A Safe Place (what I discovered when I didn't expect it)

On Saturday I returned from the Red Bird Mountain of Kentucky. I had been one on a team of twenty-one persons from NC to travel to Kentucky to work with the Red Bird Mission of Appalachia. It was a great trip filled with many blessings. But it was totally different than I had planned on, which was a good thing, and it was a God thing. I shared in my sermon on Sunday of how what I was looking towards was not what I ended up seeing and that is because God knew what I have been seeking all Summer.

I shared a link below that is an audio recording of Sunday's message. I hope that you will listen to it and if you do I pray that you will be blessed through it. I guess I would title it "Safe Place" because of what one of my teammates and new friend, Jimmy Kennedy said during our closing worship service on Friday night.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5n76aennmj61vu5/A%20Safe%20Place%20-%20Red%20Bird.wpl?dl=0

 What he shared was also how the trip was going to be different than what he was expecting when he signed on, but he too realized that God was answering his prayers also. Of course those simple words of mine gives no justice to the passionate way in which Jimmy shared it with all of us that night in Beverly Church. As soon as he said what he said the brightest gate opened before my eyes and I immediately realized that God was speaking to me through Jimmy, because he said the same thing that I was feeling but couldn't discern what I was feeling other than I knew I was safe and I was happy.

Another blessing of this trip I would like to share with you is that each night a core group of us would gather at the camp fire there at the Work Camp. Each night we shared God stories, life stories, stories, and we shared laughter and a few times we shared tears. We grew together as we realized that we have became a community, we became a family. Some find it at a table, a church, or on a team, but we found it all just gather around a camp fire.

I am glad that we had no cell service at Red Bird. I don't believe that we would have experienced all that we experienced if we had kept looking at our phones every second.

I share a special word with those who are now the Citizens of the Campfire Community; I am so blessed to have spent so much time with you all, and to have been honored to hear so many of your stories, and to have shared some of mine. I love you and hope that someday we can gather at a camp fire again.