“As Micheal Tait (of DC Talk) said to us when we saw him live at a Christian bookstore in Nashville, 'we all have struggles in our lives, we all have our own change of seasons. But no matter what happens God will always be there for us.' As a team we saw a perfect example of this when we visited a girls home this past month. At this home there were many girls who experienced many struggles in life, from using drugs, to eating disorders, to pregnancy. By being in this home they were trying to overcome those struggles with God's help.
 
Well, as we walked into the home we were a little nervous about giving them a program. See, most us of had never experienced any real struggles like that. Not that our lives are perfect, because they're not, but how were we suppose to help minister to people when we could not fully understand what they have gone through?
 
But as soon as we started to sing the first song we were no longer worried about what the differences were. The girls who we were a bit intimidated by were now standing up and singing along with us and we started to have so much fun. With every song that we sang we would look at the girls looking at us and we saw the joy of the Lord all over their faces. Sometimes they would join us in the songs that we sang and they would lift their hands up to God. And at that moment is when I truly understood what Micheal Tait said, that every once in a while we do slip up, we do fall, but when we do God is always there to lift us up again, that's why we call him our Savior. GO GOD!”
 
                                                                ~Katie Strelow
 
 
“It’s times like we had today that makes me and the rest of the team love what we are doing this year. This morning we had a chapel for a school with about 180 kids. They all walked in the sanctuary at 8:30 a.m., eyes almost open and shy. The pastor said the verse for the day and turned it over to us as we started with a couple songs which the kids didn't seem too excited about. But then all of a sudden they started jumping up and down like crazy, singing at the top of their lungs with huge smiles across their faces. And for the rest of the forty minutes that we had with them we continued to jump up and down and sing our praises to God as loud as we could. IT WAS AWESOME. If anyone was to ask me, “In what way do you see God?”, I would have to say in that chapel that we had this morning, or actually anytime that I see a child's face light up because they get excited about God. When I see their faces I see joy, peace, love and innocence and it's something that I hope they hang on to for a long time.
 
These are the times that make being a member of Captive Free the best. Yea Chapels! Yea Kids! YEA GOD!”
 
                                                                ~Katie Strelow
 
 
Find a Captive Free team in your area, read team journals, learn about team ministry and more at www.youthencounter.org/teams/!