Our Weekend at Transform Student Conference

Flashback to 2012 when I took the kiddos to Precept for the first time...

before I had the sense to take a group picture and not just a random shot of half our group.

When I thought about taking the kids to the Transform Student Conference 2013, I was exhausted by the thought.  On top of my crazy schedule, we had to raise half the funds to take our whole group.  The money issue was enough for me to take the easy way out and bail ("Next year, kiddos!"), but God provided and I was once again blown away by people's generosity.  A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated.  

Now we had the moolah and all I had to do was make it through the weekend without one of my kiddos burning down Precept Ministries on accident.  

(That was sarcasm in case you thought I was serious.)

No, we didn't burn anything down.  But this awesomeness happened on the first night.  Makes my heart ridiculously happy that someone captured this precious moment.

Photo taken by Transform Student Ministries.

The next day someone captured a photo that is not quite as spiritual as the one above, but I die every time I look at it.  Jamal aka Mr. Popular surrounded by his adoring fans as he blows a bubble inside of a bubble.  This just sums up the fun and fellowship everyone has in between studying God's word at Precept.

They had announced that there would be a late night concert with As Isaac later that night and I was trying to decide if we would stay or head home early.  All the kiddos were staying at my family's house and the thought of leaving early and squeezing in an extra hour of sleep sounded great to me, but I wanted the kids to choose.  

During lunch I asked the kids, "So do you wanna go to the concert tonight?" Then trying to be funny I threw in, "Or we could just go to my house and and read the Bible and talk about what we learned today!"

*cue Veggie Tales music*

To my utter amazement, the kids jumped on that idea.  "YES!" They said.  "That would be amazing!"

"Wait.  Ya'll want to go home and read the Bible?" I asked in disbelief.  

"Yes!" They nodded excitedly.

So we did.  We skipped the concert and headed home and sat around the fire place.  We took turns sharing what God had taught us that weekend and we all cried.  Even the boys.  Some of the things shared were:

"I cried during worship.  I don't know why, but I just started crying."

"I felt God touching my heart."

"What if I listened to God and did what He wants me to do instead of listening to my friends.  I've made a lot of bad choices following my friends instead of God."

I even shared and started bawling and in the middle of my story I looked up and saw the kids crying with me.  They cried over what God was doing in my life.  Y'all.  I get chills just pondering over that.

The last day of the conference was bittersweet, as it always is.  I did remember to get a group photo though!

Our group was the bomb.  We were far from perfect (who isn't?), but God still managed, in the midst of our craziness and flaws, to confront each of us with His glory and power.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. - James 1:27

Bullets Fly Close By

Bullets Fly Close By

By Kara Akins

There was a shooting in Emma Wheeler Homes tonight directly across from our afterschool program. The shooting was at 5:46 and our pre-schoolers are let out at 5:30, the rest of the children are let out at 6:00. Well, we were running late, thank goodness, and the pre-schoolers weren’t let out until around 5:55. My niece and daughter drove the pre-schoolers home and happened upon the scene of the shooting. The police were there but hadn’t even put up the yellow tape.  The victim survived… another blessing. The shooter got away.

And I am sad. I am sad that children played alongside the yellow tape right after the shooting as if nothing happened. It’s too normal to them. I am sad that the police didn’t notify us at the school about the shooting and we released children to walk home in the midst of a dangerous situation. I am sad that I didn’t cry. That no one cried at the thought of someone being shot. What is wrong with us?

Wouldn’t it be something if we, the church… the ones who believe people are made in the image of God, would respond to violence with the emotion and attention it deserves? Wouldn’t it be something if we can convey to this generation of youth the value of life by a display of appropriate emotion when life is violated?

After I drove away from the scene, regretting the lack of emotion I modeled before the children, I couldn’t help but envision what it would look like if the church responded to these shootings in mass number. What if we lined the streets of the projects to show sorrow, much like crowds lined Kensington Palace when Princess Diana passed away? What if the youth of the inner city saw people from all over Chattanooga come to cry over the spilt blood on their streets? What if genuine mourning over needless violence was modeled to our youth each time it happened? Would they begin to believe that life is valuable? Would the church begin to believe that if someone who was killed is valuable, then so is the child who still has breath in him or her? Would we all begin to wake up from our numbness? For we have fallen into a slumber. Our love has grown cold and the coldness has ushered us into a deep sleep.

