Three Weeks and 1,866 Miles Later

My journey started June the 18th and 4:00 a.m.  Less than two hours later me and eighty other Geyer Springs youth were headed to Orange Beach, AL for Student Life's The Kingdom beach camp.  I learned while I was there that I absolutely love the beach.  Besides that I got to hear Matt Chandler speak on the Kingdom of God all week.  He really challenged us to know who the King is, about His kingdom, and how the Kingdom's people should exist together.  I got to meet a lot of amazing girls that are younger than me that week (I was the only tenth grade girl) but nothing monumental seemed to happened.  I did get to see my secret prayer partner accept Christ and get some big sins off her chest, though I don't know what they were.  It was refreshing to see someone freed from their past.  Like Chandler told us, "The old Matt Chandler is dead!".

From there I was dropped off near grandparents house in Mississippi.  The next day I jumped straight into a three year old VBS class for the next four nights.  Those three year olds taught us as much as I hope we taught them.  Although it was exhausting my time in Mississippi was refreshing as always.   While I was there my aunt returned from Nicaragua a little beaten physically (got two black eyes and bruised nose from playing basketball and had her backpack with her money, phone, passport and Bible stolen), spiritually, and emotionally but with amazing reports!  They saw over 200 salvations in just a week!  Suddenly God I was able to begin seeing how God was moving around me again.  The numbness I had felt and struggled with was leaving.  What a shame it took seeing the big things God does all the time to get my attention!  But that week prepared me for the following.

The 28th we drove back to Arkansas where I had a little more than a twelve hour turn around before getting on a bus headed to St. Louis, MO.

When we arrived on Saturday we dropped our things off in the school/church (Tower Grove) we were staying in for the week.  April, the leader from the church we worked with all week, showed up with two interns and took us to downtown South City St. Louis (the area we did all our work in).  We prayer walked several blocks.  In that hour I learned some of the city's background, its racial makeup, saw a huge gay block party, and later learned about someone who was saved after talking with Caddy, my youth pastor.  Gays have become rampant in St. Louis in the past ten years.  We saw lots of rainbow signs in store fronts and huge flags hung on homes.  St. Louis is also a city that gets lots of refugees.  We worked with people from Napal, Burma, Conga, and then a few other countries in Africa.  Because of this the church, New City Fellowship, was very diverse.  On Sunday morning during service we sung in Swahili, French, Burmese, and I think Spanish.  I can't remember for sure.  But seeing people sing in their native languages and the languages of other people was a reminder of how awesome our God is.  He understood every word even though I didn't know half of what I was singing!  Everyone worshipped in their own way.  Some singing, clapping, dancing, playing the drums, raising their hands or just listening to all the languages.  That evening we divided into our four teams and went to different parks to do "Bible clubs" (basically shorter VBS).

Monday morning started our normal routine.  Most of us stayed at New City Fellowship after breakfast to help with the tutoring program.  (We did have a team gone all day to do a sports camp somewhere)  I was assigned two Burmese boys who just finished fourth grade.  Their names are Mung Pi and Ozar Kay.  Both are super smart and very talented artists.  I mainly helped with their grammar when they wrote since English is a second language.  That afternoon   more of us split up into groups while some stayed behind until the end of the tutoring program.  We had girls go to homes and help with ESL.  We also had people go to a nursing home and others, like me, help with work projects.  Monday's work project was helping at a community garden where refugees can rent a plot of land to grow fresh produce.  Right before we got to the garden we went under a bridge.  It was as if we entered a different world.  We passed from the ghetto to a rich neighborhood within seconds.  The economic divide is that visible all the way through St. Louis down that particular road.

The next day was cool like the day before but rainy.  Sports camp was cancelled along with outside work projects and Bible clubs.  So after tutoring we stayed at the church and took apart room dividers and tables in the basement then stored them on the second floor.  This involved the old complicated elevator that Ben and I ended up being stuck on for almost five minutes before someone realized the button needed to be pushed up on the second floor.

Wednesday was our last day of tutoring because the Fourth was the next day.  We said goodbye to our kids and got to take pictures with them.  When we found out that our work project was pulling weeds along a fence for an invalid, I thought, "Oh, this will be fast and easy".  Once we got there and saw some of the weeds were taller than all of us and as thick around as a small tree, plus the fact that the only tools we had were an old pair of metal scissors, two rakes, and my two pockets knives I thought otherwise.  I ended up cutting down the 'trees' with my knife.  Ben and I also took out a rotted, termite infested tree stump.  As a reward for our hard, hot work Mrs. Cindy stopped at Starbucks for us.

On the Fourth of July we had a community/church wide block party.  We had between 300-400 people there.  I was supposed to be a 'trash girl', but somehow ended up painting complicated designs on people's bodies.  I drew everything.  St. Louis Cardinals, a bald eagle, 'Don't tread on me' cartoon, and on and on.  Later that day we ate Vietnamese food and went to the Arch to see Trace Adkins and the fireworks show.

Anyway, all the fun stuff wasn't the point.  I feel like everyone got to use one of their talents for the Kingdom last week.  We also got tested in our faith.  Some of the teaching of the church were not clearly represented.  Caddy confronted the leaders about this.  I learned that Satan is very sneaky.  We all assumed we were in a place of sound teaching.  But Satan was able to plant a 1% lie in some articles we read the last day as a devotional and confuse some of us.  The three articles, written by the same man, showed different views on salvation than ours.  He also made it seem as if the rich (us) couldn't get into Heaven.  Many of us had to explain how we were offended by some assumptions that April made about our church and how we were using our resources.  She assumed that because of our church's location that we were only serving the 'white flight' in Bryant and not ministering to the lower income minorities.  In the end we all came out stronger in our faith.  We had to refer to the Bible for teaching, not just what our leaders say.

I have been thinking of all of you!  I hope your travels and summers are safe and fun!  I can't wait to see all of you again.  (Ill see some of you at CSU!  Sooo excited about this year.  But we will miss Katie.  ;) )

Love,
Rachel Barber

P.S. Sorry this is SOOOO long but 1,866 is a long journey.  ;)