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

DETROIT: THE BASICS

Hey Folks! This is Spencer making my blogging debut, and I thought a nice thing to do would be to explain in simple terms what on earth we are trying to accomplish in Detroit right now.  We have not explained our summer project in detail because we have not had the details until now, and actually we still do not have all of them. I suppose one way to look at our general lack of information is that it will make things that much more exciting when we finally figure them out. It also adds this cool layer of suspense to everything we do, as in “will anyone show up to our camp, I really hope this works out”. Fun, right?

 I was a late addition to the team, only signing on to the project in May, a little more than a month ago. Gabe and Chad had asked me if I wanted to work with primarily black children in Detroit at “a camp”. I have worked at summer camp before, I enjoy working with children (especially primarily black ones), and quite frankly I need to make some money because I graduate in December. So I said yes, not knowing that “a camp” was something that we would be starting from scratch between the four of us.

            So what exactly have we done? And what are we trying to do? We are working tirelessly (except before meals; working on an empty stomach is a no-go) to create a full day-camp curriculum and schedule that will give our campers an experience they have not had before. We are running our camp at an incredible school called Cornerstone Schools Association that we have already referred to in our blog several times. Here is a link to the school that will tell you a lot more about it than I can.The summer camp was school President/CEO Ms. Ernestine Sanders’ idea, and we have the privilege of using school grounds and resources to make the camp as incredible as possible. 

            Thus far we have created an entire curriculum for our summer day camp and for a weeklong basketball camp as well.  We have been doing things that we have never done before, like making budget reports, meeting agendas, and even legal tender for our applications. Our self-sufficiency, as well as the chance of being sued, has never been higher.  We have been advertising throughout the greater Detroit area to recruit elementary and middle school campers, and we even have radio ads playing in the area.

Look at this meeting agenda, this is the most professional thing I have ever done. Somebody show my mother so she can see how grown up I am.

Gabe made this whole budget report himself. Raise your hand if you are impressed!

            We have science lessons (to blow stuff up), art and music lessons (to make the kids do Jewish circle dances), and yard games (to make the kids too tired to get into mischief). We are even taking the kids to the Wright African American History Museum and the Detroit Science Center.  Heck, some people might even suggest that we are including legitimate education in our camp. Our day camp will start on July 14^th and will run in weeklong segments until August 8^th, which is 4 weeks for those of you at home who are too lazy to do the math (shame on you). We are also starting our after school basketball camp today, June 23^rd.

Above: Cornerstone Camp Directors Timothy Shackleton and Chad Knox enjoy a beautiful view of Downtown Detroit.

            How many kids will show for camp? We can tell you when they get here. How will our counselors (we are not the counselors, we are the DIRECTORS, largely due to our maturity and responsibility) fare with all the children? We do not know because they have not been hired yet. Long story short, we have a lot of questions, important questions, waiting to be answered. So we ask you, our delightful audience, to continually pray for us as we do the work set before us each day in faith. The questions we have, God holds the answer to. It is not our job to worry about what God controls and we do not. Therefore pray for us to keep our faith in God’s plan for this camp. We are working hard and giving our time and energy into this camp, and yet our vision for the camp may never come to be. Our camp may be the coolest, fastest growing thing in Detroit, and that would be great. But it could also only bring in 20 unenthusiastic children who are only there because their mothers dragged them to camp. We only desire a Godly perspective to see the success of our camp, not a monetary or worldly one. Whatever happens this camp is in God’s hands, not ours, and I find that inexpressibly comforting.

Spencer Dupee

Director, Basketball Camp Coordinator, and Chief Editor at Cornerstone Camps

Be a Godsend

Hey all,

As we said earlier about our workload piling on, our productivity has also become much higher. It is a huge blessing to continue to get more direction in how to make this camp, but when we are given a direction we must move in that direction. If we don’t move in that direction, we aren’t being good stewards of our gifts and abilities that God has given us. As Oswald Chambers said in My Utmost For His Highest, “God not only expects me to do His will, but He is in me to do it.” This has meant volumes to me pressing forward in creating this camp. We already know that this is God’s will and He has chosen us four college guys to make it, knowing that we aren’t making it at all but simply being used as vessels for God’s vision for this camp.

