God Moment
We have not been able to get an wifi signal here at the church this week, That makes it much tougher to blog because I am restricted to word press mobile on my phone. Let me say this….that has been the only thing CLOSE to a glitch (except for a surprise visit from the boy scouts on Monday due to a scheduling issue)that has occurred while at Ooltewah UMC (OUMC henceforth because that is hard to spell). There hospitality has gone above and beyond what we could have ever expected. We have been super blessed by it.
Anyway without internet service the blogging has been limited more than i had hoped. I have so many stories to share anf will do my best in the coming weeks to,share each of them here. But on moment has stood out as the highlight for many of us and it happened on Thursday. To fully understand the power of the moment, i need to give a little background first. We have spent the vast majority of our time working on the farm of James Massengale and his family. Three generations of Massengales and all sorts of livestock (cattle, goats, ducks, a donkey, and a horse to ve exact)call the 28 acre farm home. Unfortunately all 3 barns and BOTH homes on the farm were completely picked up and strewn across to the other side of Alabama Rd. on Apri 27th when the tornadoes came through the Apison area. We spent the week clearing the property of debris and making burn piles and eventually putting up 3600 feet (thats 2/3 mile for those of u scoring at home)of barb wire in order to keep the livestock on the property. During our work at the early part of the week some of our students and adults stumbled across a couple of tattered pages from a Bible that talked about building a house or rebuilding a house. We thought it might be a neat idea to frame the tattered pages and give them to the family as a way to offer them hope and to let them know how encouraged we were by their resiliency, faith, and hope. So we stopped at the Wal-Mart, picked up a frame and on Thursday after we finished our work for the week we went to the church where the Masengales have been staying and presented the frame to the family.
presenting the frame
The family was so appreciative of the frame and even more so the thought and meaning behind it. However, it became a God moment when the grandmother walked into the room and was told of the gift. When one of our adults took the frame to her, she burst into tears, shouting, “that’s my Bible, that’s my Bible, I KNOW that print!” Her emotions were hard to describe. The room went into a bevvy of hugs as students and the family were embracing. After we settled down we did snap one more picture of the group with the grandmother. She is on the right of the pic below. Mikayla is the tall young lady in jeans and a tank top on the right side of our group.
Group Pic With the Masengale Family
What an incredible moment it was for us. It was truly an affirmation that we were definitely in the place that God intended us to be as we served this week. When we asked our youth on Friday night, “what will be the one image or moment that will be ingrained in your head when you are asked a year from now what you remember of the trip?” Almost unanimously it was THAT moment at that small church on Alabama Rd. God did so many things within our youth during this trip, but NONE was more moving and representative of the trip than that God Moment. Amen.
