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