Now understanding that Christ is in us, we have seen Him go before us in this overwhelming task of constructing this camp. It has been a blessing to see how God has sent people from the school to us: Godsends. The middle school principle, Mr. Wrosch, was the first example in our line of Godsends. He really stuck out to me, being completely sacrificial of his time in his busy schedule, making us his first priority when we had a question for him. He by no means had to be so accommodating to us; he didn’t even know us! This characteristic of seeing a need and being a solution is something I found to be very desirable in my own faith. I want to be able to drop what I am doing in my so called busy life and become someone’s solution. I want to be a solution sent by God.

I can only see this Godsend character being possible if we remain in the Spirit. He wants to use us; we just need to give up our right to ourselves to Him. Chambers says, “If you give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you – and His experiments always succeed.” If we just take a quick glimpse at some big names in the Bible, we will see clear evidence of God’s people giving this right to Him and being in the Spirit.

The story of Joseph had event after event seemingly not go his way. However, he remained in God’s will, with his right to himself in God’s hands. Being thrown in jail, he remained in the Spirit. Eventually, Joseph became Egypt’s Godsend. There was no way Joseph could’ve been in the position he was, and save a nation if it wasn’t for being obedient.

Moses had a fortunate start to his life where God spared his life from the wrath of Pharaoh. Eventually coming into the presence of God at the burning bush, Moses was told to give up his right to himself and bask in His presence to release His people from the bondage of slavery. Moses’ obedience became the Godsend the Hebrews have been waiting for.

David, a mere shepherd boy, became a Godsend for the Israelites when the Philistine giant, Goliath, challenged the nation. David had complete confidence, or faith, that God was in absolute control. He by no means kept his right to himself, nor did he go to the battlefield out of the Spirit of God.

Esther turned out to be the Godsend the Jews needed from evil plots of Haman. She was taken and made queen, for reasons she didn’t know. She later realized her purpose and gave up her right to herself and stepped boldly into the King’s presence, both king Xerxes and the King of kings’ presence. With bold, faithful obedience she saved her people.

Being a Godsend is something I truly yearn to be on a daily basis, especially as the four of us step into the children’s lives on daily basis. We must remain in the Spirit, having no grip on our right to ourselves, but being in Christ’s utter control to be His vessel so that He can fulfill His will within our lives.

-Chad

First Week Down!

What up guys!

Gabe here, and being the least literate member of the Detroit hood rats the following blog post will represent the battle between my brain and keyboard. I would like to first apologize about the tardiness of this post; it has been my job to post the past week and as you can see…I have not. So we will just pick up where Tim left off and briefly cover the events of the past week!

To start, Spencer is here!

…and has been for a week. I apologize to any of those who may have been distressed upon not hearing of his arrival. As a group we have really been making ourselves at home with the Hecks. I would like to take a moment to give a total shout-out to Manfred and Debbie Heck. Not only is Duckback (Mr. Heck’s self-given nickname) one of the chilliest bros you will ever meet, he also loves biking, ice-cream and all things hip and fashionable. 

Mr. Heck at his secret Office rocking the Headband Fashion Statement

Also, I would like to note that we celebrated his birthday this past week! 

 And for this birthday celebration Mrs. Heck made this seven layer ice-cream cake.

 And speaking of Mrs. Heck she is an absolute angel! Not only does she make food for 4 growing college boys, she takes us shopping to find outrageous deals and bargains.

 She also puts up with our relentless teasing,

sarcastic comments,

 and complete incompetence when it comes to making food for ourselves. 

 Please keep her and Mr. Heck your prayers that God will continue to give them the grace it takes to handle four crazy oversized children. But really, these two wonderful people have been and continue to be such a blessing to each of us and we could not be more grateful for the hospitality they have shown us. God has truly provided!

Moving on from one blessing to another, I am going to spend the rest of this blog post updating you all on our progress with creating Camp Cornerstone! I would be lying if I didn’t tell you all that almost all of our camp is “still in the works”.  Beginning last Friday morning at 8:00am God opened door after door for our efforts, and provided in incredible ways. We arrived as a team ready to go bright and early Friday morning. We had the opportunity to participate in Cornerstone’s “partner day”, during which we had the chance to meet students and observe a morning class. 

