Meeting a Need

Working with the newly established Pursuit Church, pastored by Alan Reed, we had a unique opportunity to serve an organization that they partner with called the Namaqua Center. This organization carries a purpose of reaching out to grandparents or other elderly family members having to raise their grandkids or underage kin. Many of these broken families are living in poverty and struggle with communication, as the generation gap can be at times too great. This is a need that I had never really been aware of before and I was thankful that God opened my eyes to. A few of the families that Namaqua offers aid to had prevalent needs that Namaqua could not physically meet in the time they had.
Mike, Jarred, and I had the opportunity to team up with two mission teams Texas and Arkansas also working with Pursuit Church to meet some of those needs. I was stationed at the home of a great grandmother who raises her four-year-old great grandson alone. They had recently bought a more manageable one-story house because of the grandmother’s increasing health problems. Her house was filled to the brim with nick-knacks and odds and ends that had been accumulating for years. There was literally no rhyme or reason to it. All we could do was pile item after item into boxes to be taken to the new house. My heart broke for this woman who had been trying to make it on her own for so many lonely years and had little time to take care of the place in which she lived. I was reminded that I should not stick up my nose in disgust at the condition of what she had been living in and had to ask the Lord to help me serve without judgment. He answered my prayer and filled my heart with His impartial compassion and a determination to complete the job better than I would even do it for myself.
I was inspired by the excellent attitudes of the youth groups that we were packing and cleaning alongside. They worked tirelessly, even cancelling their plans of other activities they had planned for the rest of that day in order to fully prepare the house to be placed on the market and move all the necessities to the new house. I hope that the grandmother and her grandson feel refreshed by a new beginning and that Christ’s love was evident in our efforts. What blessing to meet a need and work together with some awesome teenagers!