THE PRAYERS OF THE FAITHFUL
We ask that you pray for us on our trip this coming week, joining your hearts to ours in spirit.
"Love must be sincere."
- Romans 12:9a
Meet our YouthWorks! Mission Team. We ask that you pray for us on our trip this coming week, joining your hearts to ours in spirit.
Lydia Berger
Reese Bonsall
Harris Breitling
Briggs Brown
Keegan Brown
WIll Bumgarner
Lem Cannon
Lindy Cannon
Amelia Caudle
Katy Cox
Mary-Dell Currie
Jay Dunnagan
Kevin Garrity
Aaron Greer
Ella Greer
Jordan Gross
Joanna Holden
Charlotte Hubbard
Bobby Hunter
Caroline Lovett
Rebecca McNeely
Hamilton Norman
Tammy Pollock
Evelyn Rackley
Jack Wall
Where We Are Serving • Bayou La Batre, AL
YouthWorks provides Christ-centered mission trips for thousands of teenagers and adult leaders in communities across the U.S. and beyond. We believe these kinds of mission trip experiences positively impact the communities we partner with, the teenagers who are stretched and challenged by a week of service, and the adult leaders who take the trip as an opportunity to disciple teenagers by serving alongside them. The Holy Spirit has inspired our staff to create mission trip experiences for teens & adult leaders for over 25 years. In everything missional we do, we strive to keep close to Jesus. We believe going on mission is the way to follow close in the footsteps of Christ, that we might find ourselves with the dust of service-work kicked-up on our faces as an outward facing sign of GOD’s LOVE for all people. We seek reconciliation with and restoration for communities by meeting them right where they’re at, just as Jesus did. Everything we do comes from this desire to follow close behind our Rabbi, to carry forward the spirit of His greatest commandment—to love God and love others. When we get this right, we experience the unconditional love and care God has for all.
As a small fishing-village community, particularly shrimping, Bayou La Batre was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Our mission is to join in the resilient spirit of Bayou La Batre -- as we come alongside community friends to serve through home improvement projects, elder care and children’s ministries.
SATURDAY • JULY 19
Pack up, pray and drive to Atlanta, GA. (Staying at Kingswood Church in Dunwoody, GA)
Loving GOD, we offer a prayer of safety for this work team on the day their journey begins. May they be ever more mindful of your binding presence as they venture away from home to realize the oneness of the Body of Christ. As members of that Body, may their service to a community which is not their own serve to remind that God so loves all the world.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. - John 3:16
SUNDAY • JULY 20
Wake up, worship, and continue driving to Bayou La Batre, AL.
Dear GOD, you are most worthy of our praise! Although we do not worship with the mission team in person, we join them in a shared spirit of praise as they worship elsewhere along the way to serving You. We’re thankful for the time to sit at your feet and be reminded of your presence -- that we then stand up to follow you out into the world.
She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. – Luke 10:39
MONDAY • JULY 21
First workday!
Exemplary GOD, You have revealed the good life by example. Now it is time for us to live that way. Grant the youth the spirit of truth to follow Your example. As we send them our love, might they (and all of us) be renewed, that the truth and way are found in a life lived in service to and with others.
For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
–John 13:15
TUESDAY • JULY 22
Second workday!
O GOD, our Teacher, You teach us that there are times to leave home to attend to Your presence. As our youth are long gone from our presence, and as they go out for a second day of service, we pray they know there is no distance they can go beyond our love for them, nor anywhere they can find themselves outside Your presence. Whatever they are up to today, may they be a presence for others that is reflective of You.
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. – Luke 2:41
WEDNESDAY • JULY 23
Third workday!
GOD Who chooses, thank you for choosing us and appointing an opportunity for our mission team to have chosen to be about Your business in the world. We pray they do not grow weary in their choice to work for You. We pray they have encountered folks who they are inspired to share the work with. May we join ourselves to their efforts, in whatever ways You, O GOD, choose to present us opportunities to be about your work in the world today.
…just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
– Ephesians 1:4
THURSDAY • JULY 24
Fourth workday!
GOD of work & rest, on their fourth and final day of fieldwork, we send a strong prayer of encouragement and excitement for our mission team and all the last four days have held for them. May the awareness that they toil for You make the last day of their efforts feel lighter than the first; may the satisfaction of a job done well, for no gain to themselves, but for others, carry them through their day. Thank you, O GOD, for the way their service reminds us that a humble heart is never a heavy heart.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
– Matthew 11:28-30
FRIDAY • JULY 25
Camp cleanup and send off. Leave for Dauphin Island to enjoy a beach day before beginning the return trip home (with another overnight stop at Kingswood Church in Dunwoody, GA).
Gracious God, we are grateful to know Your calling upon our lives. As You begin to call our youth mission team home today, our excitement for their return matches our hope—that from leaning into Your holy calling to be the hands, feet and heart of Christ, their hearts are filled with the knowledge that all work for You is but a gift of Grace that just keeps giving.
“…who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, and this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…” - 2 Timothy 1:9
SATURDAY • JULY 26
Up early to enjoy Olympic Park and the Coca-Cola Museum in downtown Atlanta before returning home to Winston-Salem!
Fun-Loving God, thank you for the gift of play. Our prayer is for a spirit of rest and playfulness to be with our soon to be home mission team; for we know You grant us chances in life to rest from work that is tiresome, sometimes even dirty, yet all the more satisfactory—for it is with gladness of heart to sit-back and wear the dirt of walking close in the footsteps of our Rabbi, Jesus the Christ.
Moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. - Ecclesiastes 3:13
