Top 10 Hawaii Moments

It has been a few days since arriving back to the Mainland. Thankfully, I have not experienced terrible jetlag. Staying up all night the last night in Hawaii was definitely a smart decision.  However, the process of processing the summer is slow since I jumped headfirst into school upon arriving home.  Through sharing with about my trip with a few people, I recalled some important lessons that I learned over the summer. I also complied my “top moments” of Hawaii.

As promised, here are my Top 10 Hawaii Moments

1.)  Seeing Cruz come to know the Lord… If you missed this story, read about it in Cruz’s Stories

2.)  The second to last Bible Study that I had with Maile and Lesleen we went to Burger King. I have a really bad habit of chewing ice (pray my teeth won’t crack.)

Maile looks at me and remarks, “Auntie Kelly, one day I’m going to be telling little girls about Jesus and chewing ice.”

This is further proof that children are looking to emulate us and actions speak louder than words.

3.) God answers the prayer of providing housing for some families that I knew while I was there.  God always meets us at the point of our need.

4.) Seeing fruit from West Oahu Community Church’s VBS. Several connections were made through that week and people are visiting and getting involved in this wonderful church.  For the last couple of years, I have been highly intrigued by church planting. I think that my fascination with church planting comes from equal parts of: the thought of planting a church scares me to death. And, knowing that God alone can make a body of believers grow. Therefore, I think church planting is an amazing opportunity to watch God work and move among His people and draw people to Him. I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to worship at West Oahu Community Church and help with their VBS.

5.) Watching Maile and Dori  serve after we talked about serving.  These girls were an encouragement  to me to not only listen to scripture, but also do what it says. James 1:22

6.) God answered our prayers for men to come and invest in the Chuukese boys’ lives. The boys thrived this summer under the leadership of the summer missionaries.

7.)  Reading Jude 24 “Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling” right before my plane took off.

8.) Eating Corn…enough said. It was DELISH!

9.) Hanging out with some Really Cool Chuukese Friends.

10.) Philios and Lastly trying to teach me Chuukese. It was hilarious. I don’t think I have much hope of being bilingual anytime soon.

As always, much love to all! Thank you for your prayers this summer and for reading about my Hawaiian adventures. God is faithful. I am considering continuing to blog throughout the year. I’ll keep you updated!

Luau and Water Fight

Short post with Lots of pictures... I will try and describe each of the pictures. I promise a post in the upcoming days after I process through all of my thoughts of Hawaii! At this point, my primary thought is I cannot believe it is over. My secondary thought is, "Whew, I'm tired!"
Enjoy the pictures. I could not have asked for a better last day with the kids before returning to Georgia.  

In 25 hours and 10 minutes from the time of writing this post, I will be landing at Hartsfield. Pray for a safe flight for both Lauren and me.

We made bracelets!

Throw the spear into the bullseye! Easy...right?

My spear throwing is even worse than my archery!

Lauren on the other hand is skilled!

Execution!

"What would you like?" "Surprise me!" "Even if it's crazy." "Sure as long as it isn't permanent."  My tattoo for the evening... Stewie.

Lauren got a tribal design for her temporary tat!

Posing!

Coke Bottle Fill Up

Team Water Balloon Toss

This was funny. They had to balance the water balloon on their face.

I think this might be one of the few pictures where Kiwo wasn't in someone's arms!

Passing the ballon down the row using only their necks

having fun

Water Balloon Volleyball

Why is Lauren shielding herself from the water?

D-ray hanging out at the beach with us.

Lesleen sliding down the mound of sand into the ocean!

Kimbo sliding down!

Much love to all!

Helping Friends Live for God's Glory

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.  When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up- one on one side, one on the other- so that his hands remained steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Exodus 17:10-13

 JD taught this Bible story today during Backyard Bible Club. He introduced the story with a competition of seeing who could hold up their hands the longest without anyone helping. Then he told the story of how Aaron and Moses helped Moses bring glory to God by helping him be obedient.  JD challenged the kids to help their friends live for God’s glory. 

            I am so thankful that God gives us other believers to fellowship with and who are there to encourage us to live for the Lord!

JD and me right before the story.

Everyone holding their hands up. Who's going to win?

Randall?

Nozania?

And the winner is.... Achema!

Tonight we are going to the luau! Maybe one of us will be called up on stage to do the hula! :) 

Much love to all!

Backyard Bible Club Pictures

Lauren has now spent two days in "real" Hawaii and with the Chuukese kids. I don't know about how she feels, but I am exhausted!
Yesterday we made stained glass crosses. Today we made picture frames and talked about the Prodigal Sons. The picture frames with the most glitter glue managed to fly across the ground and land in a pile of grass...the joys of outdoor crafting! Tomorrow the kids will get their frames back (hopefully grass free) and a picture of themselves and a friend to go in their frame.
Here are pictures from the past two days of Backyard Bible Club:

Tasha hulahooping

Lauren's beautiful stain-glass cross

Crafting!

