Random Joy: More About Detroit!

Who in their right mind would take 100 suburban high school students to Detroit? What kind of high school student would want to take a week of their Summer vacation to go to Detroit? How many high school students do you know that would go into a stranger’s home and clean their basement that was

littered with animal feces, dead mice, broken furniture, thick cob webs hanging everywhere and to top it off the basement flooded with all of these things on the floor? Let me answer these questions for you.

The STUDENTS of Woodside Bible Church and their “not always” fearless leaders, that sing this line from a song called “Our God” by Chris Tomlin, “If our God is for us who could ever stop us?” with passion. The most selfless, hardworking, non-complaining, loving, kind-hearted, gentle and faithful teenagers attend WBC. These are the students I am privileged to know, spend time with and serve God with.

{God is so good to me}

Some of the highlights from the “D-Town Driven” team will be shared in this blog but there are many fascinating stories from the other three teams that were serving in Detroit as well.

Our team put together 50 brown handled bags filled with food, water and a sweet hand written note, our students donated all of the items. We decided that we would pass out the bags any time we saw a homeless person, and let’s just say we could have past out 50 more bags. There were many situations during the passing out of bags that were memorable, like when we saw a man in a wheel chair going down the street and two of our students hopped out of the bus and gave the man a bag, Keith, he smiled from ear to ear, like he just received a birthday gift. Then there was the man sitting on the steps of a church, two of our students jumped out and gave him a bag, and as we were driving away he was waving saying, "thank you" and asking for another one to give to his wife. Then there was "Regina" sitting on the corner and not only did our students give her a bag, they got to sit and chat with her for a few minutes. This is what is so amazing to me, teenagers that could be at home in their clean comfy homes, hanging out with their friends at a coffee shop are excited to share food, conversation and the love of God with people they have never met and will probably never see again. There is only one explanation for this kind of selflessness, Jesus. If anyone ever questions whether God is real and working miracles in the 21st century they should meet some of the high school students I know. It’s a beautiful thing to see teenagers moved by the Holy Spirit to serve, love and worship.

{It’s remarkable}

"Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it's needed Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you." Hebrews 14:1

Painting the garage: this was a hot, hot day by 11:00 AM it was at least 90 degrees and the humidity was about 90%. Marianne, she is a “hoarder”, she had piles of junk in three different spots on her property, and every seat in her car was filled with stuff except for the driver’s seat. She also had a collection of bracelets, rings and a key chain around her wrist that had at least 25 old keys on it. When we asked her if she wanted us to throw away the old broken glass leaning on her garage, she was quite firm in saying, “NO, don’t throw anything away.” Our students scrapped, sanded and

painted the whole garage, cleaned up her yard, pulled weeds and made her yard look much better. When we were leaving she told me her car wasn’t starting, so of course one of our students was excited to help her. We tried to get her car started and when it didn’t start she asked for a ride to the corner repair shop, so we dropped her off and I am pretty sure if we would have had the means the kids would have taken up a collection and bought her a new car.

{Love others as you love yourself}

On Wednesday night we attended a church in Detroit, the pastor was great and he said something that just made me smile, God is so cool how He puts things together for us. The pastor made thi

s statement, “We need to stand on the shoulders of other believers.” Well, as you can see in the picture, the day before we heard this pastor, while painting the garage we did not have a ladder so our students used their height and strength to lift each other up on their shoulders to finish painting the high spots of the garage. How can anyone deny that God is at work orchestrating the lives of believers when you see teenagers doing an act of kindness and a pastor they don't even know mentions that exact thing they did in his message the next day.

{There is no coincidence, only a well orchestrated plan}.