A full, fulfilling, and fun summer!
This summer was a great start to Follow The Call Missions. The trip to Latvia with Mauldin First Baptist that started it off was great. This is the third year leading a team over there to help with Eagle’s Wings camp. The first one officially as FTCM. The team did great connecting with the leaders and campers over there. The two new guys jumped right in and were hanging out with the leaders and campers. The returning crew were able to deepen the relationships we have with people over there. It’s great seeing their leaders and our teams connect so well. We do appreciate and love what they are doing over there and look forward to continuing the relationship we have. Next summer we’re in discussion about bringing some high school students from the US to help with a younger kid’s camp before bringing the older crew to help with teen camp. This will be a huge advantage to these teens in developing their faith and providing an experience to see God show up in amazing ways. We’re also looking at bringing some teens over from Latvia to help with ministry here in the Upstate or beyond. I’ve got to discuss and finalize things with some churches in Greenville. But if those plans don’t work out, I’ve got a few other connections in other parts of the US we could work with.
During my time in Europe, I hopped over to England to spend a few days talking with Mike Taylor who runs UK-USA Ministries. You can check out his ministry here: www.uk-usaministries.com. He’s been connecting churches and young people in the US and England for many years. It was great seeing how he has the same passion for connecting churches and ministries for a deeper relationship than just doing some mission trips. To be able to connect groups across the ocean helps broaden the churches vision for what it means to be a global church. It also raises awareness to the great need in Europe for missions. There are so few believers in Europe that they need people to come help spread the the Good News of God’s love for them. Be praying for his team and him as they continue to make connections and build relationships between churches in the US and England.
After the trip to Latvia and England, I came back and helped out with Mauldin First Baptist’s Vacation Bible School. It’s always a great week to be a part of. The crew there goes all out decorating and making sure it’s a lot of fun. But there’s definitely solid Biblical teaching and learning that happens as well. My thought is if you have fun, they will come back and continue to learn more about God. If it sucks, the chance of sharing God’s love with them again will be very slim. Fun also breaks down walls to be able to share the Gospel with them. If you can’t let your hair down and have fun with kids and teens, good luck getting them to open up, come back, and hear about God.
The week after that I had the opportunity to run a VBS for Reedy River Baptist. That was a lot of fun working with a new church and being a part of their ministry. I was able to recruit a crew from Mauldin First Baptist to help out with it. Seeing people from two different churches working together was so cool. This is what I want to do on a wider scale across the ocean. Bring two churches or ministries together to accomplish God’s call to share the Gospel with the world. Not only can we get more done when we work together, but we see God working on a bigger scale while getting us out of our bubbles. Would love to do more with Reedy River in the future. Maybe we can bring some people from overseas to help us out next year!
The rest of the summer has been networking and focusing on the business side of the ministry. There’s so many little things that still need to be done. I feel like I’m finding new things that need to get done while trying to accomplish one task. Like this week I’m working on my getting onto a donor platform that an accountant told me to get on. Well in order to do that I have to be listed on GuideStar. Which is now called something else. So waiting on them to get me listed so I can finish setting up GiveButter and update my site to take donations through there and be able to handle donor care and finances better. It’s a learning process. While also trying to get the next trip planned.
This October I’m working on getting a team together to go help fix up my friend’s church. He needs some serious work done on this room to allow it to be used for more things like youth gathering and community outreach. The trip will be from 7-19 October. We’ll be staying and working with Salvation Temple in Riga. There’s ceiling and flooring repairs that need to be done as well as putting in a wood pellet stove for heating and a new kitchenette. It will be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. If you’re interested in being a part of it, let me know. We’ll need about 8-10 people to be a part of it. The cost will be between $2500-3500 depending on if you want a room to yourself or not.
Think that’s it for this update. Will do another one talking about the ministry opportunity in October early next week.