Lauren introduced the group to pirate tag!

Sometimes I think that I am a jungle gym. One would get up, another would plop down.

Discipleship girls minus Maile

Attempting a jumping picture. We proceeded to get soaking wet right after this one, so they never perfected it. 

Supposedly, this was Raston's first time doing the dishes!

Lauren and Urko concentrating on the picture frame.

Raston, Kiwo, and Nozania

Randall and Kimo

Mr. Personality

NeNe

Completed frames!

Much love to all!

Cruz's Stories

            This is a story of two stories. One is a fictional story and one is the story of a young man’s life.

WOW!! God is incredible!!  Throughout the day, the logistics of teaching  writing  to 6^th graders spin around in the recesses of my mind.   I am excited about the opportunity to teach writing this upcoming school year, but I am also slightly apprehensive about this responsibility.  I like to write, but teaching a Preteen to write is a whole other ballgame. 

            So how does God’s amazing wonders and writing connect? Well, Raston begged me to have him come over and hang out at our house. Along with Raston came Cruz and Lesleen. During our crunchy taco dinner, we started talking about school and if I was their teacher. 

            I commented “ If you were my student, I would teach you how to write.”

            Cruz quickly retorted, “ I already know how to write, I will write you a story now.”

            For the next thirty minutes Cruz wrote his story (written at the end of this post).  Next we edited his story together. He was very excited about the prospect of his story appearing on this blog. Through discussing his story, our conversation turned to God’s promises and from God’s promises to the Gospel and what Jesus did for us.  We searched through my Bible and looked at scriptures about how Jesus’s sacrifice for us.  We looked at our sin separates us from God and makes it impossible to have a relationship with Him. We discussed how God made him who had no sin to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) so that we can have a relationship with God through Jesus and Jesus alone.  Through Cruz’s questions and comments, it was evident that God was opening the eyes of his heart and drawing him to Himself.

When we were discussing how Jesus took our sin upon Himself, Cruz looked at me and said on more than one occasion, “Jesus took my place for the bad things that I have done. I never knew that before today.”  In those moments, Jesus’s death was becoming very personal to Cruz.

Cruz continued to ask me questions, and we continued to look at scriptures. We talked about we can never be good enough, and that is why Jesus had to take our place. We talked about how salvation is gift that we have to accept through faith. Then we talked about how when you become a Christian, your life in not your own anymore. God is now in control.

After a long conversation, Cruz looks at me and says, “ I want God to take control of my life.”

We talked a little more about what it meant to be a Christian, and he said again, “I want God to be in control through Jesus.”

Cruz then prayed the most heartfelt prayer agreeing with God about the bad things he’s done to hurt God and asking God to take control of his life and change him through Jesus.

After Cruz prayed we talked about a little about assurance of salvation. We read the verses in Romans 8 about how nothing can separate us from God’s love.

When I finished reading them aloud, he exclaimed, “Wow, God’s love is really powerful!”

We also talked about how we are called to tell other people about how God has changed us. Cruz immediately said he was going to tell his friends, so God could change them too.

God ministered to my heart this evening that I spent with Cruz. One of my all time favorite verses is Philemon 6 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you  will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.  Sometimes I get caught up in the motions and I hear God’s Word in my head, but it doesn’t resonate in my heart. While I was watching Cruz gain a heart understanding of the gospel for the very first time, God was whispering to my spirit,  “Kelly, I took your sin upon me too.  Nothing can separate you from my love. Be in awe of me... I am worthy to be praised.” The gospel is continually at work in the lives of the believer.  It is so important that we never become hardened to every good thing we have in Christ.

As promised to Cruz, here is his story that he wrote me tonight.

           

Once upon a time, there was this kid name Lick a Stick till it Gets Sick (for short, Sling. He was bullied by kids at his Cause a Kid Club. One day, this new kid came to join the club.  Everyday after school they had their club activity time. So that new kid was just walking around until he saw Sling on the ground. He went over to Sling and helped him up. He knew Sling felt uncool to say what happened. So He helped Sling up and walked him to the club.  After the club activity, they went home. While walking home, he finally saw why Sling was hurt. Even though Sling was hurt, he would still never tell anybody.

            The new boy said to Sling, “You are a good boy. You have a lot of heart.”

            Sling just walked away. Everyday the new boy always sees Sling on the ground. One day  Sling told himself to stat fighting back.

So he went up to the bullies and said,  “Why do you always bully me?”’

One of them said, “Because we are men.”

Sling said, “Being a man is not fighting; it is doing what is right and fighting for what is good.”

So the next day the bullies came up to Sling and said, “You are a good boy with a lot of heart. I wish I was like you.”

They lived happily ever after.

By Cruz Ignacio

This is Cruz during Backyard Bible Club this morning.

Busy writing his story

I love how God even uses teaching writing to provide opportunities for sharing the gospel. 

Much love to all!