Martin Luther King had a dream and I want to have a dream, too. But I wasn’t allowing myself to dream. I was stuck in rationalizing.  I reasoned I could help maybe ten or twenty children in the inner city to turn their lives around. Maybe. And even that number can change on a given day. Ha! But even if I helped a hundred children to turn their lives around that wouldn’t really be solving Chattanooga’s problems.

There is a verse that caught my attention. I have heard it before but I never needed it as desperately as I feel it is needed now… or I simply wasn’t aware of the need until now.

“If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

I can’t help but to ponder what a land that has been healed looks like. Healing in Emma Wheeler. Healing in Chattanooga. That’s what we need and it is refreshing to remember that God is able to do it. And the formula for healing has a lot to do with the church.

Maybe humbling ourselves is going down to the projects. Maybe it is weeping over those that are slain in our city. Maybe it is allowing the sorrow of what is taking place in our city to drive us to our knees as we cry out to God for mercy.

Maybe (the church) disengaging from our apathy is what turning from our wicked ways looks like. Maybe our apathy and living so much for our own comfort is revolting to God. Mordecai didn’t mince words when he told Esther,

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13&14)

According to Neighborhoodscoutreport.com, Chattanooga is ranked to have the 10^th most violent neighborhood in America. OCHS Center says Chattanooga ranks 11^th in the country for crimes, ahead of Detroit and Atlanta. Ironically, American Bible Society ranked Chattanooga third in the most Bible minded cites in America. Let’s face it, we aren’t being nearly as effective as that Bible statistic implies we are. There is a gap from what we (the church people) are learning and what we (the church people) are sowing. Because it’s not that the children in the inner city won’t go to church or Bible study. They will go. There just aren’t enough people who are willing to take them. Didn’t Jesus Himself say, “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few”. (Matthew 9:37) When you immerse yourself around the needy then you are able to compute how vast the need really is. That is when you find yourself praying for laborers and staying up until 3:30 in the morning writing a blog post about your longing for people to take action… even though it’s referencing a shooting that logically would keep people away. But I am hoping the opposite.  I am hoping that it will serve as a reminder that we need to draw near.

For I have a dream.

I have a dream that one day Chattanooga will be healed. I have a dream that the church will rise up for the distinct purpose of falling to our knees because we care so deeply over the condition of this place. I have a dream that violence won’t be ignored, but that it will be mourned. And I know that when we allow our hearts to break, God will show Himself near for He is always near the broken hearted (Psalm 34:18). Always.

Kara Akins married Mr. Jack Stephen Akins III at age 18.  She is now the mother of six children, ages 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18.  Her "7th child" is her niece, Cecily, who also lives with the family.  She has one boy in the bunch who is spoiled rotten.  Along with being a mom, she is also a speaker for the Be Still, Get Real team.

We Don't Know What We Think We Know

"We Don't Know What We Think We Know"

By Kate Gifford

The first day my kids and I tried our hands at this tutoring thing with WOW Kids was a hands-down fiasco.  I, with a teaching degree, with a couple of decades experience with kids in various capacities, with a small army of helpers, could not keep ten primary-grade children under control.  There were less than two kids to every helper.  Excellent odds for maintaining control, no?  No!  Those kids ruled the roost.  They shouted me down and danced on the desks. Anything in their hands became a projectile missile.  We dodged and they dashed out of the classroom.  And after they dashed, they screamed a frightening array of choice vocabulary that left my own children goggle-eyed.  My family huddled up and changed tactics, to no avail.  The city kids won that week and the next week.  And the next.  And the one after that.

