An Inspirational First Timer by Derek

During visitations Mandy, Nurr and I were walking along the apartments in Azalea Place and noticed a group of children so we took some time to talk to them. We invited them to the Children’s Activity Center and out of nowhere this young man comes out of his apartment screaming in excitement and walked toward us, he asked us what the fliers were all about we explained to him about what we do here at the CAC and he became even more excited! “I’m going to come!!” He yelled out in excitement…

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He was so excited it kind of scared me to be honest; then he ran to his apartment all joyful and full of life and came out again a couple minutes later to tell us about how his sister can come too and he was even more joyful. It was awesome to see such happiness and excitement! I truly never seen a kid so excited; we are talking about more excited than Christmas morning, it was so amazing! 
 
Then Saturday came, right at 12:30pm in comes Jonathan with his sister Jennifer. When he walked in he just had a look of amazement over his face; “Wow! This place is so cool!” he said. And he started asking questions about the ministry; curious about how long we have been here, how it all started, why there are a bunch of painted hand prints on the walls. Then Nurr and I had a chance to minister to him, because he didn’t know who Jesus is and he was receiving, but a funny moment came when I was telling him how Jesus died on the cross for our sins; he then looks at me and says “Cool! Hey are those drums? Can I play them?” It made me crack up so much; he is a very unique and interesting child. So when we started the service he got right into it! He was really enjoying worship, was cheering on the boys for the games, very attentive to all the lessons, and was deep in prayer during prayer time. When it was all over he was so happy that he was there and I had a chance to meet his Mom and she was just so thankful for what we do. I could tell from that point that they would be coming more than just once. It was so amazing to see God work in that family’s life in such a short amount of time; Jonathan went from not knowing anything about Jesus, to praising Jesus and wanting to learn more about Jesus in a matter of minutes. It was so inspiring for me to see from the sidelines and it really put a lot of joy in my soul to see Jonathan start his relationship with Christ. 
 
This whole experience reminds me of how important it is to have a child like faith, it says in Matthew 18:3 “Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, Ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.”. We need to have the excitement, love and undeniable passion for the truth just like children have. When a child accepts a truth in life, they don’t deny it; they don’t doubt or question it, just simply receive and believe. We tend to make things more complicated than it needs to be, especially when it comes to God. So let’s not complicate things and be like Jonathan, let’s receive and believe.