Go! Spread! Fire!

We spent six perfect days reaching out to the community in fun ways. None of us wanted the week to end! Highlights of our weeklong Go! Spread! Fire!

1. Cold Water for Jesus
We gave away 1,200 bottles of cold water on sweltering days in Washington, Bethesda and Rockville. (At times, Patrick's van became an intense assembly-line for labelling and laminating the bottles between destinations!)

2. Rebuilding Ancient Ruins, Metaphorically
As a surprise, we cleaned the Bethesda church where we've started to rent a room for Sunday mornings. When we got there, we heard they'll have a new pastor soon, so here was an instant opportunity to beautify his yard! We bought garden tools to do the same thing in the Twinbrook church, new site of our evening service.
These two churches have gone through a lot, and the idea was to encourage them and possibly light a spark. (I'd never pulled weeds before... Made me think about the value of removing little-noticed weeds in our lives!)

3. Dollar Bills
We dropped and hid dollar bills wrapped around tracts in a mall. It was harder than we imagined to drop them covertly!

4. Free Fotos... Really!
That was the slogan on our tee-shirts. We walked around the greatly inspiring World War II Memorial with digital cameras and portable printers, offering to take and print pix on the spot for visitors. The pix are also on the deeperthandermis website for downloading. Along the way, we engaged in amazing conversations... We met a brother and sister in their twenties who live in different cities and found each other on MySpace!!

Similarly, we'd love to create bonds and bring smiles to Washington, our hometown, mission field and global hub.

I'll remember this as a week that mingled creativity with compassion. It was immense fun and so spontaneous, involving out-of-the-box thinking, prayer, hard work and, importantly, a willingness to speedily change plans as we listened to the Holy Spirit. Lots of planning + an undoing of plans when God revealed new paths. It's the way life should be, Su said.

We also wrote a tract that we printed, laminated and memorized. We were self-conscious when we role-played the evangelistic encounter with each other. Great practice. It's OK to be fools for Jesus. We'll either be fools now or later, PD said.

It's all about SOULS!

Also WONDERFUL was the 8 am devotions that we started the day with (to seek God's heart and the day's marching orders), and the evening revival meeting that we ended with (for refilling).

You can tell that I learned and experienced LOTS and LOTS! One other lesson is to persevere and laugh more. For example, our photo ministry (see above) started discouragingly some weeks back. But we refined our ideas, sourced printers at one-third the original price on overstock.com, and went out again. It worked!

Similarly, reaching out to Rockville was easier than Bethesda and Washington, cos we'd spent three years as a church in Rockville and prepared the ground. About two years ago, I'd also given away cold water with my former church in Bethesda, and the reception was a little chilly. But, I'm sure a few seeds were planted at that time. Indeed, last week, more people grabbed our water bottles in the same place in Bethesda, near the trail.

It's been a fuller than full week, and greatly transforming. Still bubbling over. It's exactly what Jesus said about giving us life to the full. What's a little surprising to me is that mostly we were five people in the team, and the planning and shopping for supplies was done mostly on the first day. We had two people who were computer whizzes who could design labels and tee-shirts and other stuff on the go. We were a mixed bunch of people, from a high-school kid to career women. We were all focused on outreach and souls and worshipping God.

This tells me that creative and powerful outreaches can be replicated in our communities by little teams, especially our generation of youths who have so much passion and are reform-minded.

I'd planned to join the team a couple of days, but was unstoppably hooked from Day One. My friend Sue would say I'm ending my Washington days on a high note and that's the way to go. I pray that this is transferable, whether in reality or in spirit.

Hey, Tyson, I thought of you, PS and your international group and the Seattle youths!! Have an adventurous summer!