water into wine – through a kids camp!

My first week in Albania was spent in a small village outside of the town of Fier where my team and I helped put on a vbs style camp for the kids of the community. Each night we would walk out to the field behind our sweet hosts house and spend the next 1.5 hours loving on 15-20 children by playing games, singing songs and dancing and sharing a Bible story with them.   

Our theme for the week was “God loves you” with our theme verse being John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” It was so sweet to see that as the week progressed, the kids were memorizing the verse and also remembering the songs we would sing in English. Hearing their little voices sing Jesus loves me over and over (and over- seriously, they would want to sing it at least 3 times each night) in the only English they knew was so sweet to hear and watch. 

During our last night of the camp we shared the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. My teammate Kaci did such a good job at telling the story in a way the kids could understand and captivate their ears and heart. At the end of the night she talked about how God sent his son Jesus to come live and die for us so that we can live with him forever – we just had to ask him to come into our heart and lives. She asked the children if anyone wanted to ask Jesus into their heart. At first it was quiet but as some moments passed, one brave kid raised his hand. Which caused another little one to raise their hand until everyone was standing up ready to ask Jesus into their hearts!!! The pastor we are doing ministry with came up and prayed a prayer with the kids and wow that was such a sweet moment to witness!!!

The questions was brought up during the middle of the week within the team if what we were doing here was sticking with the kids and making any lasting impact. To be honest, some moments were hard in facilitating the camp. The language barrier is strong here in Albania so the conversations are little. The kids come full of energy so it was hard to capture their attention at times. It was easy for us to think that what we were doing could be done without us there and maybe better by someone else that spoke the language. But it reminded me of the verse in Ephesians 2:10 – “For we our Gods handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The Lord knew ahead of time that there would be 15-20 children that would need to experience his love in this way and created me and my teammates with specific strengths to do just that!

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Something the Lord has been teaching me, specifically this past week, is the sweet sweet goodness in walking in obedience to him. At the beginning of this week, my team and I were studying John 2 and 3. We were going through the story of Jesus turning water into wine and how the miracle came from the servants walking in obedience to Jesus telling them to fill the basins with water and serve it to the guests. With this being the first of Jesus’ miracles, the servants really had no proof that anything special would happen. But something special did happen!! A miracle! And it was through their obedience that it did. This story also reminded me of all of the simple things in my life – like water – that the Lord is asking me to fill and give to others. And through walking in those simple things, he is actually turning it into something really rich and special like wine.  And I was reminded of that again and was able to see it so clearly in the way this camp went. That even though there were moments throughout the camp that we weren’t able to see the direct fruit, the Lord was still doing something so special in the hearts of each child there and it resulted in big life change!! That sometimes walking in obedience to the Lord means that we don’t always know what he’s doing but trusting that it’s he’s working and that it’s going to be good. 

Much love,

MK