We started this thing in our own strength but turned to prayer in a nanosecond because truly there was nothing else to be done.  This is a dark place and, but for the Lord, we fight an impossible battle. Five months later, we’re still at it but before we open the doors to thirty or so hyperactive children, the handful of volunteers meet to beg for God’s mercy on the lives of these children, to take our meager abilities and multiply them into something powerful, something beneficial.  I’m always impressed as we gather together, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  We seem too few to do this job.  How can we do this work?

We are too few to do this job.  But for the Lord!  Little by little, month by month, we inch ahead.  We get to share hope with these kids.  We get to share the love of Jesus.  There is something different about sharing the love of Jesus with a well-fed, loved, self-sufficient friend or relative and sharing the love of Jesus with second graders sprinkled with burn marks because they can’t count on adult help to cook their meals.   There is something powerful about holding the face of a fourth grader, looking into her eyes and telling her she is beautiful, she is valuable, she is important to myself and more importantly to Jesus and then watching her react to these words because where she comes from, hopeless people aren’t equipped to offer a lifeline of hope. We get to share Bible stories and principles that speak to their lives; stories they can relate to in ways that we sheltered middle-class suburbanites simply cannot.  (Cain’s murder of Abel is a favorite.) We get to demonstrate that God is love by loving them, by sharing the imperfect but healthy bonds of love in our family.  We get to show that God is just by stepping in and administering fair discipline (as many times as it takes.)  We are careful about the promises we make and even more careful about keeping our word. By doing so we build credibility and show them that our God is faithful. 

But for all this, God has shown my family more.  When we wrangle a rebellious child back into order in the classroom, God reminds us, You, too, are rebellious and I love you enough to tackle the places where you go astray.  When we hug a child reeking of dirt, smoke and worse, before we wrinkle our noses, He whispers, Your pride is sooo much more offensive than this.  When we are frustrated by the magnitude of the work, the one step forward, three steps back, He says, So it is with you. I love you. You are worth the effort.  It is good to be knee-deep in sin and the literal darkness, mud and desperation of the Projects because that is the perfect picture of every area where we live our lives apart from Christ.

These children are amazing.  They are curious, resilient, and joyful in the face of chaos and uncertainty.  They can be moody, disobedient and out of control, but over time the children are letting down their guard, beginning to trust.  They are started to show us their tears, share bits of their stories, wrap their arms around our waists, nestle in for comfort.   And that makes the many journeys across the tracks to an overlooked part of town well, well worth the effort.

Kate Gifford is a wife, a mom with a houseful of kids and a recipient of God's great grace.  She and her children teach the K-2nd class at WOW Kids Tutoring on Tuesdays.



A Little Boy Named Jarvis

There is a little boy named Jarvis.  Well, he's not so little.  He's in 6th grade.  But he's small for his age.  He is one of the cutest kids ever with an adorable smile.  He loves snakes and riding his bike.  He is protective of his little brothers.

He's reminds me of the child in this poem:

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad,
She was horrid.

When Jarvis is good, I love that kid.  When he sees me, his whole face lights up with that adorable smile and he throws his arms around me in a big hug.

When Jarvis is bad, he's horrid.  And I still love him.

I've seen him at his worst, his saddest, and his lowest.  I watched as he struggled in school and was sent to ISS over and over again.  I watched as his family was homeless this past summer as they moved from motel to motel because it was too dangerous to be at their duplex where someone had broken in.  I watched his face crumble when a neighbor ran out of the house yelling that his mom had been taken to jail and I held him as he cried with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Jarvis, Jarvis, Jarvis.  I was so full of hope when I interned in your classroom that first day.  I thought I could change your life around in one week.  I was so determined that I could get you and your two friends under control.  The next day I sat at an empty table in disbelief.  I had taken you three to the bathroom the day before and you guys got into a fight.  You were all suspended for a week.  I stared at that empty table for one solid week and it represented my failure.  Could I not even get three children under control?

My whole internship, you were like the girl in that poem.  You could be so sweet and then turn around and be so horrid.  I remember once when you were in trouble and there was nothing I could do but take you out in the hall and talk to you.  We sat on the floor and I stared at your dirty shoes with holes in them.

"You know, Jarvis."  I said.  "There are children who don't have anything nice.  Food, clothes, or shoes."

