The Eurasia Experience: How did it go in DC?

Well first of all, I had no idea we were in the DC metro area. Country mouse realization:  Evidently big cities have these things called suburbs and Chapel Springs Church in Bristow, VA is in a suburb of our nation's capitol.

There are tons of cool things about this church not the least of these is their fabulous mission's department. They brought the Eurasia Experience in as a portion of their mission's convention, unfortunately I didn't get to see all of it,  but it was IMPRESSIVE. They do missions BIG and they do it RIGHT!  This link MISSIONS will take you to this portion of their website, they believe everyone is a missionary and I agree, I agree, I agree.

Here's another fabulous thing about their church. THIS GUY!
 As we were setting up, this guy walks in with the other volunteers and says, "What's the jail for?"  I have no idea who he is, so I respond, "It's for YOU, we lock up the bad people." (Actually, it's an actual size representation of where a Christian pastor was held in the Middle East along with 9 other men for sharing the gospel.)  Later I see him, setting up the Russian souvenir booth and ask him how he got out of jail. He said, "They said if I helped I could get out." Later I see this picture on my co-worker's site with the caption of, "Pastor Scott helping to set up for Saturday."  Oops! Turns out "this guy"  is actually the senior pastor of the multi-campus over a thousand member church, that supports over 200 missionaries and provides multiple service opportunities in their community and the US and abroad all year long. So he's kind of a big deal, but you never would have known it by the way he came in and served on a Thursday morning. In my defense, if he'd at least said, "I'm the pastor," I probably wouldn't have told him he was going to jail.

Only set back at this place was that a lot of government officials attend here and signed up to help with the Experience. Government employees are not the problem, but when the government goes into lock down and said volunteers get stuck in DC and can't volunteer any longer, well, you really CAN blame the government.

Here's what their fabulous mission's pastor had to say about our time in the burbs:

Hello Team,

Thank you for all of your effort to make the Eurasia Experience and our opening weekend so special!  We had 28 people indicate they feel a call to missions!  There were so many stories of people coming out of the experience with a fresh perspective on missions and it is because of you and your efforts.  I can’t thank you enough for giving of your time and talents.  You truly made an eternal investment in the lives of others.  Nearly 700 people went through the experience!  Thanks again.  It was a pleasure working with you.

For the Mission,

Pastor Doug Dreesen

Thanks for having us Chapel Springs!

    The EE Team