Loving Every Minute

About a month ago we started up a bible study specifically for our REC students. The students who participate are new christians or pre-christians. It’s been going really well!

Two weeks ago I asked if there was anything we could be praying about. One of the girls shared that she would like us to pray for furniture. She and her sister share a bedroom with no furniture. The specific prayer was for dressers so that they could get their clothes off the floor (where the cats were sleeping on them, etc).

The next day I sent an email out to several people from the church sharing the need and within 2 hours my dear friend Becky responded that they had 2 dressers in their basement that were not in use. So Tuesday night when “Brittani” got to the church for Rec I pulled her aside and showed her the dressers that had been cleaned up and dropped off at the church. She teared up and it took some convincing for her to believe that they were really for her and her sister. Two guys from the church loaded them into a truck and took them to the girls’ apartment later that evening and unloaded them. Her mother was equally blown away.

As I was writing a thank you note to Becky this morning it dawned on me, she didn’t just show this family kindness and christian love … she gave Brittani her first experience with answered prayer. It gives me goosebumps to think that God allows me to witness this stuff.

No better job on earth. Testify!

We made some big decisions at our leaders meeting last night and there are significant changes coming our way.

For the past few years we’ve had grades 5-12 all together on Sunday night. Dinner and worship together and then into small group (by age) for bible study. We’ve made the best of it but there are pretty big challenges when you’re working with that many different ages. The more I learn about middle schoolers, the more I realize that we’re not doing the best job we can for them because we’re trying to program to such a wide age range. We can improve the way we minister to the high schoolers when we’re focused solely on them as well.

So beginning in about a month, we will have 2 youth groups. High schoolers will meet at the same time they do now but Middle schoolers will meet at a separate time that’s just for them. We haven’t decided yet if they’ll still be JUSTIFIED or if they will have a new name that’s just theirs.

I’m excited about this change but there are a lot of details to be worked out still.

Please pray for our leadership team as we figure out what all this looks like over the next few weeks.

We had a great night last night!!!   It was Crazy Game Night. Games to include Water Balloon Dodgeball, Blindfolded Musical Chairs, Blind Volleyball, Dizzy Obstacle Course and Splash Ball. There were 400 water balloons lined up in bins by the back door just waiting for the insanity to begin.

We had a surprise in store for the leaders.

When everyone arrived, one of the middle schoolers announced that the leaders were getting the night off. They were told that a chicken bbq in their honor was ready and waiting for them at a church member’s house (I call her the hospitality ninja because she’s so awesome and stealthy). There were 6 other church members ready and waiting to run Crazy Game Night in our absence. The leaders were definitely surprised.

So we loaded into a couple of cars and took off for the chicken bbq and the kids stayed behind with the subs for Crazy Game Night. We had a lovely evening of hanging out together and all reports are that the kids had a BLAST without us!

So many people helped put this secret mission together. It was another example of how much the entire church owns the vision of youth ministry. I know I brag on my church family a lot – but it’s hard not to. I’m super, duper blessed!

Just posted a little poll on the YSBlog about summer hours.  If you’re a youthworker, head over there and weigh in!