Then there were 2

Tim & Chad @ Chad's home

Chad and Tim are gone! (It's natural to cry, as our dear friend Lawrence apparently did) They are now at Chad's house laundering and hopefully resting soon so as to be at the airport for their 11:50 AM flight to Ecuador with part of the Grove City College soccer team.  If you've come to think they're just super neat, you can continue following their summer at gccsoccerinecuador.blogspot.com.  They got to say their farewells to the Hecks on Thursday thanks to the Hecks delaying their departure to visit their eldest daughter in Chicago in order to see them off (They're the greatest!)

This leaves Gabe and Spencer to survive this weekend on their own and then finish our responsibilities at summer school strong.  They are pleased to have all the food to themselves, but perhaps not so thrilled about being further outnumbered by ravenous children :)

Chad and Tim are extremely thankful for all of your prayer support thus far and for the experience that has been the result of said prayer.  Please continue to pray for them, especially that they would find time to reflect on all of the lessons God had them learn this summer

Gabe and Spencer now need additional prayer for energy as their workday picks up 2 more hours to fill Tim & Chad's absence.  Pray also for the counselors under them to take full advantage of this last week in their mentorship.

Father, may You be our focus, not our tiredness, not our new circumstances, not the work You have for us.  May we find great love, joy, and peace in Your simple, infinite existence long before we seek such things in Your Callings for us, Blessings to us, and especially the lives within us.

If there are words for Him, then I don't have them,

Chad, Tim, Gabriel, and Spince

So Now What?

Hey everybody!

First, there will be no pictures in this blog post. It has come to my attention that many of our "readers" only skim the blog to look at the pictures. That is shameful and I want no part of it. My post will be nothing but my own extremely dry writing, which I think serves as a fair punishment . For those who complain that you have been reading all we have written diligently and it is not fair for you to be punished for the shortcomings of others, too bad. Life isn't fair, especially when I'm its author. So here we go.

Monday, July 14th was the first day of our summer camp. So now is probably a good time to explain that the summer camp no longer exists. Yes you read that sentence correctly; our summer camp, the whole reason we came to Motown in the first place, has gone up in an inferno of misfortune and sorrow.You may be thinking "Oh no! What happened? I thought that you guys had done a lot of work on that summer camp." 

We appreciate your concern, we really do. And yes we did put a great deal of time and effort into this camp. Before last week, however, we met with the big guns of Cornerstone (meaning the Founder and the Principal of the school, we did not meet with actual guns, that would be ridiculous) and we had a very sober discussion of the camp. The problem we addressed was described as a "lack of interest", which is a kind and professional way to explain that even though we sent out 20,000 letters, 6,000 flyers and applications, and 5,000 dollars worth of radio ads, we had ZERO kids sign up for camp. Read that again. That's a big ol' NOTHING. Read it one more time, and then stop because reading that is depressing, and you are probably beginning to feel sorry for us. And that is not what we want.

We had to scrap our entire camp, which was a bit disappointing, but we realized that God is freeing us up to do something completely different. In our meeting we decided upon a new plan:

1. We still have the opportunity to use some of our camp ideas with the Cornerstone summer school students. This way we can still do our research (as well as get paid and not tell Grove City that we totally wasted their time and money). This is a general victory for everybody.

2. We are trying to set up connections between churches in the suburbs and the Cornerstone community. Martin Luther King Jr. said that "the most segregated hour in Christian America is 11:00am on Sunday", and he was right. If we can help the body of Christ in Detroit cross over urban/suburban lines, well gosh darn it, that would be great. 

So yes, we still have found plenty to do in Detroit, even without our summer camp. We have been showing up at the summer school at 7:30am to run before-school care and staying to run after-school care until 5:30pm for the parents who work demanding hours and have trouble transporting their children to/from school at earlier hours. We are also in charge of the kids for lunch and recess, which, when you add it all up, means we spend about 5 hours every day with the kids. Because there are so many kids, after maybe thirty minutes they have us tired out to a pretty pathetic state. So we invented a really fun game for the kids where we lay face down, unresponsive on the ground while they jump on us and gleefully yell, "my horsey is dead!" They can be entertained like this for several hours, which I find to be flat out amazing. 

This has no connection to anything else I have told you, but it is funny so now seems to be as good a time as any to tell you our drug dealer story:

It was a muggy summer day on the East side of D-Town, and four (or 3.5 technically, sorry Gabe) young white men were again in the midst of their mundane daily commute back to the suburbs, blissfully unaware that herb-based confrontation lay in wait for them. To pass the time the young men were listening to brazenly loud Disney songs with their windows down, sharing the joy of beautiful music to the entire neighborhood, which on the whole did not seem to enjoy the cheerful (and, I suppose, uninvited) serenade nearly as much as they should. In short, the youngsters were drawing more attention to themselves than most white folk probably should. Apparently driving a couple of Disney-singing white guys in a nice new car through the east side of Detroit is a good way to get taken advantage of. 