Spencer and J 

Each of the students we spent time with were so special and got us all hyped (slang for enthusiastic) to make the best camp this world has ever known. From there we went to meet Ms. Sanders, who is the CEO of Cornerstone Academies. Things got a little interesting, Ms. Sanders and her secretary were incredibly busy and could only give us a few tasks to finish over the weekend. These tasks Chad was to complete in about…45 minutes, and by the end of the night we found ourselves lacking direction. Returning to Cornerstone Monday morning we quickly realized that we were to create this camp almost entirely on our own, because Ms. Sanders is FAR too busy to take the reins on the specifics of the camp, and understandably so as the CEO of the school ranked as “number 1 in the city of Detroit.  This realization brought about a brief moment of panic as we looked at the scope the task that lay before us. This is where God started to do his thing and came in the clutch BIG TIME! (He’s real good at that). We started wandering the halls of the school like lost sheep, and we ended up meeting important person after important person, who each helped to the questions that we had. Our productivity was astounding from that point on, and we were able to take initiative without needing Ms. Sanders to micromanage our efforts.  Needless to say we were all pretty stoked (again, it means enthusiastic) about God’s provision.

Our new found self-direction in the camp project was encouraging, however, we realized that our recent productivity resulted multiplying our workload significantly. We had to have our entire camp curriculum to present to Ms. Sanders on Wednesday morning. So we woke up Tuesday ready to get to work only before we remembered  that we had to Skype Dr. Blackburn to adjust some of our research for the summer. It was great to hear from our team leader, and we were able to make some profound changes to the program. While this was exciting it also increased our already hefty workload (it turns out you have do a lot of work in the real world, how about that)!

Some may be daunted by the task that is set before us. However, these incredible kids of Detroit provide more than enough motivation for us to put our hearts and souls into making this camp great.  Last night we had the chance to experience Cornerstone’s Choir concert. The talent and dedication of the kids blew us away! I personally have been to a concert along these lines, but for Spencer, Chad, And Tim this was a new and revolutionary experience in the world of gospel music. 

I’ll let the music talk (or sing) for itself in through videos in the next post, But you can imagine how this experience fueled our love for the kids of Detroit. To put it simply this school that we have the privilege of partnering with has stolen our hearts! The kids and the Hecks are truly a light in our lives and simply want to share these blessing with all of you! We are so in love with God, and his love for these kids pushes us to push ourselves in serving him! And trust me, we are going be pushed….BIG TIME.

Please pray for the sleep deprivation and the split personalities that we have been developing under the stress of these real world responsibilities.

Yours In Christ, 
Tim (Deshaun), Chad (Lennie), Spencer (Randy), Gabe (Gabe).

Thug'n.
(Mrs. Heck Still wins the sweet heart award)

New Home!

Warriors of 'Troit,

3 of 4 have migrated to our new home in Canton, MI from which we'll be commuting to Detroit for camp. Spencer will be joining Chad, Gabe, and I tomorrow after returning from Oregon.  We are thrilled to be allowed to stay in the same place together.  Our host parents, Mr. and Mrs. Heck have already given us tours of the house and the town and there is an encouraging aura of community all over.  We have clicked seamlessly.  Mr. Heck has a very compatible sense of humor (and I am nearly in fear for my health preparing for the comedy act that he and Spencer will be), and Mrs. Heck is very generous and sweet.  It's easy to feel in control and optimistic about our situation now, but a great many things come to mind at this revelation:

Are we remaining humble?
As we clown around with Mr. Heck, or take advantage of the freedom from our own parents, are we doing what we are doing to inspire a Godly joy in others, or are we being fools. (Proverbs 15:21)

Are we remaining servants?
Are we seeking ease of living or our own pleasure, or simply being lazy?  This needs to be a large focus of mine. (Proverbs 6:6)  We will only be a great harm to young minds if we are imploring them to live a servant's life that we are not living.

