This is Us (30th Anniversary Edition)

We’re celebrating our church’s 30th throughout the month of November, so we’re focusing the “This is Us” posts on folks that have been around a good part of that time.

Today’s story is from Stephanie Kiel, our Communications Director and long-term member of Five Oaks. (Stephanie is third from the left in the picture on the right. More pics below.)

For as long as I can remember, Five Oaks has been my church home: one of my favorite places, filled with people and memories that have made me into the person I am today. 

My family first moved to Woodbury in the fall of 1993, when I was 2 years old, and started attending Five Oaks in the spring of 1994. While I have countless memories from my 25+ years here, my years in the youth group have been some of the most impactful. The relationships I built during those years are people that, to this day, are some of the most important and influential friends in my life. My faith was made stronger due to the teaching and conversations I had at youth group, my small group, and on all the various retreats and missions trips I was able to be a part of. It built a strong foundation for my faith and life as I went off to college and started to ask harder questions about life and God. It’s because of the impact of that time, the devoted volunteers, and influential friendships that I now serve on Wednesday nights in hopes that this next generation can experience some of the same encouragement and support that I did.

I am forever grateful that my parents found and engaged with the community here at Five Oaks. My life would certainly not look the same without the years of love, support, and relationships and teaching that have continually pointed me to Christ. It’s a blessing now to give further to this community and God’s mission by serving on staff and volunteering with the ministries that once made such an important impact on me. 

How can we learn to be content?

by John Eiselt

In 1998, as a senior in high school, I went on a missions trip to Mexico. What happened when we finished the project stunned us.

Our mission was to construct concrete roofs on houses. The process involved laying roof rails/joists, followed by concrete block that would rest on the rails, followed by liquid concrete that we used to seal cracks and secure the roof.

It was the first time I’d been to Mexico and, to be honest, as a high school student on spring break I was just has interested in the sun and scenery as I was the purpose of the trip.

A lot changed for me that week.

I witnessed poverty like I’d never seen before and built relationships with strangers who became friends, brothers, and sisters over the course of our week together. By the end of the week, they were no longer strangers in poverty, they were brothers and sisters for whom my heart ached.

Despite all of that, we were still unprepared for what we would experience as we blessed the completed home with prayer and celebration.

The leader of our trip offered a house-warming gift, and we prayed aloud together with our hands raised asking God to bless this home and this family.

We said, “Amen,” and after a brief moment of unplanned silence, the mother of the family raised her hand and stepped forward to speak. Speaking in English, she thanked us for our help and hard work, and she expressed her deep gratitude to us and to God for the roof that now covered their home.

She stopped for moment and then raised her head and told us that she prays for us in the United States. She went on to explain the sympathy and concern she had for us because of how much we have that gets in the way of our relationship and dependency on God.

I’ll never forget the look on our leaders face and the feeling inside my own heart as her words offered a perspective that, in a moment, had changed us all.

Their gratitude couldn’t have been greater for the gift they had received. Her gratitude seemed to be based on something greater. That ‘something greater’ offered her a sense of contentment that she knew few of us had ever known, and she was concerned we might never know it.

This weekend, we will continue our series on Finding Contentment in a Discontented World and we’re going to explore how we learn to be content.