Plant city 2009

Are you ready for another trip to Plant City???
We are excited about our upcoming trip in December. We have a great group of people going with us this year (we did last year too). We have had 3 meetings so far and getting ready for the trip. Everyone is really excited about the trip this year. This year we have many people going with us that can speak Spanish. This will be very helpful this year.

A few areas to be praying for our team:

Financial Needs met.
Team joining as one.
The Pre-trip group going down in two weeks to line everything up.
Spiritual growth in team so we can pour out.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. More post will be coming as we prepare for this trip.

God Bless,
Andy Stinespring

Jamaica Baby

Hey everyone,
I appologize for not posting more this week, it has been an awesome week and we have worked really hard and not had many chances to post this week. But everything is great down here. Tonight Mrs. Kristi is actually going to be posting the blog for tonight. Hope everyone is having an amazing week and thank you all for your prayers.

Hey!! Greetings from Jamaica - one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Not only is the land beautiful, but the people are radiant! Especially the ones who know the Lord. They glow with the love of Jesus all over their faces. This has challenged us in our attitudes. We have also been challenged to really appreciate all that we have. The people here have very little and live very simple lives. But they have such incomparable joy!

We have all been stretched in varying ways. God knew just where we needed to be and what we needed to do. (Doesn't He always!?!?) No matter what plans we make, they are always flexible and changeable.

This team has been "amazing" all week! You would all be SO proud. Everyone has worked hard and made many new friends. They have such beautiful servant hearts. From painting to concrete work to bending rebar, we have all been given much energy from the Lord to do whatever is asked of us.

God has been SO good to us. We have kindred spirits and have gotten along so well. We have truly functioned as 'one body'. Thank you all for all your prayers and support. We really need them and feel them.

We have made some wonderful new friends here with the staff from Team Effort (Bryant, Clark and Josh) and also with Haley. We are looking forward to coming home to our families, but we will miss our new friends and family here.

You will see changes in your teens when we return home. So be forwarned. They are amazing because of Jesus living in them and we love them very much and are very proud of them. !!

See you soon!!
Kristi

We are in Jamaica!!!

Hey everyone,

We have our High School group in Jamaica.   Funny story we thought we were going to be Montego Bay Jamaica but we are actually near new port Jamaica in the mountains.  The weather here is amazing.  Much better than the Sham.  I actually did not sweat much today.  We had a great flight down here and then on Sunday we were able to go to a deaf church at the Deaf village.  It was amazing worshiping together with those that were hearing and those that were not.  Watching people signing for worship was amazing and beautiful.  Yesterday afternoon we were able to hang out with the students at the school, which is actually not that many.  We had a great time hanging out with them.  Today we began working.  We had one group that was working with metal all day getting ready to pour concrete.  There was one group that was doing concrete and another that was painting.  These students are extremely hard working and do so without complaining.  The people here are so nice.  They do drive on the wrong side of the road and honk all the time though.  It was awesome to see all of the people dressed up and walking to church on Sunday morning.  Did I mention the weather was beautiful?? We are in free time now and playing some basketball.  Our students have already picked up a great deal of sign language and are learning from the Deaf students.  They have also given us all our sign names which is pretty cool and funny at times.  Our leader Bryant is hurting pretty bad.  He had to go to the doctor today and they told him that he had kidney stones... kind of painful.  Please keep him in your prayers and pray that he is healed.  He has been on the road for 6 weeks leading groups and gets to go home next week, and it would be awesome if he could go home and enjoy time with his family and if the pain left him.  Continue to pray for us as we continue to serve.  We miss everyone back home and cannot wait to tell you what God is doing in our lives.  We love you all. We will have pictures up tomorrow so make sure to check it out.

Andy Stinespring

We're still here and still have 26 of us... so relax!

Disclaimer: This is Becca writing so if it's girly you can't make fun of Andy, for that anyway. (He said I had to write that.)
Thank you for your sweet prayers. We have felt them big time! God is beginning to break the hearts of our students for the things that break His heart. It's so neat to watch the Spirit changing them right in front of our faces. What a big God! I can't wait to see what God does with them, here and at home. We have been blessed with some fantastic leadership from the Adventures in Missions group- we're probably bringing them home. We're kinda not kidding! God is moving in such incredible ways that I pretty much just need you to ask your kids about it, but here's a fun story or two.
Tonight, we had the privilege of doing a cookout at an abandoned school in the Carrollton area of New Orleans (Jamie says "the hood"). Kenley and Emily S. met three little children who were pretty much the cutest things I've ever seen. You couldn't help but fall in love with them. Kenley and Emily offered to get them some food, but they refused it originally. Later, the oldest child admitted they hadn't eaten all day and were actually very hungry. Sadly, by that time we had run out of food, and we were leaving to go to feed the homeless in another area of town. We gave them some bread we were supposed to be taking to the homeless and left. After feeding the homeless, we had so much left over food we were able to pack up several meals for their family and the group travelled back to the area. Though we didn't know which house they lived in, the Lord led us to them! Kenley and Emily were able to give the food to the family and pray over them. God really opened all of our eyes to the way he is opening up doors of opportunity for us if we are just willing to listen and act.

Keep praying! (Jamie says "hurry up, amen").

nola Day 1

Well we made it,
We had a great time on the way down and made great time. I also believe that we left an hour earlier this year (my bad on that). This morning we woke up and went to church..awesome service but two hours was a bunch ha ha. God moved in the service is the hearts of some of our students. After church we came back and ate lunch, after that we left a rode the street cars/trolley and during this time the students sat and talked to complete stranger (we had a close eye on them). We rode all the way down to the end of town and the went to the river walk. It was amazing to see the students go and talk to people without us even having to encourage them to do so. They really have a heart for missions. God is moving already and today is Day 1. It is so exciting to see what all God has for us on this trip.
Also God gave us some scripture for this trip and I would love to encourage all of you to read it. It is Isa 61. We believe this is what God has brought us to do. The boldness and faith that our students (your children) have is incredible. They are warriors for Jesus. I hope all is well back in the sham...We love you all and miss you and thank you for your prayers.

Until next time,
Andy Stinespring

Bully Pulpit

So since i am the one that posted on this i can let everyone know that i created my own blog, i enojyed doing it somewhat. If you want to check it out its www.andystinespring7.blogspot.com

Thanks

Late but better than never

This was an amazing trip. It was awesome too see the body of Christ working. I have seen kids work on mission trips, and have seen students on mission trips, however this was the first time I have seen this many adults on a trip serving. We were able to minister to many people. The last night we had a fiesta and we believe near 600 people showed up. We cooked 300 hamburgers and 300 hot dogs and they were all gone. That night there were lives changed, Pastor Julio gave the chance for people to recieve and MANY raised their hands. This trip was awesome. One of the coolest things was watching our church family serving.

Today I had the privilege of going to the Georgia Bowl Game in Orlando. The game was a lot of fun and we won. However as i sat there looking around at all the people drinking and yelling and cheering on their team it hit me. We live a life of luxury compared to most people in our WORLD. I was sitting and enjoying a game most people couldn't afford including my self, I was given tickets. Also, while I was there I realized that everywhere was a mission field. While eating lunch we shared with a guy at a bench about our trip. We all have to open our eyes and look around us. A Mission trip is not about going somewhere its all about serving God in serving others.... I am preaching to myself more than anything but someone may need to hear that. Everyday in your work place or in your school, or in your town there are people that need Jesus. Take the boldness that God can give you and do it. Plant City was an amazing trip, now we just have to take everything God taught us and apply it back home. Thank you for the pray and support during the trip. Love you all,

Be blessed,

Andy