Are we remaining Christ-focused?
As simple as everyday things can seem, they may be the battlegrounds that are most often lost out of complacency. (James 4:13-17)  There are some many things that God has enabled us to do that we get lost trying to seek the most extravagant.  I am always looking for "The New" especially in my faith.  But by sprinting to the outer reaches of the globe I've trampled some really beautiful, really delicate, virtues.  The real smart guys out there are stopping to smell the roses (or do other mundane things well)

Are we being quiet?
Fools being loudmouths has got to be one of the bigger themes in Proverbs (17:28 for one).  Quieting ourselves does a number of things for God and for us.  It cuts out the middle man of us for those who need to hear God more directly, it allows God to teach and use us more effectively, and it gives Christian-critics less to justify their God-separated lives with.  On the level of the individual, we find peace faster, get to be (or at least appear) like the mature person we'd like to see ourselves become, and we catch far more of the show that is God's Creation

Jesus was never sarcastic, his disciples weren't putting tacks on each others chairs, and Moses didn't come down from Sinai with the Ten Best Jokes tablets.  Pray for our understanding of the mission that has been entrusted to us.

That being said, this mission undeniably involves a great deal of loving and welcoming kids that may receive very little or none of such tangible Godliness.  Perhaps a strong prayer then is thanks that God's joke-book is a good one...



...a very good one.

Prone to wander,

Tim, Chad, and Gabe

When you work together, you get to know better

Hey All,

We really appreciate you following and praying for us this summer while we are out in the mission field. No, we are not over the ocean in a third-world country, but that doesn’t make where we are placed not a mission field. We, as a group are absolutely stoked to see what God is going to do after already seeing what he has done in this opening already. We anticipate great things as we press forward with Christ as the head of our insignificant team.

I would like to take a minute to express what I learned this past semester at Grove City College (GCC). I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Jamaica on a mission trip with other students from GCC. We seemed to be a group that would not be a typical group seen together. We each had a different background and affiliated with different groups on campus. With that being said, I didn’t know everyone very well. We had weekly meetings that helped breach into relationships that consisted of saying hi to each other on campus. Fast-forwarding to Jamaica itself, we jumped right into close quarters and working together. It was amazing how well we meshed! It was only through Christ that a team that had no commonalities to come together and work so well together. It was incredible how within the first day of work, by lunchtime we knew each other so much better. One of the members said at our first lunch, “Is it just me, or does it feel like we have known each other forever?” The work we did together brought each of us to bond closer together. Within work, there is a problem. You need this thing you are working on to be something more than it already is when you are done with it. So we would struggle through fixing or building or whatever the task was, with our teammates and eventually came to a point where it was a successful job. Just a little work helped us to get to know each other on a deeper level. I was telling my family, when you work with someone, you get to know them. Then it hit me... When you work with God you get to know Him. Yeah it is good to meet with Him once a week, but when do you really get to know God? You get to know Him in the everyday, working with Him daily. Going through problems together and coming out of the challenge in triumph of knowing Him more and giving Him the glory.

So I ask you, have you gotten to know God in a while? How are you going to work with Him today, tomorrow? Press in and go through a challenge not by yourself, but rather with Him, ultimately to know Him more through it.

-Chad

Still In The Works (Spiritually)

Hey guys!
     You may have taken notice of our blog name and URL (or at least we earnestly hope so). Jonah's story is not actually a very redemptive one; it's a warning. The Sunday School story is only the 1st half. Jonah runs from God, gets eaten by a giant fish (They always make a big emphasis on it not being a whale...still haven't figured that one out), is sad, then repents, then gets vomited (In almost every Biblical translation that's the word alright!) onto shore. He goes to Nineveh, and preaches, the king tells everybody to be afraid, be very afraid, and they all mourn and repent their sin. Happy ending, right? Nope, you forgot the last chapter, my friend!
     "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it." (Jonah 3:10) Jonah's God's messenger; he must be so proud of himself! Plot twist #2. The next verse: "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry." (Jonah 4:1). Jonah did see himself as God's instrument, but he hoped to lord that over others, and wouldn't share that power with these spiritual worms! So he goes up a hill and waits and hopes that the city ceases to exist in a glorious fashion. The book of Jonah ends with God's critique of Jonah's lack of love, and Jonah being a brat: Telling God that he is entitled to be angry about a shade-providing tree that died in the sun.

