Youth FoLife Mission Trip Updates

Writing on behalf of the Fountain of Life youth and adults who are going on a missions trip to Los Angeles, Rebekah Bolin will be sending updates for the duration of the trip! Bookmark this page for DAILY updates!

April 9, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

We made it through the last full day in Los Angeles!  We had a wonderful day.  This morning we drove down to Long Beach and helped at the Fountain of Life Family Center.  This building serves as a faith-based community center in FOL’s neighborhood.  Our youth really helped clean and organize the building, which was a huge blessing to its ministry.  It is so great to see our churches blessing each other.

This afternoon at the after school program a couple of our youth led and taught a praise dance to the song “Shackles”.  A few of the other youth led a Bible lesson on David and Goliath and Daniel and the lion’s den using puppets—it was hilarious, yet you could tell the children learned the message of how when we pray, God listens and responds.  It was so incredible to see our youth interact with the children throughout the week—they did such a loving, joyful, magnificent job.

After having dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, we celebrated our week by getting cookie ice-cream sandwiches at an ice-cream shop at UCLA.  After that we went to Santa Monica Beach where many of the youth saw an ocean for the first time in their lives.  It brought smiles to our faces to see them having such fun with the waves and sand (picture below).

Prayer requests:

·         We are getting up super early tomorrow to pack our vans and have a final devotion at Griffith Park.  We are also going to minister in an extremely intense way.  Please pray for our day—that we would have the energy and strength to minister as well as enjoy our last few hours in L.A.

·         A safe trip home.  We get into Chicago at midnight and will arrive back in Madison between 3-4am on Saturday morning.  Please pray for our flight as well as our drive (and drivers) from Chicago to Madison.

April 8, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

We’ve had another long, intense, and exhausting day, yet wonderful, deep, and fun.  We began by going to Project Angel Food, an organization that prepares and then delivers meals to those suffering with HIV/AIDS and other terminal illnesses.  We were able to help prepare 1600 meals and then we drove and delivered 3 in the Hollywood area.

At the after school program we helped with the craft and did a skit based off of the three little pigs and building on a firm foundation (Matthew 7:24-27).  The children loved watching our animated play.

Between playing with the children and going to our next activity, most of the team went to Azusa St.  We explained the history behind the Azusa Street Revival, which began in 1906, and how that eventually led to the founding of our church, Fountain of Life.  We can trace our history to a street in Los Angeles.

At night we went to “Homeless Karaoke”—an event that happens in the same building as the after-school program every Wednesday night.  It was a blast as we danced and sang with those from the Skid Row community.

Prayer requests:

·         We would have a transformational, powerful last full day in L.A. tomorrow.

·         That we would have perseverance in our testing of our faith

·          That we would not struggle with flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12)