Sandy's Sayings

Love Works Is Funner Than Video Games

This was our annual Love Works Weekend. We canceled church services and encourage our body to serve the community this weekend. I think this is our third Love Works Weekend. We had a ton of projects ranging from serving the homeless, doing repair and cleaning projects with different shelters, serving schools, helping out with beautifucation projects in different cities and much more.

Last night we had our celebration service where we had the opportunity to share how God moved while we served! There were some amazing stories that were told! Although, my favorite quote from the serivce came from a little boy who shared, "Love Works is funner than video games." There were some good laughs at his comment, but what this little boy was trying to say is that he had fun being the hands and feet of Jesus! He enjoyed interacting with those in need! My hope and prayer for our kids and students is they would continue to be broken–hearted over those in need and would be spurred on to continue being the hands and feet of Jesus. 

Here is a short little video our high school pastor put together for our project!

 

Back To The 80's

Last week, my bookshelves were looking a little out of control. It was time to purge! I had a truck load of old youth ministry books, but this student leadership one cracked me up. Can we say 80's! Sad to say, my hair once looked like some of those girls!

Checking out a new camp

So while the guys on our youth team are in the Dominican republic, all of us girls went to check out a new camp in Mammoth! I've never been to Mammoth, it's absolutly beautiful! We are checking out Mammouth Base Camp! They run a winter camp as well as summer stuff with rock climbing, mt. biking and horseback riding! Today we went rock climbing and there was still a ton of snow on the ground! Lots of fun had by all! Really like the team that has started this camp! Great people.

Two-Weeks of Craziness is Over!

I'm breathing a sigh of relief as the two weeks of craziness are over. I have a love/hate relationship with the month of May!  I love it because summer is coming!  I hate it because I feel my life is not my own!  The ministry school year is over and our summer program starts in two weeks.  High school graduations and grad parties are over, Jr. High graduations start on Tuesday!  This was our largest senior class we have had, and it sure was fun to see this class graduate!  I'm so excited to see where God will take them.  It was a bittersweet good-bye to our 8th graders!  This was one of those really special classes.  All awesome kids who have been such leaders in our ministry, who love the Lord and one of the few classes who really cared about the younger kids in our ministry. I will miss them in our Jr. High Ministry but look forward to see how they will shape our high school ministry. In all the craziness, our summer intern also started.  I love having are summer interns around.  This is our second summer having interns.  I'm looking forward to spending time with them and doing ministry with them.  We've got a fun week planned with them as we leave on Thursday for Mammoth Base Camp, to go check out this ministry. Four days of mt. biking, rock climbing, hiking and adventure!

The Teen 10 Day Tech Challenge

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10 Year Old Gives Advice on Getting A Girl

Over the last few weeks in our Jr. High Ministry we've been talking about the difference between guys and girls.  We showed this video this morning on "how to get a girl."  Great advice from 10 year old Alec Greven. 

Summer Designs

May and September are the craziest times in student ministry for me.  In May we are winding down the school year, yet gearing up for summer. For instance, this weekend holds a play, writing all of our jr. high/high school graduates, our usual Sunday AM and our Student Ministry Family BBQ. The week holds end of year meetings, 09-10 calendar planning so I can finish up the 09-10 budget as well as getting ready to teach and work on my summer sermons and get ready for our summer interns.  Weekend after that is the overwhelming job of fitting as many graduations that you can, in a span of 2 days as well as all the parties that I get invited too! June 1 I plop down on my couch and breath a sigh of relief until June 11 when it's time to fit as many Jr. High graduations in, in the span of 4 days.  Then summer kicks in. I love summer in youth ministry.  It's not a vacation but it is a lot of fun.  The kids aren't stressed, you get to see a glimpse of their real selves.  It's pure hang out time with jr. highers with a few fun activities thrown in as well as "seriously ridiculous" summer study.  As I sat and designed all of our summer calendars this week, I was wishing I could just snap my fingers and skip the next 3 weeks and dive right into summer!  The weather this weekend in the Bay is going to be hot, which will really make me wish I could just skip to June 16 and start summer!

Student Ministry Family BBQ

On Sunday, May 17, the Student Ministry will be having a Family BBQ at Booth Bay Park in Foster City from 1-3 pm. Bring your chair, rec equipment and food item, we will provide the meat! We will also be honoring our 6th graders, graduating 8th graders and graduating seniors. It will be a fun time hanging out with family and friends! Sign up with Darcie, Rob, Sandy or Ben by Sunday May 10. Download Student min picnic 09

Good News

In 24 years of youth ministry, I have sat through a lot of plays and musicals.  Last night I went to see "Good News" at The Kings Academy.  Of all the plays I've been to, I had not seen any school do this musical.  What a great musical!  I think this was one of the best musical's I had seen any school perform! The students were amazing and I still can't get over the huge tap routine the cast did.  What a fun night. Katie, Hannah and Sarah, you girls were awesome, it's always a joy to come and support you girls!  

My First E-Newsletter

In January our Student Ministry made the final transition to go green. Yes, we are that cool now! This has been a year long transition for us. Throughout 2008 we were slowly making the transition to go paperless by moving towards a blog format to communicate to parents and students, as well as replacing our old phone hotlines with twitter and adding a text message service. The last thing to take off of my plate was mailing postcards and newsletters. I sent my first e-newsletter a couple of weeks ago. We are using My Emma as our newsletter host. For the most part the transition has gone fairly well and I've been pleased with the response.  We still have some work to do with our parents to get them looking online instead of through snail mail, but they are getting with it.  For myself personally, I've found that designing and doing mailings was such a time consuming process.  Going electronic saves my time and saves the church a good chunk of changing with paper and postage.  The best part in all of this, is each of these services can all be done from my iphone, so where ever I might be, whether I'm at the beach with kids or at camp, I can update our parents of what is going on with words, pictures and video!