We started the day out at Greg and Laura Pollak’s house with a delicious breakfast and then went back to Easter Lake for a time of personal and group devotions. We had an awesome unexpected object lesson as Chad was talking about being just a sojourner on this earth. Right after he got done making his point a guy with a huge backpack on some sort of a monster hike walked right up to us.

The morning was dry while we did our devotions but as we went back to the Pollak’s for lunch the rain started to come down. We had an afternoon of knocking on doors planned to invite kids to VBS. The rain did not deter us however and we “slogged” it out for about 45 minutes. God blessed our efforts though and we had even more kids show up tonight we also saw more kids accept Christ as their savior.

After we got everything torn down and put away for the night we all went back to our host homes a little early to hang out and hopefully get a little more sleep tonight.

Pray that we will continue to have energy and keep praying that God will keep bringing new kids to hear the gospel.

Day 2 has come and gone.

We started out the day at the Daggetts where we were treated to an awesome breakfast of French Toast, fruit, meat, and scrambled eggs. After breakfast we all went down to Easter Lake to have some personal time with God. Everybody spread out and got into the Word. After that we came back together, shared what God has been teaching us and then we prayed for the rest of the day.

We were back at the Daggetts for lunch and then we spent a couple hours, playing, hanging out and getting our skit ready for the vbs program.

The temperature went up a bit when we went out calling in the afternoon. It was an awesome experience for all of the teens. Afterwords we asked them if they had thought it was going to be scary and hard and they all said they had thought that it would – but when we asked them how it really was they told us it was much easier than they had anticipated. We had a lot of great houses where people were super excited to come and it was neat for the teens to see God work in this way.

That night for the vbs program we saw an increase in attendance by almost 300%! Needless to say everyone was blown away. God also blessed the night by adding a little boy to the kingdom!

As we gathered at the Lang’s later that night for supper everyone was really tired, really happy, and really excited about what happened today.

We can’t wait to see what God is going to do tomorrow!

Well, day one is in the books. It was quite a whirlwind right up until we all went to bed tonight. After the baptism service we met up at the building, loaded the trailer and set off for the untamed wilderness that is South East Des Moines!

We met up with Pastor Josh at his house and he went through everything that we would be doing during the week. And as soon as we were done we piled in the van and made our way over to the school where we would be having VBS. This little journey also provided us our first “memorable moment” as the trailer doors were not properly secured after *someone* was getting into her luggage… Praise the Lord nothing fell out or worse when the door decided to open on the road.

We got to the school without further incident and proceeded to set everything up. The main task was to get all the big tents set up. Unlike the tents at Lakeside these tents had instructions on how to set them up and the teens did a great job at getting everything up very fast. The girls took to hanging countless numbers of snowflakes while the guys lugged in a big ol’ polar bear

We had no time to rest when the set up was done because it was time to start! The kids filed in and away we went. All of the teens are divided up between the classes. So they are able to go with the same kids to all of their activities. The teens did a great job in getting the kids excited and participating during the opening song time and the rest of the class times.

The night ended with a skit put on by a bunch of the teens. Two “Yettis” are on the loose and nobody knows where they will show up next.

Afterwords we had to take everything down and again everyone pitched in and helped and it was done super fast. We ordered up some pizza and headed over to the Daggett’s house. When we got there with the pizza there was a mad scramble and the vultures decended. For the first 10 minutes or so there was no talking just some very hungry and tired people eating.

It was a great first day and an awesome start to our week. Tomorrow we’ll be getting together in the morning for group and personal devotions and then we’ll head out to canvas the area neighborhoods to invite kids to come.

Pray that that many more kids will come tomorrow, pray that our teens keep having a servant attitude and pray that God will be glorified this week! Hopefully, we’ll get some video and pictures up tomorrow.

Hey Everybody!

We are just about ready to head out for our Summer Missions Trip.  This year we’re going all the way down to East Des Moines!!!  (the travel costs to get there are brutal!)

We will be helping out Living Waters Fellowship put on their Vacation Bible School for the week.

It should be an awesome opportunity for our teens.  Pray that God will use them to reach kids down here for Christ.  Also pray that God would do a work in all of our hearts as well.

We’ll be posting updates, pictures, and videos nightly so you can check back to see what we’re up to.

Also, we’ll be posting a bunch of updates to Twitter so you can follow us if you want to get the most up to date information. Just follow @thirststudents — If you don’t know what Twitter is click here to sign up and learn all about it.