Some say it was the alluring harmonies of the music that drew in the drug dealers, just as the sirens had drawn Odysseus in ages past. Whether or not this was truly the case, something had certainly caught the attention of two friendly neighborhood dealers, and they were determined to contact the young men and offer them their services. One of the young men noticed that a large black truck had pulled astride their own vehicle, and two very large, rough-and-tumble looking African American men were trying earnestly to communicate with them. When both cars came to rest at the next stoplight, one of the dealers (for indeed it was they inside the aforementioned truck) jumped out of his vehicle and walked anxiously to the passenger side of the young men's car. The young men were once again focused on a particularly riveting song, loudly proclaiming rhymes from Beauty and the Beast, and the approach of the dealer caught them unawares. The dealer leaned down to the window and said something along the lines of "Y'all wanna eff with tha boys, or tha girls?" and as he spoke he reached out a clenched first that undoubtedly contained some sort of herbal concoction. Understandably the young men took several seconds to respond, mostly because they had never quite heard a question phrased in such an interesting way. Once it became clear that the "boys" and "girls" in question were two differently mixed drugs, the young men politely deferred the offered services, and the answer "no thanks, we are just good listening to some Disney." was the definitive remark made. The dealer took the answer in stride, and seeing that his offer had been declined, gave a polite nod of his head and returned to his truck. 

Yes, this is a story about a man trying and failing to sell us drugs while we were singing Disney music. The most amazing thing was how normal he found our response that Disney music was more than enough of a rush for us, and that he easily gave up at that point.  This has nothing at all to do with our current mission, but we all thought it was hilarious. We have been enjoying the adventures that Detroit has lent us, and it will be a tearful day indeed when our remaining three weeks are up.

So all I ask is that you would pray for our continual trust in God. We have totally excepted that his plan is different than ours was, and we are trying to faithfully follow wherever he leads us. Quite honestly I do not know where we will end up because we are nowhere near where I thought we would be, so our constant prayer has been that God will hold us close and take us along for the ride. All four of us appreciate the prayers and support that you, our friends and families, have been sending us all summer. It means a great deal to know that all of you are invested in our mission in Detroit, and God’s work is even more powerful because of it. We will keep you updated on our plans, accomplishments, and even our failures, and we promise to stay clear of drug dealers from here on out. Thank you guys and God Bless!

-Spencer

It's Not Ours to Begin With

This post is inspired from a now really good friend of mine, Ellen Moore. She is Gabe’s older sister and she stayed with us here in Detroit for a few days. This was a huge blessing for her to help with the mailing of the letters as you already read about. But one of the first things Ellen said to me was, “Thanks for letting me use you room while I’m here.” Now here is where God has been working on me and teaching me lessons by having me respond, “No problem, it’s not even mine to begin with.” This is very true, it is the Heck’s guest room and I am temporarily occupying it for the summer. I cannot claim it as my own and make it seem like it is a real burden for me to give up the room for Ellen.

As all my posts, my life experiences turn into life lessons for me to grow stronger in my walk with Christ. Here I am taught that the things I “possess” are not even mine to begin with. God owns them and me and I should be willing to give up my place for the sake of others. I do not deserve to keep the comfort of a bed more than my neighbor. I should consider myself as dirt (Ecclesiastes 12:7), not able to do anything alone. I have been compelled by Christ to lay myself down for Him so that I may be more than just dirt. The only way I become something more than scum is if Christ is in me and I allow Him to live through me. As Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Having this new life of Christ in me gives me the right to possess what I want… WRONG! Jesus was as much of a servant as He expects us to be, and only now having been raised to His Heavenly Throne by God, is He to be worshiped! For even Christ’s service was in pursuit ofanything, is because of God’s extended grace to me, in the form of Jesus. Right now, because of my sins I deserve the pit of Hell (Romans 3:23). However, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And I would like to extend here, that believe means more than just being certain that Jesus died, but Running the race With a Purpose: “[not] to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to be seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace” (Oswald Chambers).

His own slavery.  He did not act humbly in order to force God to acknowledge such action and exalt him, but he served with the full intention of becoming less, not more.  Though demons cowered beneath Him, He did not want them to grant him a reputation.  Though He healed the blind and leprous, He did not want to be known as a humble man worth emulating.  He wanted to be a man, as compared to God: very pitiful, worthless, deserving of only a muck-dwelling life. I myself am still scum and do not deserve anything that I do have. I do not even deserve salvation let alone my next breath. The only way I have anything, and I mean

Now trying to tie this altogether: we do not deserve anything because of our sinfulness, but by God’s grace we are blessed with possessions to be a blessing, and/or a servant, to others. What are you holding so dear to you that you aren't willing to give it up? Is it money, your time, or a simple act of service? When was the last time you sacrificed something that you possess to benefit someone else? Don’t hold anything with a closed hand, but rather hold it up with an open hand to be available to be used by God.

