Wednesday. Whew. As someone would say at the end “it was our best day and our worst day.”

It started out the same as the other days. I got up about the same time.

Shower. Cold. Still.

After doing my impression of a polar bear, I read my devotions and worked on the YUGO journal.

Breakfast was the same as it was on Monday. Or Tuesday. Whatever.

The children’s ministry meeting was about the same. They went over the craft and had a couple of teams give one of their lessons. Just about everyone was acting them out.

The worship service was the same. The speaker went on in his message of trying to convince the youth they should go into foreign missions to a land that had never had a missionary. I remember him really stressing obeying God as opposed to living a good Christian life. He was talking about how raising Christian kids was a given, as was most of the other things Christians strive for. He really railed against the comfortable Christian life that so many Christians have picked out for themselves. I remember getting a lot of this message. It really challenged me to make sure that I was living God’s will and not mine.

After the worship service was quiet time. I remember Joy, John, and few other people talking about the speaker. He was pretty galvanizing and was very focused on foreign missions to places that have never had a missionary before. The conversation was about if people agreed with him and all his points, etc. John made some good points about the speaker being a soldier (metaphorically. The speaker also used the same word to describe himself). He was trying to kick the youth in the butt to knock them out of their comfort zones, and get them seriously thinking about missions, and if that’s where God was calling them.

During my quiet time, I found myself dwelling on the speaker’s message. I had been really challenged about following God’s will, and not my own. Its something I’ve always struggled with, and this just brought it back to the front. I made a list of agendas and goals of mine that got ahead of God’s will in my life. Number one was my career. I logically followed through with answering questions like: What would it look like if I followed God’s will? and How do I ensure I’m following God’s will? I actually wrote it down at the time, for all the good that did. It was a very productive time for me.

During the team meeting, the children’s ministry decided that we were going to go to the same park as the sport’s ministry. It was close by and there were kids around. We actually would play in the road right in front of the park since it wasn’t heavily traveled. That way we didn’t interfere with the sport’s ministry.

Lunch. It was some sort of food-like substance.

After lunch, we went to the church. The children’s ministry originally had the idea of starting a few people playing, and then sending some people out inviting. But after a little bit of playing, it became apparent that no inviting was necessary. We just had the frisbee and jump rope going, but that was enough. We had about 20 or 25 kids there playing. It was great. I didn’t play any frisbee, but turned the jump rope a whole lot.

After playing for a while, we decided to give one of the lessons. We managed to get most of the kids sitting down in some shade. The “hook” of the lesson was to tie a kid’s legs together and have them try to run. I picked two kids to do this, and had them try to run a telephone pole and back. I probably tied their legs too closely together because they just hopped their way over to the pole. About that time, the ribbon came off, and they just ran back. It was quite amusing. The lesson was on Peter and John and when God healed the lame man. They kids listened fairly well, but there were a few distractions. I don’t think the lesson went as well as it could have though. I was having trouble working with a translator, in this case Elaine. I kept looking at her to see when she was done translating. I also should have been closer to the kids, and kept better eye contact. Oh well. I didn’t present the gospel this time because they were getting very restless. Instead I just invited them to the church that night, and to invite friends as well.

We played some more, then we packed it in to go have supper. We decided to go to the other park (the one 9 blocks away). Now on Monday and Tuesday, we had gone to the church first and locked our bags in a room there. But on this day, we didn’t go to the church first, so some of us had our bags with us. The park was “nice” so some of us just left our bags in the van.

We went into the park and had supper. It was nice to not have supper in the church.

When we got back to the van, things went south. We discovered someone had broken into van by jimmying the lock. They stole three bags. Matt’s, the Idaho youth paster, Alan’s, one of the Idaho adults, and mine. Matt and Alan had some things in their bags, but really only their cell phones were of worth.

Unfortunately, I was not so lucky. I had only brought two bags with me from Texas. A soft-side and a backpack. The soft-side contained all my clothes. Since I was packing for ten days, my soft-side didn’t have any room for anything but clothes. So my toiletries, Bible, etc were all in my backpack, which was stolen. I had also been storing my valuables in there, like my cell phone, passport, wallet, and keys. On Monday and Tuesday the bag was locked up in a room in the church so it was fine. Unfortunately, being locked in a van is not the same thing. It was not a smart move on my part.

As everyone I spoke to afterwards was more than happy to point out, I shouldn’t have done that. I should have kept my passport hidden on my body (lots of ways to do that), and kept my wallet and keys on me.

Meanwhile, we had to get back to church and prepare for the evening service. The robbery was a pretty big distraction. Elaine and I ended up praying at the church that God would help us put this aside and do God’s work.

We had discovered that there was a room above the sanctuary that we could use for the children’s ministry. Which was a good thing. Because before we knew it, about twenty kids showed up. At first, we tried to keep them in the service, with the understanding that after the music we would take them up to the room and do crafts. But they kept running in and out, so we rounded them up and took them upstairs. We did crafts and Joy gave a lesson. The timing was good; the kids finished up about the time the evening service was over. The kids were fairly well behaved, but there were a few kids who were hard to keep from disrupting.

After the service we went back to YUGO. We told the coordinators and such about the robbery. Unfortunately, their phone and internet system was down. The children’s coordinator let me borrow her cell phone to make some calls. I called all my credit card companies and canceled the cards. I also called Cingular and canceled my phone. They apparently only got to a couple of my credit cards, and some of the transactions had failed. I felt a lot better after making the calls canceling everything.

By the end of the phone calls, the sharing service was over. I think a few people from our team did manage to go, but I was on the phone and didn’t make it.

Despite all the action during the day, I slept pretty well.