It is always amazing to see God at work in a group of high schoolers, who for many of them are on their first mission trip ever. It is awesome to see the way that God will stretch them, make them break out of their comfort zone, and maybe even act a little less “cool.”
On the recent trip to Nicaragua, the students of Houston Christian High School experienced just that. They were faced with going door to door to reach people in a very impoverished area. Many faced having to give their testimony in public for the first time ever. Others faced and achieved praying out loud in public for the first time ever. And, they all faced the #1 key to being on the mission field: the art of being flexible!
One story in particular involved a smaller group of the team, who had to travel up to a small community further up the mountain near Grenada at the Cana Castilla ministry. The group was told that they would be helping with a feeding and helping lead a VBS-style study for a group kids. We brought a couple of the girls who were prepared for a specific study and assumed that their planned study would suffice for the kids.
When we arrived, there was some uncertainty of what we were doing until one of the ministry workers informed us that we had to lead a study that they had been going through. They needed our group to lead lesson 7 of a curriculum that they were using. The curriculum was a paragraph explaining that the lesson was about the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. This was the only information we had, and we had to make it work for a large group of kids.
Upon relaying the information to the group that we had to come up with something about Joseph on the spot and had to be ready to go with it in about an hour, the group did not know what to say or do. Needless to say, there were a lot of blank stares of confusion. But, our God is bigger than an issue of a no pre-planned study!
We gathered as a group and prayed for guidance. We prayed for creativity. We prayed for physical and spiritual strength to do this. God moved!
After praying, it was as if the group turned on a switch of “can-do” attitude. Many of them had never done anything like this before, but they were determined to make it work. We decided to have a couple narrators, who could tell the story in simpler terms, and then the rest of us would act it out in skit form. The team truly came together and did an amazing job making the story/skit memorable and effective.
The kids loved the skit and the story. They listened and were able to correctly answer questions about it at the end.
That day the students learned the importance of being flexible, and that the only way to be flexible is through the power of prayer.