Tim and Chad admiring Detroit from Belle Isle

His undeserving servants,

Chad and Tim

Another Peek Into Our Lives!

What up Guys!

Gabe here! and I am back at it to give you all an update on how things are going and what we all are up to. Since its been a while since most of you have seen our faces I shall try to match pictures to most, or at least some of the activities and events of the past week!

So jumping right in, I have to give a shout out to the Detroit Zoo for having some incredibly active animals and being incredibly relaxing to all of us the Saturday before last...especially after leaving the house at 5:30 to get there by 6:30 for Cornerstones Annual Zoo Walk!

The four of us slightly out of it waiting for food

 The Zoo visit was very fun and allowed each of us to goof off and relax a little bit before we started our  first week of real camp, which as you have read was a challenge at first, but incredibly rewarding in the end.  It was Incredible for me personally to look back on the week as a whole and see how God in his wisdom brought the perfect amount of campers for us to spend legitimate quality time with, and begin solid relationships. and from this I must give all the glory to our Incredible God! We had the chance to be humbled by God and still be used to serve Him in the lives of those he put us in contact with, all we had to do was stay faithful and maintain a heart of service.

The Official Shirt of Cornerstone Basketball Camp (our camp!!)

Spencer Sporting his best smolder

Speaking of service, over the past two days we were gifted with the chance to put Gods command to be the servants of all into action! We Labeled, folded, stuffed, stamped and sent out over 5,000 flyers and applications starting Monday morning at 8:30. On top of that, we still found time to catch the World Cup with Mr. Heck (even though we were sorta late) That, my friends, is domination! However, I would be lying if I told you that it was an easy and frustration free task. In fact, it was far from such, but in the hours of monotony is where God showed me just a tiny nugget of what it means to serve God through serving others. I must confess that as we started into the endless pile of paper my attitude was less than prime. Not only did I think that the letters were a waste of paper and my oh so valuable time, I also thought that the job was some how beneath me. This is where that conviction of the Holy Spirit came in and punched my pride in the face. Who the heck am I to be possessive of the time God has given me to serve. If I am truly here to represent Christ to the people of Detroit it matters not what form of service Christ will put me in, it simply matters that I am faithful in that task...this realization was humbling and pushed me to fulfill the aforementioned command of Christ.

That is about 1/4 of the total dropped mail...

As I end this post, I must give a shout out to three incredible people. First, My Brother Isaac Moore whose graduation Tim, Chad, and myself were overjoyed to attend this weekend. I love you man, and im super proud of the man you have become in Christ, keep it real down at AU, dog.

Izzy & Tim Sending a message to the world

 Second & Third shout out goes to my sister Ellen Moore & Mrs. Heck. Ellen, who also had her graduation (form College) party this weekend, came up to help us stuff envelopes up here in Mo-Town. Your heart for God has and always will be my inspiration. Speaking of inspiration, Mrs. Heck is the best one can find, her compassion for others is an incredible example of Christ's Compassionate heart and eyes.

Queens.

His Servants.

Tim, Spence, Gabe, Chad

Running With a Purpose

26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Corinthians 9)

This post was inspired by Mrs. Heck. She may not know it, but she is making a huge impact in at least my life, from feeding me with delicious food to being sacrificial and willing to teach in my ignorance. She is willing to serve us even when we are the ones invading her house, but she is also prone to ask us to serve alongside her by drying the dishes or something along those lines. One of the coolest things that I saw Tuesday night with the Hecks, is that they got a call at around 10 pm from some college students that are friends with their son. They needed a place to crash for the night and Mrs. Heck was off to pick them up while Mr. Heck grabbed us to help him tidy up the house. It was a beautiful example of flexible hospitality, and we got to be a part of it. Now that is just some examples of what our household life is like, where we are learning lessons to grow in our faith and to be better men of God.

I didn't know I was going to say all that above, but now to the reason I sat down to write. Within the first week we were here, we learned that Mrs. Heck ran a marathon and that she ran with a group called Team World Vision. Now if you don’t know much about World Vision, it is a Christian organization that reaches third world people groups by providing humanitarian needs. But Team World Vision is a branch of World Vision that runs marathons or other shorter races in support of third world countries, supplying them with clean water. Providing clean water is the easiest prevention of so many deaths within this world.