You looked up at me.  "You mean those children in Africa?  I will send them my shoes."

Oh, sweet boy.  I was talking about you and your ragged shoes, but all you thought about was children who are poorer than yourself.

I sat next to you in church and I was overwhelmed at how the odds are stacked against you.  You sat next to me oblivious to the pain in my heart.  How, God?  I asked.  How can a boy in the projects who's life is the furthest thing away from your perfect plan change his life around?  It seems so impossible.  Everything in his life is twisted.  Marriage doesn't even exist in his world - only casual sex and abandonment. 

I laugh at my ignorance the first week I met you.  Change your life in one week?  Me?  I must of have been living in a fake world of Christian summer camps or something.  Radical change in one week?  I've known you for a year and I'm still struggling to see any change in you.

I never understood when parents discipline and they say, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," until I had to discipline you a couple weeks ago, Jarvis.  I had warned you over and over again that if you got sent home three times at tutoring that you wouldn't be able to come back until the next quarter in April.

But you didn't listen.  Or you didn't care.  Or you just couldn't behave.  I honestly don't know.

You got sent home three times and I had to remove you from the tutoring program until April.  On your last day, you acted like the old Jarvis during my internship and I think I know why.  Is that your way of pretending to not care?  To pretend that you're not embarrassed when I call you out?  Is it easier to act out and put on a show to make the other kids laugh than it is to cry?

It broke my heart to send you away.  I kept telling my family, "Jarvis got sent home three times."  Other kids have been sent home and they come back having learned their lesson, but I hated to see you go.

I'll still see you at school, WyldLife, and at Music Camp but I will miss you at tutoring, my sweet boy.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Inspiring Kids Through Learning

I have an important rule for myself at the WOW Kids Tutoring Program that I run on Tuesdays and Thursday:

If I'm not having fun, the kids aren't having fun.

(I honestly think that I had more fun at the Kids Creative Discovery Museum than the kids did!  It was a field trip this past Sunday for the well behaved kids at the tutoring program)

It's a simple rule, but harder than it seems.  It's easy to print out a couple work sheets and be done with planning in five minutes.  But I've learned that if I am not excited and jumping up and down because my lesson is just so awesome, than it's probably an blah lesson and the kids aren't going to like it either.

Another thing is that black children love sensory and they speak through touch.  They are really kinesthetic when it comes to learning.  If they're mad, they hit someone.  If they're happy, they hug you all day.  If they're curious, they want to touch it.

One example is when I was volunteering at East Lake Academy and I put together a 1,000 piece puzzle for the Social Studies teacher.  She had me wrap it with some clear stuff to protect it so the kids wouldn't mess it up when they touched it.

Why in the world would they want to touch a puzzle? I wondered.

Of course, she was right.  Those kids weren't in the classroom five seconds before they saw the puzzle and ran over.  The first thing that they did was "Ooooh!" and run their hands all over it.

Sadly, kinesthetic learning is the last thing that they get in their inner-city schools.  They don't even have art class!  I interned at East Lake Elementary for 15 weeks and I've volunteered at East Lake Academy for three years.  I basically try to run the tutoring program as different from their schools as possible.

We have a craft ready for them when they come in.  It's interesting to watch them create because they never get a chance to.  They don't do it at school and most of them don't have any art supplies at home.  I have a love/hate thing about giving them glitter because they love to mix it with their hands.  Again, they love sensory.

We enforce procedures and rules.  We actually have a whole class devoted to Manners and we talk about the importance of eye contact and saying yes m'am and yes sir.  We role-play talking respectfully to adults and teachers and their peers.

Something new that we started recently is decorating the rooms according to what they are learning.  This is huge because the learning environment is very important.  When I interned, I barely made it through my first day without screaming.  I was stuck in a small room that had bad lighting and no decorations with 23 kids for seven hours every day.  It was horrible!  The kids hardly ever got recess because of bad behavior and I knew that if I was going crazy in that room, then the kids must be too.

The first room that we tackled was the Bible room as the kids learned the story of Jonah in November.

