KEVIN ELWORTH LIVE

We’re still trying to recover from our crazy week of VBS. I feel bad for the group that was here working with us. They volunteered to work with us in the afternoons, but were already committed to work another VBS at a church here in the mornings and until about 230 in the afternoon. They must have been wasted at the end of their week! We very much appreciate their help.

I’ve been doing some thinking over the past days about God’s working in it, How He did it, what He showed us, what we expected and what we feel now. I hate that word feel because it often has little to do with reality. Today I woke up and was actually bummed, I think because of the high we were on working, serving and being busy, and now we have a few slow days to come back to reality. (Don’t get me wrong, we needed a few days off) We saw God work in some strange ways. As I mentioned already we had a lot of problems with weather. Monday it was beautiful, Tuesday it was horrible, Wednesday it was worse yet and Thursday started bad and ended good. I scratched my head as to why He would allow it to be like this but then one of the group reminded me what the truth was- that God is always in control and His ways are not our ways.

I went into this event with great expectation. I really thought God would show me something I’ve never seen before. You don’t get great results without great expectation and great effort. Our results were mediocre, but my question is was I wrong? or did God just not answer my prayer. Actually I don’t believe either is true. I think my expectations were right on and I think God did answer my prayer. In thinking about it, if my expectations were small we’d have only give mediocre effort, and if I didn’t pray for God to give it I’d still only given half effort. In the future I don’t see us changing a thing about all this. My expectation will always be God sized and my prayer and faith in Him will be the same. The results are always up to Him.

Well it’s over, it’s in the books and now it’s all God’s. Because of what happened on day three with the weather I decided to push it up and hour and start our big day at 4 rather than 5. God still had other plans and the devil fought. We arrived at 3 to meet with the guys from the inflatable place who didn’t show up till 330, sound guy not till 4 and the group not till 430. At first I was a little disturbed with it all, but then the clouds started building and shortly after the rain started falling. At that point I changed our plans again and decided we would wait until it cleared out and about 20 min later we were good to go. All set up, sound playing the kids started showing and a few parents too. They all had a great time jumping on the inflatables, eating and just hanging out together. 

About 20 minutes before we were to finish we started with the drama and presentation you all have been praying about for so long now. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with the results, we didn’t have nearly the amount of people I thought we were going to have but I know that God still worked. Someone was there just for that purpose and drama and I know it touched hearts of some- He said we need to proclaim His name and that’s just what we did,  now it’s all HIS!

All in all it was a great week. We saw the devil fight us, all week we have dealt with weather, its ironic that it’s Friday afternoon and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky all day, but more importantly we saw God at work. We saw 8 kids accept Christ and now our coworkers have about 20 people they can follow up with and hopefully see some Bible studies started with them. As for Cris and I besides being completely exhausted today from a week of long hours and hard work and months of prepartion, we learned a lot about coordinating with groups and putting together things like this. We learned some things we will definiently do again and some things we were crazy to try in the first place, but the most important thing is that through the entire event we depended and relied on God. We can and never will see God do great things through us unless we attempt and expect from this from Him.

Thanks for your prayers…I’ll be writing more about all this throughout the next days. I’ve got a thousand things going through my mind right now and I can’t wait to share them all with you.

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Often times we have no idea why the Lord allows things the way He does or when we ask for the mountain to be move, why He does not. The truth is that we cannot understand all the ways of God and His will- I’m grateful for that, although I don’t understand it. Yesterday was all but a washout. We arrived and got set up, about 20 minutes after arriving Cris told me that she had a searing pain rip through her abdomen and she couldn’t even stand up. She went and sat in the car for a few minutes hoping it would subside, but nothing. I ended up driving her quickly back to the house so she could rest and hopefully get rid of the pain. As soon as I returned they had already started and within minutes so did the rain. And at that point it wasn’t like the day before this was a downpour. Thankfully the lady across the street who had been helping us facilitate this event opened her house to us and the kids and allowed them to finish their craft and snacks inside. The awesome news is that 6 kids raised their hands with questions about salvation! What in the world, on a day that we think it’s going to be a washout, God works!

Today is the big event and now I’m nervous about it. Not about the planning that’s all be executed perfectly thanks to Cris but about the weather. I’ve cried out to God that this day would be clear not a cloud and perfect for a family festival where people can pray to accept Christ. Pray with me. My prayer is that God shows up and does something unexplainable- I am addicted to seeing God work in extraordinary ways and today is the first day! I’ll post results/pics tonight.

Yesterday was a bit different than we were expecting. Doing a VBS program the way we are requires a lot of flexibility and the ability to change plans at a moments notice and that’s what took place yesterday. We arrived, set everything up and were ready to go much earlier than we were the first day, but as we were beginning the rain clouds were building and lightning began off in the distance. Because of this we had to shorten everything. The kids were only able to do one of the crafts we had prepared. It was stressful trying to get through everything as still see God work at the same time. We ended up finished and packed just before the rains began, thankfully all the kids were able to get home safe before anything happened. Pray today that the weather would hold and we would have a great day. They’ll be having a water balloon fight today so that should be lots of fun and hopefully the weather will be nice and warm.

Today is the final day of the actual VBS event and tomorrow will be the big kahuna. I’m really excited about it and seeing what God does. As I said before we’ve planned this entire event for what will take place tomorrow. I’d really appreciate your prayers for me especially because of the salvation presentation I’m doing. Pray that God works, that His Spirit reigns free and that we are the tools He uses to reach lots of people- it will only be done through prayer and it will only be done by God.

Well the first day is over and done with and it was awesome. First let me give a shout out to the group that is here helping us. They are from podunk Alabama and they know how to give it up. They are none stop workers and are great at what they are doing here. They are passionate about missions and have taken Zacatecas as their own and are willing to do whatever it takes to make God famous in this city! That is exactly the kind of people we want working with us. The awesome part is that they came to us back in March and said they were going to work with a Baptist church downtown but would have extra time and wanted to work with us! Praise God for that.
So I started yesterday by giving them a pep talk about what our expectations are for this event. I talked to them about the temptation to consider this as just a small VBS event to reach a few kids and that we all must consider this a great opportunity for God to show Himself strong like He did in the Bible with examples like tearing down the walls of Jericho and the fire that Elijah saw fall from heaven, and Gideon how killed thousands with only 300 solders and all these done by God’s mighty power. We are here, they are here, to see God do a God-sized act!
We saw only 10 kids show up, but that’s a great start to a small VBS program. Today we should see that 10 double and hopefully by Thursday we’ll see a great response.
One of those who came last night accepted Christ as their Savior so we are already seeing fruit and God work in this.
I can’t tell you how excited I am right now. For 8 months we’ve been chomping at the bit to see God do something, anything with us and now here it is! Cris kept telling me, just wait till we can do this event, you’ll be in your element and we’ll finally be seeing God do awesome things. And sure enough she was right. I’m infected!
I also what to make a shout out to my awesome wife. God has equipped her with some amazing abilities not the least of which is her organization skills. She put this whole thing together, even drew a blueprint for where everything was going to be set up. The group was amazed yesterday when we arrived and she already knew where everything was going to take place. She did all this in her extreme pain from the cyst that plaguing her right now. Pray for her, she’s really enduring a lot right now. She needs some relief and a vacation I think.
Okay all for now. A million things to do before we start again this afternoon.