So I have been contemplating over this idea of running a marathon with a purpose. Now I really don’t like running, especially long distance (26.2 miles!!!). I was almost brought to tears thinking of crossing the finish line and the result would be saved lives! Now tell me that isn’t a reason to run. Each mile is another mile to saving another child. What a great purpose to run the race! Should we not be doing the same in our own lives? Every day is a day to run the race. Every day is a day a day to save someone from the grip of Hell. We should be running daily, not for our own spiritual health, but for the sake of others salvation. We need to beat our body and make it our slave to Christ, running the race He has blessed upon us.

Run in such a way as to win the prize, not running around aimlessly without any purpose to your faith. We have faith so that we may share it with others. So let us stop being so selfish and lay down our lives for the sake of the cross, that others may live because of our sacrifice (just as Christ sacrificed everything for us).

Because of Him,

Chad

Basketball Camp: Day 2

Well, we got 4 kids today.  It definitely made camp different than we were expecting, but we got to teach basketball and share the Gospel, so I think we did what God had for us to do.  We learned some finishing, handling, and defensive fundamentals today.  More to learn tomorrow, and we look forward to it.

We also finalized our counselor squad for Kids' Camp with Mrs. Sanders, how neat is that?!  I'd say that's pretty neat.

(I forgot to take pictures, so this is all I could think of to make this post more entertaining...)

Short one today; love you all, thank you for your support.

-The Boys

First Day of Bball Camp!!

Was not quite what we expected.  Nobody showed.  We stood at our table, thrilled to not be wearing ties, for an hour, and actually gave away infinitely more applications than we received (Which is just simple, clever mathematics: 4/0 = infinity).  How do you rebound from that?  What does that mean?  Are we doing something wrong?

Backtrack to yesterday.  Something that I'm pretty sure none of us have thought about yet (including myself until now), or at least haven't vocalized yet.  The Heck's church, which we've been attending, had a guest speaker for their Sunday morning.  His name: Phil Vischer.  I'll let you google that and be thrilled for all of us.  If laziness is settled deep in your core and you didn't do that, I'm sorry but I'm gonna push you to do that.  I wouldn't do him and his story justice here.  His life lesson was for us.  Upon coming to the brink of making the Christian Disney, Phil was wrongly sued and lost, ending his dreams of using the often abused American media as an avenue to teach the Bible to children.  I can't speak for who Phil Vischer was before that corporate meltdown, but while speaking to us, he was definitely sincere, and thus I believe that Veggietales was exactly that; a Christ-focused calling, not a money making scheme.  Which therefore marked the reason for his confusion at its collapse.  "God, this was a good thing.  Why would you let this fail, maybe even make it fail?  My dream was Your dream!" was the gist of his inner chaos.  And after fighting depression for several years he came to a marvelous conclusion: "God doesn't want my dream, He wants my soul."  His finest example was Noah.  Noah built the ark at the tender age of 500.  He was NOT planning to make the first animal cruise ship and save the world for those 499 years prior, he was waiting on the Lord.  It was not his dream that made him special to God, but his obedience (John 14:15).  The Bible is not a story of people saying "God can't steer a parked car, I gotta DO something so God acknowledges me and can make much of me!"  It sounds silly in that light, doesn't it, and I know it to be true of me.  The Bible is a story of steadfast and devout people who were patient and humble until God told them to rise.

Could I be too anxious to do a good thing, and not content resting in the arms of my Father?  Have I been chasing a resume builder for here or heaven, instead of realizing that God prizes simple pure things over things that look extravagant but are empty, or even mostly full?  Have I been trying to show God how He could bring some good instead of asking how He makes all things work together for our good.

We'll keep you posted on the rest of the week.  Thank you for your prayers, please continue to do that simply and purely.  Please pray:

• First, praise and honor your King.  He is good to you and good to us, and we would hate to have you forget that in the midst of earthly disappointments
• That God makes sense of this latest letdown
• That we continue to be unified to and considerate of each other as a team
• That we optimize the situations God puts us in, especially if they are not what we anticipate
• Taking responsibility and not shifting blame for our camp’s shortcomings
• Our future (hopefully?) campers’ hearts to be ready for Biblical teaching
• For our hearts, minds, and selves to have prepared worthwhile Biblical teaching for these future standard bearers
• That God & Souls (especially our own) would be a far more important relationship than God and our dreams
• For my competitive pride to surrender

Still finding things that we didn't know we didn't know,

Tim, Gabe, Chad, and Spince

P.S. I posted this soon after Spencer posted one of his own, so make sure you don't miss that.  Also, I think this is the most recent picture of all of us for all you worried mothers out there:

Enjoying a Tigers Game with Rob (Grove City Athletics Department) & his friend Emily