You can see how we decorated the room and the door.  We also drew a picture of Jonah running away from God on the chalkboard.  We also had a cool rain activity with shaving cream and food coloring one day.  

The kids LOVED the Jonah room.  One kid came back to our program after being gone a few weeks because he thought the program was boring and Iyssis told him, "They decorated the room!  And we had a game where we popped balloons!  It's SOOO much fun!"  She kept gushing and gushing about everything we had changed and how much she loved it.

Our next big project was to tackle the Language Arts room.  The kids had been complaining that it was boring so we decided to change that!

We decided to work on listening skills and picked Focus On the Family's radio drama of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the kids to listen to.  We pulled out costumes and decorations to make it even more fun!

Usually it's hard to get all the kids to participate during craft time.  Today I had Eden dress up like the White Witch.  The kids didn't know that we were decorating the room, so the White Witch passed out paper snowflakes for the kids to decorate and told them that if they decorated enough snowflakes, then the Language Arts room would have a spell cast over it and cover Narnia in snow.

The kids LOVED it.  They were decorating snowflakes like crazy.  Devon cracked me up.  He said, "White Witch!  I need another snowflake, but don't get to close 'cause you're a witch!"

They really got into it, especially Jarquasha.

These are some of the small, but fun, ways we are inspiring kids through learning!  It's a big challenge, but we're enjoying every bit of it!

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Now is the Time to Help a Child, Not Later

WOW Kids Outreach runs a tutoring/mentoring program on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-6pm.  Like everything else we do, we have a ton of boys who come to our program.  The boys usually out number the girls in most of our programs.  We desperately need guys to come and invest in these boys who are going to grow up to be men one day.

The tutoring program is what I love most.  I'm in college to be a teacher, so it's a perfect fit for me.  I have volunteered at East Lake Academy for three years and I interned at East Lake Elementary.  I have been in these children's schools and they are broken.  Very broken.  Believe it or not, the elementary school is actually worse than the middle school. 

The city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County are letting us use the old Piney Woods Elementary school building right across the street from Emma Wheeler Homes for our tutoring program.  It hasn't been used as a school since 1992.  From the outside it looks abandoned, but the inside is very nice and full of potential.  Before we came in, it was a huge building that was underused with just a Family Resource Center.  Now it is full of kids every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our tutoring program is off to a wonderful start and every week we talk and tweak stuff to make it even better.  This is not your average help-with-homework-and-go-home tutoring program.  We split the kids into three groups: Pre-K, K-2nd grade, and 3rd-8th grade.  3-8th grade are put onto different colored teams and transition throughout five different classes in two hours.  The five classes are Math, Language Arts, Bible, Manners, and Drama.

We don't just have classes.  We also have a computer lab with twenty new computers that were donated.  We also have a library that has been organized and labeled with a ton of great books.  We even have a thrift store full of clothes, school supplies, and toys for the kids to go shopping when they earn WOW Bucks for good behavior.

It doesn't stop there!  The kids are able to earn Sunday trips every two weeks if they have good behavior.  These trips can be anywhere from the aquarium to the zoo to on top of the mountain to hike and play on the Pumpkin Patch Playground.  All of the places I just listed are places that these kids have never been before! These kids live in the shadow of the mountain, but most of them have never driven up it before.  Most of them have never been to a museum before.  Most of them have never been to the Chattanooga zoo or the aquarium.  One of our goals are exposing these kids who live in the projects to the wonderful world around them that they hardly ever get to see.

All of this is happening every week and we are still working on putting even more into our program.  We talked to people today about starting a basket ball program this June.  One of my biggest desires is tapping into every kid's potential.  Whether that is through a basket ball program, a jewelry making class, a knitting class, a computers class, etc.

What we desperately need is YOU!  We can do all this without you!  I can have all these wonderful ideas, but it takes you to kick them off.  If you just want to volunteer and be that one person who gives a kid the attention that they really want or you have a skill that you would like to teach them like computers, drama, music, sports, chess, photography, knitting, etc every little bit helps!

