Cumberland Youth

After many hours of travel, we've arrived in Minneapolis! We are so excited to serve this week!

We are partnering this week with Shiloh Temple International Ministries! We had a wonderful time joining for worship and hearing an awesome message about Heaven. 

We were so blessed to be covered in prayer this morning during the service! The church members invited us to the front and prayed over our week of serving. This was such a special moment!

We had an awesome time stepping out of our comfort zones and diving into the community! Our team had the pleasure of riding the Light Rail from downtown Minneapolis to St. Paul and back. A few smiles and granola bars later, connections were made and prayers were lifted up. It was impacting to hear the stories from all of our new friends. 

We enjoyed a few Twin Cities landmarks during our Light Rail excursion today. We stopped at Union Depot at the end of the rail in St. Paul and also explored a little bit of the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, where the Vikings play. Check out those rowing skills!

We are having a fun time learning about good listening and conversation skills! Now, we can go out and talk to people here in the community.

We started our morning at Shiloh Temple International Ministries! Here, we have had the opportunity to clean out some of the rooms in the basement. Lots of Christmas decorations and glitter later, we are still full of energy!

During lunch, we had the pleasure of meeting Pastor Ramon. The Pastor kept it real with us as he explained what prison ministry is like, and how he became involved with it. We love hearing the heart Shiloh Temple has for this community - especially those who aren't always loved on. It's been awesome being able to grow our hearts for Minneapolis, and it was an honor to pray over Pastor Ramon and his ministry - we're praying that God will continue to use him to break chains!

After a long day of work, we had the opportunity to sit down, relax, and listen to the youth choir practice. They even blessed us with singing us one of their favorites!

This morning, we have started the day by hearing an awesome devotional from John 9. We learned about the miracle Jesus performed for the blind man, and how we can be a light to others by getting in the dirt. As long as we're a light, we're going to let it shine! What better way to shine our light than to write notes of encouragement to Shiloh Temple International Ministries and their community?

We dived right into the day! We are back to working in the basement to continue cleaning. The first room is pretty much finished, and we're onto the second one!

Today at lunch, we heard from Pastor Jalilia about the Food Shelf ministry here at Shiloh Temple! We learned that the food pantry serves over 9,000 people monthly - mostly in the city. Many people "shop" weekly! The youth who serve in this ministry is starting a garden to provide a bigger variety of fresh food. Pastor Jalilia also works to hire youth to fight against youth violence. She is a big part of the decreasing numbers in gun violence here in the community. We're so grateful that Pastor Jalilia was willing to be vulnerable with us as she shared her powerful testimony! It was an honor to pray over her and her ministry.

Thanks to Kari, we were able to tour the Praying Pelican Missions headquarters! It was awesome to see where all the magic happens. We loved getting to meet some of the people who make trips like ours happen. Kari also took the time to talk to us about joining on staff with PPM, what the mission field looks like as a trip leader, how impacting trips are, as well as all of the benefits. We might have some future pelicans on our team!

We started our morning with a devotional from John 4 and training on different methods of prayer. We got creative and stepped out of our comfort zones through prayer journaling, one-sentence prayers, auditory group prayers, and more. How cool that God invites us to come to Him in many different ways and that He promises to hear us!

On our last day of work, we tackled the last room! As fun as it has been, we're glad that we've finished what we came here to start. It took hard work and determination, but we did it!

For lunch, we had the pleasure of eating pizza with Pastor Jalilia, Courtland, and his choir - Known MPLS. We then got to hear from Dr. Andrea Langford! We learned so much about her ministry here at STIM. Dr. Langford is extremely active in the choir, as well as counseling the children, youth, and the adults right here in the community! She wears many hats, and we loved getting to know about the many ways that Jesus shines through her. We are so thankful for her willingness to be real with us and answer all of our many questions.

As we concluded our week of ministry at Shiloh, there was much heartfelt gratitude and joy. It has been such a sweet partnership this week, and it's hard to say goodbye! We were blessed with a thank-you cake and one last opportunity to connect with Pastor Theresa. We got to pray over her and give lots of hugs! We hope to continue this partnership and to still be united in Spirit even when we're miles apart.