During the Summer of 2004, Jacob Masemore, a teenager from Pennsylvania, joined OMS missionary Tom Wright and his short-term missions team on a trip to Hungary. The group of American, Christian teenagers planned on participating in a soccer ministry that would hopefully reach out to about twenty-five young people in the small town of Kubekhaza, Hungary. The entire week they were in Hungary they experienced record-breaking amounts of rain which mostly destroyed their outreach. The group played two games of soccer as "Team USA," but due to flooding were unable to do any more. They spent much of their time just hanging out with the local kids because of the rain. When Jake would often tell the story, he would describe the thunder in a storm that struck one evening while the team was in prayer. He said it sounded like God was walking up and down the streets of the town! It was almost as though He was preparing the hearts of the little team for what He would do next!
One of the last days of their stay in Hungary, the mayor of the town asked Tom Wright if the teenagers would be willing to hand out tracts at an opera festival later that week. It was the largest opera festival in all of Europe! They shut down the main street of tiny Kubekhaza and used it as a stage! It seemed like a great opportunity, but after some consideration, the mayor proposed that rather than handing out tracts, the team be in the opera festival!
As you can imagine, this was
quite a shock! The team of American teenagers that set out to do a soccer
ministry would be in Europe's largest opera festival as the opening half-hour
act! They stayed up most of the night practicing worship songs and
choreographing a "drama" to the song "Via Dolorosa," as sung by Sandi Patty. In
the drama they crucified Jesus and presented the Gospel message. The next day, a
trembling group of American teenagers wearing white shirts and black pants (the
only uniform clothing they had) were driven to the opera festival and escorted
through security as "American opera stars!" 20,000 people watched live and big
boom cameras, broadcasting to national TV captured the incident from every side,
as these unimportant, American teenagers stood on stage and sung about a God of
salvation and love! I don't believe those teenagers will ever forget that day!
When Jacob returned home to our tiny little church, he was filled to the brim with excitement! Our church asked Jake to share about his trip to Hungary at our "Youth Sunday." The sermon, worship, and preparation were all done by teenagers so it seemed quite appropriate for Jake to share about his Hungarian adventure. He wanted to re-enact the drama, and consequently, ended up asking our odd bunch of inner-city and country-bumpkin teenagers to help. It would have been hard to have more diverse kids than what we had, but because it was a one-time-only deal, we tried it out.
The drama was a great hit! We were thrilled! A few months
later, when we wanted to re-do the success, we decided to create our own "drama"
to the song "My Cross" as sung by FFH. Once again Jake represented the
youth and preached the sermon for our second Youth Sunday. To our surprise, one
of the elders of the church asked us to do the drama at the missions banquet
held at our church that next weekend. We complied, hardly knowing what we were
starting. At the end of the banquet we had two more scheduled performances! We
were shocked! We found ourselves at neighboring churches being introduced as the
"drama team from Bethany E.C.!"
Eventually we gave ourselves the name "Potter's Clay" and set a weekly meeting time. The team has now gone through about forty kids and many changes. We are no longer from only one church but rather from many churches. I believe I speak on behalf of just about every kid on the team when I say that this has changed many of our lives. We have encouraged each other, prayed for each other, and learned from each other as we strive to follow the Master. My prayer is that the kids from this group will go on to lead mature Christian lives and affect fellow Christians along the way. Hopefully, when they look at this small group of simple American teenagers, they see the unmistakable hand of Almighty God!
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. -1 John 3:1