I recently went to a conference where a man was teaching a photography workshop with inner-city boys.  The boys loved it.  He shared that one day it hit him that he would die and all his knowledge would die with him unless he took the time to pass it on to the next generation.

We are working with Chattanooga's future.  The next generation.  You decide what kind of Chattanooga that you want your kids to grow up in.  Now is the time to invest.  We can't wait until these kids are grown or getting in trouble to help them.

Last week, I was dropping kids off at home in Emma Wheeler after our tutoring program took a field trip to Silverdale's fall festival.  It was late and the moon was already up.  We drove right past three cop cars that were surrounding a boy who looked like he couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen.  They had him sitting on the curb with his arms handcuffed behind his back.

When we drove past, he looked up at us and the expression on his face was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen.

"Just think." My mom said.  "If he has been with us tonight at our tutoring program, he wouldn't be getting arrested right now."

Who knows what talent that boy has.  Who knows if his talents will one day rot away on a jail cell because of a stupid decision he made as a teenager persuaded by some wanna be gangsters looking for something to do on a Thursday night.

(Newspaper article about Chattanooga's gang problem)

I sincerely believe that the only way Chattanooga is going to overcome our gang problem is by the Church being willing to go out of our comfort zones.  A lot of people have never been to the projects or been a minority before.  I know that I never had until we went to East Lake Courts to pass out clothes a couple years ago, but God opened up a huge door and now I help run an inner-city ministry.  Can you say WOW?!

Now I'm in the projects almost everyday and I love it.

Why don't you come down to the projects and check out our tutoring program?  We would love to have you visit (the kids love visitors!) and check it out.  Shoot me an email if you're interested (parisakins@gmail.com)!

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Something Beautiful

(East Lake Academy's WyldLife club on Monday nights)

"Something Beautiful"

By Madison Akins

I'm writing this from the back of our fifteen passenger van after dropping off a load of kids.

On Monday nights I volunteer as a leader for Wyldlife, a middle school Christian club. The one I help at with Paris and Cecily is in the inner-city of East Lake, Chattanooga, TN.

Earlier we were finishing up the last game when my sister came up to me and whispered that a girl was crying.

I looked up and easily spotted one of the only white girls in the room, and yes, she was crying. This wasn't very unusual, considering that this young girl is often picked on by the other kids. She's the one they all make fun of, avoid, and groan when they hear that she's going wherever it is they're going.

Why? I don't know. Maybe it's because she is a different color then them.  Maybe it's because she smells bad. Maybe it's because she's smart, or comes from a crazy family.  For whatever reason, they just don't like her.

I've often felt sorry for her, and when I saw her crying, I felt the same. I walked over to try and figure out what was wrong, but she was hard to understand through all her tears.  Paris pulled her away from the staring kids, and I tried to talk to her.

"What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

She sobbed and rambled on about something someone did thirty minutes ago, and honestly I couldn't understand half of it.  Finally I told her to calm down, stop crying, and we'll talk about it. It was kind of loud, so I took her into the hall.

She looked at me through red rimmed eyes and said, "I'm always bullied!  I was never bullied in New York! I've been bullied ever since I moved here." The tears started up again. "Sometimes I just think this is a mistake. I shouldn't be here."

We've all heard those stories of kids that were bullied. Bullied so much that they decided to end their own lives. It's so sad and tragic.  Now, I'm not saying that this girl was thinking that far, but to have an eleven-year-old girl cry and tell you she thinks part of her life is a mistake is just heartbreaking.

I felt the pressure of being the one to encourage her, so I briefly closed my eyes and said a silent prayer. "Lord, give me the words to say to her."

I took a breath and knew what I needed to do. I needed to speak life over her. Hope. Let her know that this isn't the end, it gets better.

So I did. I leaned close and said everything I knew was true.  "I love you. God loves you. Miss Akins and Mrs Kara love you. This won't last forever....things will get better. Just think about the story you're going to have. One day you'll be able to help kids who have gone through the same things. You can tell them what God has done for you..... the Bible says that God works all things together for the good of those that love Him.  God will make your life beautiful."

