Taking a "Break"

Some of us at Ignite spent this last weekend facilitating the youth part of a church's weekend away (aka  church retreat). It was a group of about 10 kids, most of whom had grown up in the church, and it was great to work with kids from a semi-similar background. It was a breeze to play games and teach lessons with them because they know how you are supposed to act in church, so we had to do hardly any crowd control. The most we had to calm down the over-enthusiastic 11 year olds!

I was in charge of the games for the weekend and I was super pumped about that! I love playing games, especially the games that can make anyone look like a buffoon (you know, typical youth group games). And this group was great because they would actually volunteer to start the games, they would bring up games they'd played in the past and enjoyed and they all actually participated! While I love the kids in TYC, they are not very good at involving themselves in anything they are not familiar with. It's a challenge just to get them to play a simple game that they already know. They typically just stay on their phones.

For each session we would start with maybe a quick game, then we'd read a portion of scripture. Then we separated the group into 2 teams and had each team reenact the Bible story we just read. We had some of them weeping at "Jesus'" feet like the sinful woman with the perfume and we had them acting out Peter walking on the water. During the latter scene the narrator read that when Peter started sinking that Jesus quickly grabbed Peter's hand and pulled him up, but the boy who was playing Jesus had this disgusted look on his face like touching "Peter's" outstretched had might get him leprosy, so he gingerly pinches "Peter's" arm with two fingers and gives it a slight pull. Not exactly like a friend helping a friend, but it was mostly for humor's sake anyways.

It was great to work with such a well behaved youth group again. It was like taking a break from the hard work we do at the TYC and the GYC. 

We are about to start off on a Bible course called Thrive that Ignite is doing. It's basically digging deeper into the Word for ourselves and not relying on the faith of our parents or church to get us through our Christian walk. This course is focused on young Christians of ages 16 to 21, and since I am still 21, I will be partaking as a student not a leader (now that's a change.).

Thank you all so much for your prayers. Until next week...God bless!

Let the Questions Come

I spent last Sunday morning teaching Sunday school for the little ones in the church. Most of these kids' parents don't actually go to church, but they like to bring their children to Sunday school. While we aren't fans of the idea that the parents don't go to church but are almost using us as a daycare for an hour or two, we want these kids to hear about Jesus any way they can.

It was difficult to say the least. We're trying to teach the kids the "Pharaoh Pharaoh" song that they can sing as part of a presentation for their parents in a month or so. But unfortunately, if kids don't want to do something, they will not do it without a struggle. So I almost lost my voice trying to be heard over the little ones. 

When it came time to teach the lesson on Daniel and the Lions Den, some of the older kids kept interrupting me to tell me that they already knew that story. Finally I said to one of the older girls of about 9, "Since you know the story, how about you come to the front and tell it." She came up front and tried to tell the story, but as they were before, the kids were loud and not paying attention. Somehow, I managed to quiet them enough to say, "Hey! You're friend is talking up here!" I then asked her how she felt having tried to tell a story and nobody was paying attention. I made the others quiet down enough to hear her answer. "It was really annoying having people interrupt and talk over me when I'm trying to speak."

So I told the kids to be respectful towards their friend and let her tell them the story. Amazingly, they were quiet the rest of the time she was talking! It was like having her tell the teachers' side of the classroom and of the annoyance of being interrupted had finally sunk in and they were quiet the rest of the time! I only hope they will remember this later.

Last Tuesday was Pancake Day. It's also called "Fat Tuesday" in honor of everyone who eats as much as they can before they give something up for lent.

It was a good day at the office in that Gary went to the trouble of making everyone pancakes with all of the wonderful toppings such as lemon and sugar, nutella and strawberries, and of course, the ever needed syrup. 

At the GYC we had pancakes in honor of the day as well. What a mess! Imagine giving a bunch of monkeys pancakes and spray whipped cream and leaving them alone for more than 5 minutes!

But I did have one very sweet moment with this little girl. We were awaiting our turns to go down to the kitchen to make our pancakes and we were in this one room in the church where there were various bible scenes painted on the wall. She pointed to one portraying Jesus coming out of the tomb and asked, "Why is God coming out of a cave?" Seeing the opportunity to talk a bit about Jesus I start to tell her how He was killed and then 3 days later rose back to life and that's Him stepping out of His tomb.

She gets this look of understanding on her face as she says, "That's after He was thrown in the lions den." I told her that's not quite right, and that she was thinking of Daniel. I go on to point out other events in Jesus' life painted on the wall and we go backwards to the manger scene. She then asked me "Is that before His mom put Him in the basket in the river?"

