Jesus lives; here's a toaster

I wrote this article a few weeks ago for my church's Sunday morning worship guide. It is about our mission team we sent to Africa over Spring Break.

“Jesus lives; here’s a toaster.”

I recently read this quote from Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. He told a story of a woman named Michelle from his church that moved to the roughest neighborhood in town because she felt led to help the people there escape the cycle of poverty and despair they were stuck in. She tried to help meet their most basic needs anywhere from tutoring children to simply buying them a toaster (hence the quote). In a short time, Michelle quickly realized how great all these simple needs added up to be. Some other women in the church heard what she was doing and asked her for lists of what these people needed. One family even wrote down “heat.” The list was passed around until each need was taken care of. At last count, they had reached 430 families and have plans to expand their network.

With this amazing opportunity we are blessed with to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, I feel like this is similar to what our church is doing. We have signed up for a 5 year commitment with four other West Texas churches, as well as Buckner International, to send different mission teams to Kenya, including; sports camps, building teams and medical teams. We have also committed to help build a new school for the Baptist Children’s Center in Nairobi, which is where we will be working in a couple of weeks.

“Jesus lives; here’s a school.”

It is not even the big things like the school that make the most impact in the children’s’ lives we will be in contact with. At our last meeting, Mike McDougal told us to take something as simple as candy to hand out to the children. I have a feeling their smiles will be sweeter than the candy itself.

“Jesus lives; here’s some candy.”

Thank you, church family, for helping and supporting us in the pursuit of this call and commitment to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Thank you for saying, “Jesus lives; here’s some money,” or “Jesus lives; here’s some prayer.” This is the biggest thing we need from you now – prayer. I ask and challenge this church to truly be a house of prayer every day our team of 13, including 4 high school seniors, is in Kenya.

Now I ask you, what other needs can we meet?
“Jesus lives; here’s a ”