Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. October was a pretty busy month here at CMTS. I spent the first two weeks of this month with Ray and Mike, mostly getting more practice acetylene torching and operating the excavator. For the rest of the month, I worked with Doug in the body shop. We worked on one of the board members’ Jeep which had been hit in the rear left corner. We started by pulling out the dents as much as possible with a slide hammer and spot welder. We then applied a few coats of body filler to smooth out the panel. We sanded down the hood on which the paint was peeling. We then removed the cracked front bumper, and Doug put fiberglass on the crack. The rear bumper was too far gone, so we went to Harry’s u Pull it and got a “new” one. After many hours of sanding, filling, priming, and more sanding, Doug put on the final coats of color and clear. We washed the jeep, polished where necessary, and it turned out great. Now we’re working on a Honda Odyssey which was rusted out underneath the rear strut mount. We started by cutting out the severely rusted metal and removing the rest of the surface rust with a stripping wheel. We then created templates of the two layers of metal we cut out of the wheel well using paper, and cut them out of steel sheet. Now we have begun the endeavor of shaping the sheets by hand into shapes meant to be pressed by machine.
In our spare time, we’ve been going on some adventures and doing some volunteering. We went to Knoebles, an amusement park, with Nolan for our adventure trip. We helped prepare and move stuff around for Operation Christmas Child at Ray and Debbie’s church. We also went to the Noecker annual cider press, with Hannah our office manager (secretary) where there was a lot of cider pressing and a lot of free food.
The last week of October was evangalism week. We spent Monday and Tuesday morning learning about why we are called to evangelize and how to approach people. On Wednesday we went to Reading and went around in pairs, prayed for people, and told them about the Gospel if they were open to it. Thursday morning was spent going over how Wednesday went, what went well, and what we could’ve done better. On Friday we once again went to Reading, this time with a table and a van full of snacks and drinks. Unfortunately, before we were unable to start giving them out, since we were shut down by the cops. We packed up our stuff, but we were still able to go around with signs saying “Need Prayer?” We were able to pray for many people and a lot of people even came up to us after seeing our signs. I learned a lot from this experience, mostly becoming more comfortable with approaching strangers and also realizing that the people I see walking down the street are people who God loves and who are in need of Him.
In class, Sam and I are still reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan, which has been convicting me of being lukewarm and inspired me to grow in my love for Christ. In our Foundations class, we are learning about the history, translation, transmission, and inerrancy of The Bible. We started a class on the importance of taking Genesis as history, where we are reading The Lie: Evolution. The book teaches us that Genesis is the foundation for the entire Bible and that when we compromise on that foundation, we cause ourselves and others to have less faith in the authority in the rest of The Bible.
Please pray for me to know God deeper and for guidance from Him.
“They will fight against you like an attacking army, but I will make you as secure as a fortified wall of bronze. They will not conquer you, for I am with you to protect and rescue you. I, the Lord, have spoken!” – Jeremiah 15:20
