Show Low Mission Trip Report

There were 24 people on the team for this year’s mission trip to Arizona. The leader of the trip was Bruce Zimmerman, although JW Tabor took over as camp director during the week. Bruce taught the first night, and then former WBC Youth Pastor, Scott Cunningham, taught the evening sessions from the parables of Jesus. Dr. Tom Rhodes taught the morning Bible studies on characters of faith from Hebrews 11 and the Old Testament. Josh Beckwith and Abigail Prescott led in worship. The Cunninghams joined in the worship team once they arrived on Monday. The Pre-Training started in April with Bruce going over the logistics of the trip and providing some cultural understanding of the life of the White Mountain Apaches, going over the schedule, having evangelism training, making assignments, learning the worship music and calming fears.

We had several who came in to assist in the training. Patti McGinnes shared about how to deal with the bullying and cutting (which was an issue last year but not this year). Cody Cook came to share how to share the gospel with teenagers and Sheila shared about how to use the evangecube. Many on the team were on their first mission trip ever. Each day we had one person share a testimony with the campers. We also had a team member give an object lesson each day that went along with the evening message. There were six training sessions before we left for camp. The American Indian Christian Mission sent a Ministry Team Packet that is very comprehensive and states the guidelines for ministry teams.

Part of our group formed a blue bus team and throughout the week this team worked in the kitchen preparing, serving and cleaning up after each meal. Between breakfast and lunch, the team did work projects including cleaning out bathroom fans, scraping and painting the chapel and cleaning up and restocking the bus each day. The team also cleaned the chapel and the recreation room during the week.

Each of the members of the camp team at some time joined the blue bus team for ministry to children on the reservations. The Bus team went out each afternoon Monday through Thursday, leaving immediately after lunch and usually not returning back to the camp until 5-7pm. The blue bus would pick up children and take them to a set location for singing songs, taking their prayer requests and sharing the gospel through flannel graph story. Following the lesson time, the kids would pull all kinds of things off the bus to play with including sidewalk chalk, crayons, fingernail polish, basketballs, footballs, Frisbees, rollerblades, bubbles, toys, tonka trucks, dinosaurs, waffle balls, etc. The kids were then taken home and given a piece of candy, a brochure about the AICM school as well as churches in the area for them to attend. We ministered to over 135 children over the four days with the blue bus.

The finale of the camp was baptisms done in the camp swimming pool on Thursday morning. Four of the campers were baptized who had gotten parental approval to do so. There were several teenagers who said they had accepted Christ during the week as a result of the Spirit working through the teachers and/or the counselors.

Thanks for your support and prayers for this trip. We were invited to come back next year and do both the blue bus ministry and the camp ministry again. We are looking at a date in July as opposed to June that will not conflict with Texas school schedules or VBS allowing more to come and participate on this trip. A later date will also allow the camp to get the word out better through the summer blue bus ministry teams to prospective campers of the dates of the camp.

You can view a video of the trip at: waxahachiebible.org and click on Show-Low Mission Trip Video.