Summer LINK Seattle

Seattle is one of the nation’s darkest places spiritually. Christians here are few and far between. Rather than a church on every street corner like there is in the Bible belt where I’m from, there are enough Starbucks establishments here to where it’s hard to walk more than a couple blocks without smelling coffee. Agnosticism and ungodliness are both rampant here. There is a general lack of understanding of the gospel here, as defined in this picture I took in a coffee shop the other day:

“THE way does not exist.” Quite contradictory to what Jesus says in John 14:6.

All this unbelief, however, does not mean that God isn’t active and working in this city! The Summer-LINK Seattle team has been fortunate enough to see some proof of this in the past couple of weeks since we have been out here working with Essential Church in Bellevue. I’ll just tell a few stories of things we’ve done out here that have been examples of how we have seen the hand of God here in Seattle. One example is our hiking adventure up to the top of Tiger Mountain outside of Issaquah, WA. After an exhausting hike up, we had a time of sharing testimonies and prayer as we looked out at out mission field that God placed before us this summer. It was an incredible experience to see and visualize the place where we would be spending life for the summer, the place where we would have the opportunity to serve in all types of ways.

Another time where the team and I were able to see the hand of God active and working was at a free carwash that we put on for the community. One might not usually think that God can do cool things at a carwash, but I am sure that he was there and that he was moving. I was the “popcorn guy” for most of the time there: the guy who makes popcorn and then offers it to people in their cars as they wait in the line to get their car washed by the mission team from Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas. I was able to have several conversations with people about the Lord during that time, and it was very surprising how open people were to talking about God, even if their thoughts about him were drastically different from mine. I got to pray for a few of the people that came through, and a few of them showed some legitimate interest in coming to church!

                       

One of Essential Church’s primary goals is outreach in the community, and their “Love Bellevue” month is the time of year when that idea is ramped up to a max. That time started this week, so the Summer-LINK team has gotten to be a huge part of it! For me, I’ve been running a free basketball camp at one of the local elementary schools for the kids in the area. The planning and executing of the camp has been frustrating, exhausting, and confusing. However, it has been a huge source of joy to be able to get to know the kids at the camp and to get to show them the love of Christ, even if we are not explicitly sharing the gospel with them. Our hope and prayer is that many of the families with kids in soccer and basketball camps this week will attend the block party that we are having this Friday and will be willing to have Christ-centered conversations with us as we seek out opportunities to share the gospel with them while they are there. I have no doubt that the Lord will do big things through the other activities for Love Bellevue, and through Essential Church and the Summer LINK mission team for the entirety of the summer.

            

by Ben Casey