In Their Own Words. . .Eric Baumgartner

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your prayers and support. It was really obvious that we were being supported with prayer while we were in New Orleans. This was my fourth time going to New Orleans, and every time I've been down there, I've seen God working in new ways, and so I couldn't wait to see what He would do on this trip.There are always new changes when I go down, so I tried not to go in with to many expectations of what i would be doing. Because of the number of youth who came to help, I ended up being on a team of seven guys who went out during day camp to play basketball at a local park with any guys from the community that showed up. This was a good experience for me because I've comfortable with sharing my faith with kids, but sharing God with adults has always been tough for me, so God kind of challenged me to step out of my comfort zone. I never got the chance to share, but I did get the chance to talk with one guy about why we were there.As always, God answers many of our prayers while we are down there, and it's obvious that there are many people supporting us through prayer. One thing that always amazes me is how the weather almost never affects any of our activities too much. It rained pretty heavily on two days while we were there, both times it was around noon so day camp hadn't started yet. The rain had mostly stopped by the time day camp began and only slightly affected the number of kids. Then by the time for Challenge Circle, the grass was dry enough that we could still run around on it.One thing I learned in New Orleans, is that God ALWAYS has a purpose for you wherever you are. On one of the rainy days, we had all run over to the Yellow House after chapel and then the cook had just gotten back from shopping for food for the week so a few of us helped her bring some food over to CastleRock in the rain. On the way over, we saw a teen trying to fix his bike and when he was still there on the way back, a few of us stopped to help. A screw had come off from his gear changer, and knocked his chain off. Right when we stopped to help, he found the screw and then we struggled for a good 10 minutes trying to get it back on. Then I realized I should pray for God's help, and then right away we finally got it on. But the gear changer was hitting the spokes, so we were trying to twist it to make it work, but nothing worked. So then I prayed again, and then, it just popped into place! We invited the guy to come to church on Sunday, he said he'd try to make it, and then he rode off. Afterwards I realized that if the cook hadn't gotten back at that time, and if we hadn't all been willing to bring the food over to CastleRock at that time, we never would have been in the place to help him.Since I first went down to New Orleans, I've been considering serving down there as an intern, and so I've been praying about what I should do, Last year when I was down there, I definitely felt God calling me to serve there as a sumer. I was considering doing it this summer, but I had so many other things that were going to be happening this summer. So I prayed about it and felt God said I could wait until next summer. Then when I was there this summer, I had three of the Urban Impact staff members (including Pastor John) tell me I should serve as an intern. So now I feel certain that God is calling me to serve there, and I plan on answering His call.Thank you all again for your support and please continue to pray for the staff at Urban Impact and that the ministry down there would continue to prosper.