A very abrupt ending, huh?

     Has this ever been your attitude towards helping someone? For Believers it might sound like "Fine God, I'll give this homeless man a sandwich, but he's just gonna be helpless an hour later." Non-Believers: "My boss is watching, so I'll have a friendly-looking interaction with my project teammate, but inside I hope he gets fired for his laziness and how annoying he is." Shamefully, it has definitely been my attitude towards the downtrodden previously in doing "good things." I am no obligated superhero, in fact, "Christ came to save sinners; of whom I am chief." (I Timothy 1:15)
     So it's time for a reminder of how Christ treated them. It wasn't His action, but His heart that Jesus wanted us to see: Not the letter of the Law, but the Spirit. He brought Himself to us, and never lifted a finger at the injustice done to Him. And that injustice is not just the cross. Jesus had to be a man. He had lived forever with access to infinity and now had to walk the long, dry, hot dirt roads between the cities that rejected Him after He spoke nothing but Truth to them.
     Christ wanted us to take a similarly humble mindset. To see ourselves as more deserving of living in the devastation of Detroit as those who actually do. These aren't evil people, nor are they people we are to reach down to to gingerly carry out of their misfortune. They are brothers and sisters who have been hurt and would like for us to sit on their bed and cry with them, and then help propel them on in order to help them feel redemption.


Pray for us. We're 4 clowning, ADHD-ridden, sports fanatics and sometimes that can creep in the way of productivity. But oh we love Jesus; what an awesome brother He is to us! May He keep us on track. Pray for the campers, that God would be evident in all of their senses. Pray for the staff, that we and those we hire would have that highest goal of salvation for all of God's children to be able to dwell with Him. Pray that we would be united to all of God and to each other. Pray that we would pray. Do NOT pray for our safety, but rather for opportunity for kids to see God unhindered.

To The One Who Sits Upon The Throne be blessing and honor and glory and power forever,

He can have ours

Still In The Works (Logistically)

Hello friends, welcome to the team!
     We were thinking about giving you a brief introduction towards ourselves and the trip, but that's not gonna cut it, so this is the long version.  Gabriel (front and center) was given the opportunity by Dr. Blackburn (Bottom right) to write and run a summer camp for kids in Detroit at the request she had received from the principal and CEO of a private Christian school in the city.  Gabe quickly assembled his roommate, Chad (Top right), and myself (Top right, tie); however, his roommate had to wait to commit until he heard back from an internship he had already applied for.  We felt out of place, being college sophomores in charge of leading children closer to Jesus, but we went in faith.  And how we were blessed!  Ideas flew, both for fun activities and an intentional leadership qualities curriculum based loosely off the Advanced Training Institute's Character Qualities list.  While in the middle of that however, we sadly lost Gabe's roommate to a different internship.  Within days Spencer [Top left (Workin' on getting a pic of his whole face)] expressed his summer availability and excitement at what we were trying to do.  The Fearsome Foursome was finalized (though nobody calls us that for some reason...).

<--Click it if you want

     That principal/CEO's name was Dr. Sanders, and after 3 months of planning beginning in February we got to sit down with her and talk about what she had in mind for this camp. As it turned out!...our thoughts were completely different, but God was very gracious in how we were able to adapt to each other and put together a new curriculum that would be fruitful for us and our campers.  The school is wonderfully suited for a very diverse camp, with a huge field, basketball court, piano lab, computer access, classrooms (Yes, there will actually be an education component), large meeting room, and cafeteria.  We are totally stoked.  God's provided and hasn't slowed down.  Our potential is as endless as our faith is willing to be, and our faith has been constantly encouraged by God's provision. Pray for us, that we would live in a manner that desires to stay in that humbling cycle.  I'll probably write a couple more quick intro posts about us and our calling so keep checkin' in.

                                                                                           Philemon 1:3-7
                                                                                          Tim, Gabe, Chad, & Spence