Stacie:
At the beginning of the semester, I had signed up for a ministry at the Pregnancy Help Center in Camdenton, MO. I figured that I had just had a baby, so that would hopefully allow me to connect with some of the pregnant teen girls that the center worked with. I looked forward to being a mentor, someone who these girls could look up to, as both a Christian young woman and a mom. This, of course, was my pride speaking, and God knew full well that this was the case. In His wisdom, He chose to have this ministry take a completely different direction for me, as well as the other girls from school who were serving there with me (Naomi Flack and Savvy Wolfson).
We started the semester with much enthusiasm, visions of Bible studies and spiritual revival dancing in our heads. This lasted until the first meeting with the ladies running the pregnancy center (PHC), where we found out that the vision these ladies had was not just of helping pregnant teen girls but also providing a place for these young people to hang out and bond with Christians (both peers and mentors) before ever getting to the point of needing the PHC. This was totally cool to us, and we quickly caught on to this vision.
Then started the frustrations that come with being on the fringes of the planning for something that takes quite a bit of work to get going. Though we knew that it would take time to make the Center a place where kids would WANT to be, we found it hard to not know what was going on. This was where God started working on our hearts. At first, our prayers centered around the ladies in charge, both our relationship with them, and that there would be more communication. As time went on, however, these prayers changed and started focusing more on ourselves, that whatever God wanted to teach us would be well learned, and that we would have patience and grace to do His will.
Long story short, what started out as a frustration, something we didn’t really look forward to, ended up being something that God used to change our hearts and attitudes. We grew closer as a team, and ended up having really good relationships with the ladies running the PHC (answered prayer!). Although we never did get to meet with any pregnant ladies, we did get to see teens get saved at a concert that took place there before we left for the summer! Even though our prayers weren’t answered in the way we expected, God has used our time there to teach us, and I’m so thankful!
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