Again, wrong story, but the fact that she's asking questions and wanting to sort out the stories in her head gives me hope. 

I've been praying for months that God would start to stir up questions in the kids' minds and that they would be asking questions about Him. This will open up the conversation on their terms rather than us trying to push our beliefs at them. This means that they're open to hearing the answers we so desperately want to give them.

Please pray with me that these kids would continue to ask questions about God and that He would give us wisdom on the best answers to give. Thank you so much for your prayers. We are seeing results! Amen!

A Subtle Change of Heart

Praise the Lord! He is truly doing something in the lives of some of our kids here in Tremorfa.

I'm seeing a change in one of the boys I've mentioned before who has a reputation for causing trouble. It's subtle, but it's there. Since he's been old enough to come into club, he's rarely behaved well enough to stay the whole evening. Maybe twice. But this last week he stayed the while time and was only mildly misbehaving!

We had a sort of game night where we brought out a number of board games to play with the kids. This boy picked out the game Frustration, and seeing that he was the one who wanted to sit still and play a game, I was quick to jump in. So me, this one boy, and one other boy sat and played the whole game together. This boy kept wanting to roll the dice until he got the numbers he wanted, but aside from that, he behaved almost perfectly. There was no bad language and no physical roughness, which left the boy as just that: a little boy who wanted to win the game he was playing. I could see him for how young he truly is. I am enormously happy that he felt comfortable enough to set aside his "bad boy" reputation and just be himself that night. That is God answering our many prayers towards this boy already. Keep praying that God would continue to break down these walls and bring up questions in this boy's mind about God Himself.

And mentoring!!! We did our first round of mentoring last week. We met our mentees and played some get to know you games. I won't share too much simply to protect privacy. But the fact that we made it in and can start bringing Jesus into the school is fantastic! We may not even be able to talk about Jesus, but we can be Jesus to these kids and to the community.

God is so good. Thank you so much for all of your prayers. God is definitely working. Keep it up!

P.S. This is the same boy I went on about in "The Challenges" post! I'm so excited!

A Chat at the "Nail Salon"

So praise the Lord! We are going into the local high school this Friday to bring Jesus in and start mentoring! The enemy tried to stop us and not let us in, but God has overcome and we are going in! Please be praying for the team as we prepare and then go in, and also pray that God would already be working in the hearts and minds of these children beforehand. We know that the kids we will be working with will have been referred to us for a reason; maybe they are at risk of dropping out or they are just known for misbehaving. Regardless of what the reason is, these kids need Jesus.

In the gospels we see that Jesus often hung out and made friends with the not-so-popular people. Why? Why not with the church goers and the religious people? From His own words He explains that it's because, "Healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do." Jesus doesn't need to introduce Himself to church people because church people already know about Him. It's those who would not go to church or don't know about Him and His incredible love for us who we need to share Jesus with. And we think that if Jesus were here today, He would be in the schools, sharing His love.

 Both youth clubs went really well this week. At GYC the group was relatively calm, but on top of that, I was able to sit with a few of the girls and have some conversations with them.This was the first time in quite a while that I've been able to do that. I love learning more and more about the individuals rather than just thinking of them all as a group. 

And later in the evening, one of the girls brought her nail polish out and she was doing a bunch of people's fingernails. So I had her do mine while we chatted a bit. Then she noticed the ring I always wear on my ring finger. She asked if I had a husband, and when I told her no, she asked why I would wear a ring on my wedding finger if I'm not married. This opened up the conversation to talk about my purity ring, and why I wear it. I think it's an American thing to wear one, but I started telling her how it was my promise to not have sex before getting married. She was thoroughly surprised and repeated what I said just to make sure she had heard me right.

I took this chance to tell her that every time you sleep with someone you are giving away a piece of your heart. And if you sleep around with multiple people before getting married, you won't have nearly as much of your heart to give to your husband who you will hopefully spend the rest of your life with. I told her that I've decided to not sleep with anyone until I'm married so I can give all of my heart to my husband. She was still surprised and seemed to ponder the idea a while afterwards.

I know the idea of waiting until marriage is not a very popular idea in today's society, but I still believe that that was God's original plan for us when He started the world with one man and one woman. I hope that by telling girls about this choice, the choice to wait, it will save them some heartache down the road.

This has still been a difficult week for me, just in that I had news that I grandfather was sent to the hospital a few days ago, but I believe that he is doing better now, so thank you to everyone who prayed for his recovery. It helped immensely. 

God bless