On Wednesday afternoon, I treked it up to Gurnee, IL to visit my best friend Marisol Garcia along with her sister Sophie. I've know this boricua since the second grade! So I hopped onto 294 and all its glory and booked it up North through a mild coverage of rush hour traffic. Apon my arrival, we exchanged quick greetings and then began our journey to Oak Creek, WI. Not a bad drive as we took Waukegan Ave. aka Hwy 41 to meet up with 294 to avoid the tolls. It took us about 30 mins to meet our destination which was the Oak Creek Assembly of God...the church that the Garcia's attend. The reason for my visit this evening other than to spend quality time with Mari and Sophie, was to help Mari figure out whether or not she should be a part of the "singles impact" ministry or the "crossroads" ministry. We decided to check out Singles Impact because if its the equivalent to HBC's version of SAM, she will need to have a friend there for back-up. Sophie headed into Crossroads which is geared towards those 18-25 years old. I knew Mari would rather go to Crossroads after the worship team started to play. Or maybe that was me:) They weren't horrible and we certainly were able to worship God. Their interpretations of some of the modern worship tunes was very interesting. Like the "bosa nova" version of "How Great is Our God." It was a challenge to accept it and not be jealous of the Hillsongs-like praise going on at the Crossroads ministry. Pastor Laurie of the Singles Impact ministry gave a message about making excuses which really tugged at a lot of our hearts. She used the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, when God tells Moses that he will bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses is like, wait up God, who am I that I should do such a thing. How many times has God asked us to do something we don't think we can do? Our tendency is to be like Moses and just come up with excuses, reasons why we aren't qualified or why we shouldn't do something He asks of us. As the story continues in Exodus, Moses continues to question God about approaching the Israelites, what if they don't believe me...I can't speak in front of people...I'm no eloquent speaker...How many times have I said that to God in the last year? LOTS! But somehow, I managed to realize its better when God asks us to do things we "think" we can't do. This allows God to truly show us how BIG He is. God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. As our evening ended, i think Mari made the decision to check out Crossroads next week as she would like to develope friendships with Christians in her age group so she can have some hang out buddies as well as accountability partners and such. Since the weather wasn't so great, I spent the night and when I woke up the next morning, I had a great conversation with Mari's mom, Lillian. She loves being a bilingual teacher! She was telling me this heartfelt story about a student, Humberto, who she recently had in her class this past year. He suffers from seizures. He just came to America and had never been in a school before. She had to start from ground zero with him and teach him just about behaving properly in school really before academics came in. It was a touching story to hear how God used her to minister to this child. The other teachers knew there was something different about the way she teaches. Praise God for her and for her love of the Lord which she shared with little Umberto.
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