They brought snickerdoodles.

Flanked by her sisters, the oldest one came bearing the treasure, and all 3 were escorted by their dad. Why had they come? They were wondering the same about us.

Why had we come all the way to Shreveport—14 hours in 2 days on a bus—from North Carolina? Surely it wasn’t just to sing in their worship service at FBC Shreveport earlier that morning and surely not to judge whether their gym floor provided a better night’s sleep than ours.

No, our reasons were varied: Mission trips are fun, my friends are going, I’ve never been there before, we get to share God’s love, I want to make a difference…

Who would’ve thought one hour would’ve made such a difference? Certainly not us. We sing all the time. The Vancils have taught them so well that we could sing them in our sleep (and from our expressions, that’s a real possibility!). Besides, this isn’t even a choir tour!

But on mission trips, we do whatever is needed. And FBC Shreveport needs a youth choir, and Minister of Music Glen Adkins is hoping for something to spark their interest. So we started off our week by joining about 15 of their youth for Sunday School and then sharing our musical gifts throughout the worship service.

We do it all the time. No big deal.

But any time we offer our gifts to God, it is a big deal because it opens up the door for God to use those gifts to bring more people into God’s family.

And so 3 little girls we didn’t know spent a couple of hours baking snickerdoodles for 27 kids img_5658they didn’t know, and then they missed their own youth pool party to deliver those cookies to us in the FBC Shreveport gym. They just wanted to say “Thank you for coming and for singing for us!”

A bus and some baking, some singing and some snickerdoodles. Like a tiny bit of yeast, it doesn’t seem like much at the time, but before you know it, God’s kingdom is starting to grow.