I just encouraged her, and told her her truth until I thought she heard. And prayed it was enough.

After talking with her, a song came to my mind. A friend of mine had sang it at her church before, and the words seem to fit this girl's life and what I was trying to tell her perfectly. I really wanted her to hear it.

As I climbed into this van to drop kids off, I asked her to sit by me. I told her there was a song I wanted to sing for her about trusting God to make our lives beautiful, even when we don't understand. She wanted to hear it.

I sat here in the back of van and sang:

"I lean not on my own understanding

My life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven

I give it all to You, God

Trusting that you'll make something beautiful out of me"

Afterwards, she looked at me and said, "You guys always say the perfect things when I'm sad."

So God had answered my prayer and given me the right words. I know one talk won't fix her problems forever, and I know she will cry again, but I hope that now she has something good to remember and cling to. I was relieved and whispered, "Thank You, Lord."

Because when there's a young girl crying about her life, I don't want to waste the opportunity to let her know that God can make it into something beautiful.

"To all who mourn....He will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair." - Isaiah 61:3

Madison Akins is a 16-year-old college freshman who loves God and people.  She enjoys being healthy and spending time with family and friends.  She's passionate about helping impoverished children and singing (which she does all the time).  More than anything, she wants to grow forever closer to her Savior.

They Keep Coming

"They Keep Coming" 

By Kara Akins

One of the greatest joys of WOW Kids is working with a variety of churches, organizations and volunteers. God has been faithful to keep a steady stream of people coming to the projects. It is nothing short of a miracle.

When we first began WOW Kids we knew our family alone couldn't feed and care for so many people. The first person I spoke to about church groups sending out crews from their own congregation told me that he doubted we could get one church to commit, much less several churches on a rotating basis. He could have been completely right. It's hard for someone with as little influence as I have to get anyone to do anything. But God. Only God has the ability to stir people's hearts. And He did!

God loves these children. He is father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). If we are willing to be used to meet real needs in their lives, then He is willing to use us. Any of us. 

And the thing is the children recognize His love. The love that compels us to go to where these children are, is the very love they feel when we are near them.

I was with some boys from our after school program the other day. They were brothers. I knew the younger one but not the older one. While we were waiting to go on our field trip I was allowing them to play with my phone. I know some adults don't like to see children with cell phones but I don't mind IF they are willing to practice sharing and it's not during class time, etc. But any strife means I take the phone away until they fix the problem.

Strife happened so I reached to retrieve the phone. The boy who didn't know me had a very negative reaction. He didn't understand that all he had to do was muster up some self-control, say some right words and the phone would be returned. So he started throwing around a very bad attitude. 

But it was what his younger brother said that touched my heart and completely changed the entire situation.

"She's not mean. She's different. She really does loves us. All you have to do is the right thing. She'll help you. When you do the right thing you get the phone back," were his words.

But all I heard was, "She really does love us."

Oh, I would give hundreds of iPhones for them to know it. But it wasn't the phone that made him believe I loved him. It was the love that made me want to share my phone, share my food, share my smiles, share my Bible verses and whatever else I could. That's what love tends to do.

"For God so loved the world that He gave..." (John 3:16)

God has placed people on my path that share a love for these children. Like magnets we come together at the most unlikely places: Chick-fil-A, Walmart, Fall-festivals, schools, FaceBook, churches. And we begin to talk about the children in the projects and in unison our hearts burn to show them that love. 

Because "the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13)

With so much coming against these children, nothing less could ever do. Love, after all, is the only thing that never fails (1 Cor. 13:8). When so many things tend to fail isn't it nice to bring these children something that won't?

And do you know why love won't fail? Because God is love (1 John 4:8). Not our twisted version of love. He is the real thing. And kids discern the difference. 

Kara Akins married Mr. Jack Stephen Akins III at age 18.  She is now the mother of six children, ages 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18.  Her "7th child" is her niece, Cecily, who also lives with the family.  She has one boy in the bunch who is spoiled rotten.  Along with being a mom, she also volunteers extensively with Young America Ministries and is a speaker for the Be Still, Get Real team.