We took a group of rising junior high girls to the Revolve Tour in Baltimore at the beginning of March for a time of getting to know each other and getting closer to God. But, the conference experience turned out to be  completely opposite to what we were hoping it could be. It was… interesting. It wasn’t exactly “culturally appropriate” for our girls. Some of them slept through parts of the sessions. Emily walked away thinking that the girls got NOTHING out of it.

However, isn’t it just like the Lord to show us what He is teaching even when we least expect it. We walked away thinking that the girls got NOTHING out of the conference. We were wrong.

The other day one of the girls talked about a lemonade stand competition that the students have been planning. They wanted to have a lemonade stand competition between the boys and the girls to see who could raise the most money. After the competition, they were going to take the money and go out to eat at one of their favorite restaurants, “The Bamboo Buffet.” I heard that they really wanted to go to the Olive Garden but decided that it was probably too expensive.

One of the girls who went to Revolve recently confided in her mentor that she didn’t feel so good about the lemonade stand idea anymore. At Revolve, she saw videos about children who didn’t have access to clean water. She had been thinking about the film and came to the conclusion that they shouldn’t use the lemonade stand money on themselves. If she lived in that situation in which there was no food and no clean water, she would want other people to help. She was thinking that she needed to convince her friends to give the money away to people who needed clean water because other people needed that more than she and her friends needed to go to a nice meal.

Now, the lemonade stand competition hasn’t happened yet, nor has this little girl convinced everyone that the money needs to go elsewhere. However, we will see where this goes and what will happen to the little seed God has planted in her heart.