Week of Fun

Every August, our community has a "town festival/party". For some, family comes in town to visit, there's concerts, soccer matches, and people everywhere. It's a time with lots of fun, but potential for lots of trouble.

Our youth group asked for help to put together a week of fun. They worried that themselves, and their friends, wouldn't have a place to go or would be tempted to go out and get into trouble. With the help of summer interns, we were able to plan a theme for the week. We made teams, had games and competitions, and a lesson everyday. Our youth group members split into four teams. They got points for inviting friends, winning games, knowing the memory verses, and participating in the sessions. Each day, a young adult came from our community and talked about what it meant for us as young people to be examples, to be followers of Christ, to be leaders within our schools and our friends.  At the end of each morning activity, we announced our evening activities. There were movie nights, talent shows, soccer tournaments, and kickball games.

We honestly weren't sure who would come or how many youth would come. But we prayed that God would use these young people to invite their friends and that kids in our community would become involved. It was incredible to see that by day 3, we had 100 young people!

It was so much fun to be able to hold this function, but to also watch our youth get involved and to step up and lead. We weren't sure that any of the youth would come on a Sunday to church. But to our surprise, we had several at church and even more of them came to youth group!

My prayer is that they would continue to come, to know Jesus personally, to be a part of a community who loves them, and that they would change their community for the kingdom.