Up Late/Early and Excited about What God is Doing

It’s 4:51am Thursday morning and I still haven’t fallen asleep from last night. I just too excited! Last night I had an incredible time meeting with my leaders. We had fun together and enjoyed each other’s company like a good team should, but we also accomplished a lot.

We were able to review the last year a little and even more importantly take a solid look forward with a clearly defined vision, mission, purpose, and strategy begin to define our short term and long term goals as a team.

To be honest with you though, what has me awake at this incredible hour is our conversation about the fall retreat. Last fall was the first time since I was in High School that I did not do a fall retreat. As a youth leader I have seen their overwhelming effectiveness in establishing and deepening relationships with kids, developing a deeper level of respect, connecting kids to a deeper level with God, and getting your whole group off on the right foot for the year.

As we were talking in our meeting this “little” venture of ours to take kids on a special trip suddenly became so much bigger at the suggestion that we include other groups. It was mentioned that we could team up with other scarlet thread youth centers and bring kids who weren’t going somewhere with their church, etc… I was thrilled to see my leaders thinking so big! The moment I started thinking about a retreat I was thinking “Hey wouldn’t it be awesome if we could grab as many kids as we can and make this something awesome.” But I thought maybe I was overshooting for our first round out here. Our leaders sure don’t seem to think so, and I really don’t either.

After having run 15 or 16 retreats like this throughout the course of my career I have a good idea of what something like this looks like, but I get just as excited about it as the kids do every time. And I’m sitting here now at 5:06am wishing the right people were awake that I could call to really start putting the wheels in motion on this project. Ahh, well. In the mean time, I suppose maybe I’ll just start working on promotional materials and such. )

Great Night at the Youth Center

Tonight was awesome! In-fact it was probably one of the best nights I’ve had since I began ministry out here. I’m sorry to say that it didn’t include a bible study or deep spiritual conversation. It is my hope to soon write you all with a similar post about such things, but tonight was great nonetheless.

Since I’ve begun ministry out here I’ve struggled not only with sharing things of a spiritual nature with these kids, but often just getting them to act in a civil manner to each other. I spent the first 8 months of my ministry here mostly yelling at them and correcting them constantly. We have finally built a culture resembling something close to respect, safety, and acceptance that looks miles away from the way it did a year ago.

Today was our weekly day of free time where we spend two hours playing a game or really whatever the kids want to do. We chose to play capture the flag and it was awesome! They encouraged each other, they laughed, they had fun. There was no disrespect, no complaining…. It was a positive, uplifting, teambuilding experience.

We went inside when it began to get dark and played cards and ping pong for a few minutes before the youth center closed and something happened that hasn’t happened in a long time, we lost track of time! We were all having so much fun we ended up staying late. The kids didn’t want to go and neither did the leaders. When we did finally wrap things up the kids enthusiastically told me that they would definitely be back to see us again on Monday (our bible study night).

Now, to you, the reader, this might sound like a simple game night, but I want to assure you that tonight was no ordinary night. While for many youth groups this may have qualified as a mediocre game night, for our group, tonight was a turning point of relationship building between youth leaders and kids. It was evidence that the long, hard work we’ve invested into the character of these kids and the shaping of this group has well been worth it and is beginning to pay off.

Praise God for an awesome night!

Another confirmation of progress

This week I received some great news along with some not so great news. Since I’ve come to work here I have struggled in being able to develop the kind of relationships I had with kids back home. It just takes time and this group hasn’t had the easiest time adjusting to my transition to this position.

I have never stopped investing in these kids and demonstrating my my love and Christ’s love for them. Those relationships are growing and improving and I saw the first clear result of my attempt to connect just a few days ago. We were having a game night at the youth center and I had noticed that a couple specific kids (brothers) were missing but I didn’t give it too much thought. At the end of the night, just before we were getting ready to close up the youth center the older of the two brothers showed up.

As soon as he could get my attention he pulled me aside to let me know that his younger brother was in the hospital and wanted to make sure I knew so I could be praying for him. I took the opportunity right there to stop and pray with him for his brother for which he was grateful.

I have been unable to find out his hospital room number and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him to find out how he’s doing. Thankfully it seems to be a fairly minor medical problem and if he’s not out by now it shouldn’t be long. As much as I am not happy to know that one of my students is in the hospital it is a huge thing for another one to go out of his way just to make sure I know and I can be praying.

I have often felt like this last year was one big struggle to connect with these kids, but I am finally starting to see the fruit of my labor and prayer pay off relationally. God is good. I am excited about what lies before me and I hope to be able to share many more positive stories in the future. (Hopefully those won’t surround any more kids going to the hospital)