Noah: My Confirmation Story

When thinking about my personal statement for confirmation, I was asked to think of a Bible passage that was important to me.  I chose Mark 10:43-45, "Yet is shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant and whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

What this passage means to me is that even God came to serve and not be served.

The definition of the word 'serve' means to act like a servant.

I fell like Jesus calls me to serve others.  This last July, I was privileged to be able to attend the National Youth Gathering in Detroit.

This experience was great and I felt like I grew a lot in my faith.

During the National Youth Gathering, we participated in a Day of Service.  On our bus ride to the project site, we passed by much of the inner city. There were several buildings that had been burnt to the ground.  Parts of buildings had fallen onto the sidewalk and road.  

No one was there to clean it up, so pedestrians had to go around the debris by walking in the road.  The buildings were eye sores for the community as well.  I could tell that the people of this city struggled with many problems.

Our service project from "Focus Hope" was to clean out an alley way that was overgrown.  The alley was so overgrown you couldn't tell what it was.  As we cleared some debris and trees, we discovered an abandoned homeless camp there.

The alley way was not safe for families and kids to be around.

It opened my eyes to see how other people have to live in some areas of severe poverty.  The whole point of the gathering was for us to grow in our faith and to make the community of Detroit more safe and a better environment to be in.

The people I saw during my trip were the people that lived in that town.  most of the people that we saw were sitting on their porches, smiling and waving as we walked by.

It felt great to see the smiles on the people's faces because I knew I was making a difference for them.  I want to take what I learned about serving and bring it back here to our community and help out by helping with the Sack Lunch Program or the Reach Out Program at the church to help people in need.

The last thing I would like to say is to the people that made it possible for me to go on this trip to Detroit: You helped serve me so that I could go and serve others in other communities, so thank you.