to see if we can use it with a team of youth that we are taking to Mexico this summer, and it looks promising.

When I saw that the Before file was an intimidating (at least for this time of year) 72 pages, I almost decided to wait until next year's trip. We are currently planning VBS, co-coordinating a large local outreach, beginning training for the missions trip in July, and trying to finish up homeschooling for the year. If you have read Deep Justice in a Broken World, by Chap Clark & Kara Powell, however, you will probably understand why I wanted to at least skim through this to see if we could use some of it.

The Before portion of the curriculum begins with an eight-page introduction that includes convincing reasons to use the ideas presented in this curriculum, along with an overview of the three-part model it promotes.

"If we want greater transformation, we need a completely different timeframe for our service. Perhaps instead of viewing an inner city trip as just three days, we need to view it as a 3 month process. Instead of looking at a week in the Dominican Republic as seven days, we need to think of it as a seven month journey."

The remaining 62 pages include seventeen 20- to 40-minute "before" activities broken into three different categories. You choose which activities to use. This is doable; there is no pressure to use all of the activities and we can tailor it to our group.

The During portion of the curriculum includes seventeen activities broken into the same three categories as the Before segment. These activities are intended to guide the team towards reflection on what they are experiencing on the trip.

This is the largest team of youth that we have ever taken on a trip, and we really want to take advantage of its long-term growth potential. I was excited to see that the After portion of the curriculum includes 10 initial debriefing activities using the same three categories and 14 activities to help facilitate "ongoing transformation."

This curriculum is intended for use in any short-term missions setting, whether it be a local 1-day service project or a 10-day short-term missions trip. We have not used it yet, but we do plan to incorporate it into our training for the upcoming Mexico trip. We will probably also try to use at least one of the activities with our whole youth group before VBS and the local outreach I mentioned, as most of our youth serve in one or both of those outreaches. If anyone is interested, I will try to keep you updated on how this works out for us.

If you are interested in downloading Deep Justice and Short-Term Missions, you will find it here. The authors are requesting feedback if you decide to use the draft of this curriculum.

Enjoy!

Youth Ministry Links

These are some of my favorite youth ministry links. This will be an ongoing list, so if you know of any sites I should add, please let me know.

• Fuller Youth Institute
• Dare 2 Share
• The Rebelution
• The Source
• The Urban Youth Workers Institute
• Youth Specialties
• YouthMinistry.com
  

A Little Bit About Me

I am Andrea, wife to the most wonderful man in the world, mother to four of the best children in existence, and a sinful human being, saved by grace and striving to serve my Savior in everything I do.

My husband is a "part-time" youth pastor; a full-time husband, father, and salesman; and is currently attending Bible college. We work together in youth and children's ministry, while homeschooling our four children and doing our best to model love for Christ, His Body and His Kingdom for them. We have our ups and downs, of course, but I wouldn't trade this adventurous journey for anything!

I have a home school blog called Elliott Academy of Excellence, where I post primarily about our homeschooling journey, homemaking, and free Internet homeschooling resources.

At this blog, I plan to write about our ministry experiences and my personal journey as I learn how to serve my Savior; and hopefully to connect with others of like mind and heart.

I am so grateful that God will never give up on me; even though I have been marred in His hands many times, He patiently continues to shape and mold me into what seems best to Him. May I be pliable in His hands.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know a little bit about me.

Contact Information

I would love to hear from you!

Email: andijeane (at) yahoo (dot) com or click here