Catching up on the fall

This fall has been busy, to put it mildly...mixed with a lot of activities, events, fun times with kids, rejoicing and pain.

To start off with, we have a new intern here at HPCO. Emily is from my home church in Grand Rapids and chose to take a year after high school to live in Highland Park and be involved in our ministry. She lives with us here on Ferris. She works part time during the day and then is involved with HPCO activities in the evening. One of which is tutoring two of our Jr High girls every Monday night. Our desire is to see this tutoring grow to more people getting involved so that we can offer it to more of our kids. We are very thankful to have Emily here and for her heart for this community

Emily with one of her girls

I feel like my weeks fill up very quickly with the scheduled programs as well as trying to take time to continue to build meaningful relationships with a small handful of our youth. I continue to see God working through these relationships. I've been thankful for opportunities to connect not only with kids, but their parents and families as well.

As I stated, this fall has also brought reasons to rejoice as well as mourn.

The associate pastor of Revival Tabernacle spoke this Sunday and shared his testimony of surviving 37 stab wounds from when a man broke into his house this past August. Hearing the story reminded me again of how his survival is truly a miracle of God. He gave God all the glory as he shared his story and it was so amazing to hear not only about the physical healing that took place, but also the spiritual. Because this story had been on the news, a couple local news stations came to the service and did a feature on it. What another great opportunity for others to hear what God has done in this situation!

On the flip side, I attended the funeral of a boy who use to come to Revival with us on Tuesday nights. He was shot in the head by another teen while playing basketball at a rec center down the road from us. Even though I wasn't close to him, one of our families viewed him as a member of theirs. He came to youth group with one of the guys I've been able to connect with. Attending this funeral was one of the toughest things I've had to do since being here in the city. Seeing the pain these kids had to go through while saying goodbye to their friend was heartbreaking. There are no easy answers and I just kept thinking that kids should not have to go through this. Please be in prayer for the youth who have had to say goodbye to Dmetry. Pray that God would bring them healing and not allow bitterness and anger to set in. Pray that that He would use this to bring people to Himself.

It's always easy to share the happy stories, and the ones that are good news about what God is doing here. The reality is though, not all stories are happy. The world these kids live in is difficult. The enemy is fighting hard, but thankfully we are on the side of the Victor! We do live in a fallen world and aside from God's grace are all lost in sin.

I wanted to share these stories so that you can know more of the reality that is around us. There is good with bad. Times that seem victorious, others anything but... but in both situations God is faithful and continues to pour out His love and grace. Everyone is in desperate need of Him, no matter where they live, what kind of resources they have or who their parents are.