Thursday morning we had the opportunity to serve Winchester Covenant Church by doing some cleaning around their church building. Also, the students went to the home of an older man in the church who is unable to doing much cleaning in his home and clean it up. He was very blessed by what we were able to do in his home.
Friday was our fun day and we traveled about an hour to “natural bridge”. We hiked for about 30 minutes up the mountain to enjoy the beautiful view of the Kentucky green forest. Up on the top is a huge rock that is formed into the shape of a bridge that you can walk under and on. It was a beautiful day for hiking, blue skies and a nice breeze. Those who couldn’t hike even got to see the view by taking the Sky lift up to the top. Many people from the church joined us and it was a great time to get to know them better and for the three from this area, spend time with their families. After hiking all morning we worked up our appetite and ate at Miguel’s pizza, a little mom and pop shop place near natural bridge with incredible pizza. After a fun filled day we went to the worship night they have once a month. A few of us even got to jam with them after the worship time. Again Saturday night Pastor Dwight had the opportunity to jam with three generations of Marlowe’s! being in Winchester for five days gave us plenty of much needed time to just have fun and enjoy getting to know people in the church better.
Saturday morning we shared with them the three workshops we had prepared to do. Larissa shared her prophetic art workshop. She asked them to ask the Lord for an encouraging picture for someone in the group and then draw it. John did a rhythm workshop with a group of people. They played around with the different instruments and really enjoyed getting to learn some basic rhythms. Jordan and Hannah shared about treasure hunting, a tool we use for finding people the Lord wants us to minister to. After explaining how to do it, we had them ask the Lord for clues and after lunch some of us were able to go and try it. We found some people on our maps and were able to pray and encourage them. Many people in the church are excited to put into practice what they learned.
Saturday night we went to Forest grove Church and ministered to their congregation. The Lord poured out his grace and blessings on us in spite of having a very small stage and a different crowd then we were used to. Coming in to it, we were all experiencing different levels of negativity and depression. John called us together to share with one another where we were at and what we were feeling. We were all able to open up and share with each other some of the things we were facing. It was neat to see how once we humbled and opened ourselves up the Lord came and met us. We were able to pray for a new spirit of joy and love and just give everything over to Him. The Lord really met us and was able to then use us to bless the congregation is ways that were so beyond us all. We saw the Lord encourage many people through words about being noticed, loved, seeing light at the end of a tunnel of darkness, and the Lord removing clouds of shame. We even got confirmation about some of our words being right on from a man who had grown up in the church and knew the people we spoke to. The Lord really turned around the darkness we were facing into good. He turned our eyes off us and to him and bringing glory to him.
Sunday morning we got to be at Pastor Steve’s “Winchester Covenant Church.” We came into this morning with joy and entered into their service that seemed more like a family atmosphere then we experienced before. Many hearts were very tender for what the Lord was saying and doing. The Lord was really calling up the young men and giving them words about activating their spiritual gifts, being warriors, encouraging them to keep dreaming and not stop where they are, and that the lord is proud of them. The Lord was also calling the next generation of men to come into a place of fathering the younger ones, and that they were full of wisdom to give them. He was speaking joy, confidence, and father’s love into the young girls and the Lord was cleansing them and drawing them closer to him. For the next generation of women he was healing things from their past and releasing anger and pain. He was also encouraging them as mothers that they were doing a good job with their children and are good enough for it. It was very easy to connect with them, and we even found it hard to say goodbye. There was a family feeling there that greatly impacted us.
(If you would like to see more pictures from tour, they are on the MCOKC face book page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/mcokc?ref=ts )
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