Tree, dead girl, and demon.

Exposing our children to radical evangelism.

It's hard to believe that our kids were so young when this all started. LJ was 12, Jeremiah 10, Caleb 9, and Bethany 8. Whats even funnier was how we double and triple cast them. Bethany really was all three of those roles the first year tree, dead girl, and demon. I love that Kari didn't mind at all having my kids in the drama.

I wish I could say that Lionel and I knew exactly what we were doing when we put our kids in ministry with passionate and excited young adult believers. When I look back on it I think, genius! Genius God! He certainly did know, even though we were clueless. He knew that my kids hearts would be stirred at very young ages for lost and hurting people. He knew that they would be following the example of college students that were fully committed and yet desperate for Him. He knew that week after week they would get on their faces before the Lord, just like the rest of us pouring their heart out to Him, asking Him to do the work, asking Him to save the lost, asking Him to provide and meet our teams needs and to bring people to the outreach.

And when God did show up, and oh how He did show up, He knew what that would teach them about His faithfulness, about doing His work not our own good ideas, about answered prayer.

Over the years our family has been involved in several outreaches of this magnitude and it has been the testimony of our family that we trust God through each step. But the amazing thing is how that has spilled over into every area of our lives. So our kids want to go on a mission trip? They trust God to provide. They want to play instruments and minister in worship? God provides instruments, guidance, ability, and opportunity. They want there friends to know Christ, they one by one begin to come and God changes them. They want to step forward in obedience with something they have never done before and because of God's past faithfulness they have His confidence to move forward with Him.

One day a few years back Jeremiah had some big things going on that God really came through for him on, He said "I knew God would do it because I prayed and He always answers our prayers!"

Thank you for that Lord.

The other day LJ my oldest son said, "mom you ruined us for being normal teenagers and relating to kids in our high school(public) and the things they care about, you kept us with older people that were already out of those issues, and I am so glad."

Praise you Lord.

I had no idea what God was doing with them. I am glad because Lionel and I can not take the credit for what God has done in us and in our family through serving Him and ministering the gospel.

So go forward, serve Him and follow Him, you may have an idea of what things He can do, but you have no idea of ALL the things He will do.

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think!

Spiderman Satan scaling the set; PRODUCTION.

Some things are just burned into my memory. This is one of those things I hope to never forget.

We sat around the table, Kari, me, Lionel and a few guys that would make up our crew. I was really excited to get input from the collective genius as well as vision and heart. Kari and I had shared back and forth plenty and it was evident God was aligning our vision, but there was so much more to our team.

Another thing was it just so happened that as gifted as everyone was for their prospective jobs, there wasn’t a lot of theater experience at the table. Which really didn’t seem to bother any of us, well ok maybe me, but only for second; so we began brainstorming.

We had lots of interesting ideas. Grand erect sets and buildings, cool revolving rooms that would be constructed, pyrotechnics was thrown in there as well, an idea that had come from the college pastor via Kari expressing his thoughts and ideas. Then my favorite of all, to hoist Lionel, our Satan, on a rigging (fly) system in order that he might be able to scale the set like Spiderman! Hmm, let that soak in a minute. I just have to say here I remember thinking through each of these ideas sincerely asking myself and God was there something in this and to not let me pass by anything He was saying to me. One look at Kari and a wink from her bright sparkling eyes assured me that even though we loved the extreme nature and excitement of these ideas, we would need to set out on our own to design the look and flow, then hand out tasks as necessary.

But before I move on there are great nuggets here. I love that anything was possible. I love that there was no holding back and we could let our imaginations run wild. I love that God would use a group that had never done theater before and give them the courage to do everything they could dream up. I love that Lionel would have been willing to harness up and FLY! I love that we had the heart and energy of THE CREATOR flowing through us and because of HIM nothing was out of the question.

Keep dreaming Kristen. Ok Lord!

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