My team got to host a mini Beauty for Ashes event for teenage girls at the church we are partnering with this month. Beauty for Ashes is a tool developed by the World Race to help encourage and strengthen women in their faith. The focus of our Beauty for Ashes event was on worth, the hope being that after the event the girls would be able to identify their worth in Christ, rather than in things of the world.
The girls ate, while we mingled among them, getting to know the ones we hadn’t met yet. We performed a short skit portraying the story of the bleeding woman. One of my teammates gave a great testimony relating to worth. Then the pastor’s wife taught on the story of the bleeding woman. After the teaching, we had a really great activity where each member of my team stood up and opened a slip of paper and read off what it means to find our worth in Christ (ex. “I am a new creation”, “I am loved by God”, “I am a child of God”…etc.). After we had all read our worth, the girls got to go to the front of the room and pull a paper flower off the cross. Inside each flower was a message about worth with a scripture referencing where it was found in the Bible. To end the night, we served apple crisp and had a spa night for the girls. They got their hands washed and moisturized and their nails painted. Normally, the girls can’t wear nail polish to school, but the school director actually came to the event and she told the girls before they left, that they didn’t have to take it off for school!
It was really cool to see how God worked behind the scenes to make this event possible. We ended up being able to find almost everything we needed to decorate around the church, so we had to buy very few decorations. We were able to make a very realistic-looking cross for the sanctuary out of logs and a piece of rope that we found on the property. My teammate, Adi, spent hours folding origami flowers to hang on the cross. But the way God most obviously showed up behind the scenes was through the apple crisp. We bought literally just enough flour and sugar to make the crisp. The recipe made three pans, and we had just enough gas to bake one pan (which was the exact amount needed to serve all the girls).
It was a beautiful night of getting to love on the girls and show them their worth in Christ.
