March - "In like a lion, out like a lamb" or is it the other way around? I can never remember.  Either way it doesn't really matter for us here at YouthPartnersNET because here's the good news.  As the scripture promises us in Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25 "The Lion and the Lamb shall live and eat together".  Your gift this month is helping us and our partners do just that.  Let me explain.

March marks the beginning of our 2010 youth and college age CityConnexx mission teams who are traveling around the country and even up into Vancouver BC to serve the poor during their spring breaks. 

CityConnexx is designed to bring young people and adults into some of our nations most at-risk communities. Places indeed where Satan roams around like a "lion" ready to stead, kill, and destroy God's precious lambs who are so vulnerable, children living in poverty.

So, the goal of our teams is to live, eat, sleep, pray and pray, work and worship together in the most unlikely places.  College students from Illinois will be sleeping in tents on the roof of a ministry on skid row in LA because all the spare rooms are filled with homeless families. But they don't mind, it's kind of like their dorms. Other college students from Idaho will be removing graffiti and cleaning streets full of discarded bottles and needles on the Eastside of Vancouver BC because the authorities have forced all the homeless and drug users to that side of town to be "out of sight, out of mind" for the tourists who came to watch the Olympics. Several groups are coming to Denver to serve meals, play with kids, tutor Hispanic children who are just learning English. And a group of 50 College Life students from Texas has chosen to spend their spring break serving in Memphis rather than Daytona Beach.

We pray that by acts of kindness and compassion, the walls of separation and isolation will come crumbling down. We pray that God's people will cross over cultural and color barriers as we seek to serve those who are most at-risk. 
Yes, we believe former gang members can find salvation and transformation through God's love to lead devotions in urban ministries. Yes, we will see former crack addicted mothers who will be leading these groups on prayer walks through the projects where she lives and now is the Director of Family Services at the ministry. Former lions and lambs can live, eat, work, worship and love each other.

It has something to do with the Kingdom displayed and represented on earth as it is in Heaven.

Come join us in this Kingdom work. There's still time for you and your church to take a team on a mission trip this summer. (See www.CityConnexx.org for more info).  Just give us a call we'll be sure to prepare a place for you at the table of God's amazing banquet feast. 

And if you are not able to attend this year, please keep our staff, sites and teams in your prayers as they are used by God to make a difference in these communities and with the at-risk kids and families they will serve.

For Him and them,

Dean Cowles
YouthPartnersNET & CityConnexx
Founder