by Lynne Faris Blessing, Assoc. Pastor for Outreach
and Mike Davis, Urban Impact

Lynne Faris Blessing:

Once again, our friends at Urban Impact provided a life-transforming summer camp for the youth of Rainier Valley. We/Bethany had the joy of participating through preparing and delivering lunches for one of the weeks (many many thanks to LauraLeigh Young who organized that effort).

Below is a very encouraging report from Mike Davis, Urban Impact staffer who ran the middle school program of their summer camp.

Mike Davis:

“This was an amazing summer. I had one of the greatest groups of young people hang with me for the summer, lots of animated personalities and ambitious hearts.

The theme of camp this summer was Hip Hop. We took a journey through the five elements that make up hip-hop which are DJ, B-Boy / B-Girl, Graffiti, the MC, and most importantly CHRIST the 5th element, which gives purpose to the rest of the elements.

The last week of camp we had the opportunity to talk about Jesus Christ and how He was relevant to hip-hop culture. In doing so, we somehow got into the many stories of Jesus in the bible and the young people kept asking questions about the stories and Jesus. This not being a part of my plan, we spent 2 hours just reading the word of God in one of our discussions.

Since then I've had a young man who sent me a message through Facebook asking how he could get a better connection with Christ. I thought he wasn't all that interested in the discussions by the way he would respond sometimes when I would ask questions or for feed back. I don't think he was the only kid interested in a deeper relationship with Christ. They all showed some interest just by the questions they would ask.

I think its cool to see how God uses things like hip-hop to relate His love to His children.”

To learn more about Urban Impact, go to urbanimpactseattle.org.