I'm a little behind on my emails, so this afternoon I was reading my Youth Specialties update for June 17. They always feature a "blog of the week" and they chose mine! WOW! I was wondering why I had so many hits the last 2 days! If you are a youth worker and came here by Youth Specialties, WELCOME! Thank you Youth Specialties for all you do in supporting us youth workers!
Had a great time at The Core with our leaders on Saturday! Here is one of the video's they showed! Great stuff! If you can go and take your leadership team, do it!
After our two week break Sunday was our first Sunday of the new year. It's fun to watch how all three groups get back in the groove. The Edge kids are just cute. They are excited to be there. The Jr. High kids are a super social group and when you have 15 middle school represented and they haven't seen each other in two weeks all they want to do is chat, chat, chat! Plus, the new bean bags came in so, it was a high energy morning. High School was rockin' last night. The band was the best I've ever heard it, so awesome job Taylor, Stephen, Forest, Nick, Darc and Ben. We had the famous Justin Buzzard speak at high school and he did a fabulous job preaching the book of Judges! Several highlights from high school last night were Forest and Taylor jammin' with Jazz during our dinner time. These guys were awesome! The second highlight was watching the high school kids really getting into worship with "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus." It was a fun teaching day as well since all three ministries are in Judges. I focused on the cycle of sin in Judges 2 with the Edge and Jr. High kids and then focused on the "The Fat King and Ehud" in Judges 3. You gotta love the gross and gory Bible stories! Next week a love story with Ruth and Boaz! I forgot to bring the camera home last night, so I'll try to post Sunday's pictures later today. The rest of today is hanging out with the guys from Ventana Ministries!
Ok, so I'm mourning the fact that we are not going to winter camp this weekend. Making the decision not to go was hard, but it made me think of winter camps of past. So here is the top 12 winter camp memories for the past 20 something years!
12. High School Winter Camp at EV Free Fremont. This was my first youth ministry that I worked in. It's also the youth ministry i grew up in. We were in yosemite on the valley floor after a spring snow. So we let kids out to play in the snow. It was a beautiful day and before I knew it, the girls had slipped into their bathing suits, brought their swim towels out and sunbathed with the snowmen they had built. Let's say that scene was a traffic stopper.
11. PBC Hume High School Trip. I was driving one of our pastors mini-vans home from Hume with my seniors trying to catch the rest of the group. What I didn't know is that I was ahead of them. I was speeding on 205 and the CHP pulled me over and gave me a whopping ticket. That afternoon I learned never to speed again in our teaching pastors van full of students! As soon as we got into the church parking lot, the kids got out of the car and screamed at the top of their lungs, "Sandy got a ticket! Sandy got a ticket!"
10. Modesto Covenant Trip: I was leading worship for this churches winter camp and a blizzard hit over night. 10 feet of snow and no electricity made this one fun. By the time we dug everyone out of their cabins the next storm hit, so we packed up and headed back to modesto to finish camp at church. The best was the snowball fight in the church parking lot with all the snow from the top of the vehicles.
9. Scheduling back to back winter camps. I was asked to lead worship for PBC's winter camp and Kings Academy's winter camp. Took one of my students, Mandy Davidson with me to both camps. The drive from the gold country to tahoe on winding 49 made both of us sick.
8. PBC's High school trip to Hume. We gave a bunch of "free" trips out that year! We told students we drew their name out of a hat and they won a trip to Hume. It's amazing how free trips will get students to camp! That year one of my seniors who was not a believer, became a believer a that camp.
7. PBC's High School trip to Hume part 2. Same trip as number 8. None of my senior girls could sleep at the last night of camp, so we were all huddled in our sleeping bags out on the front porch in snow playing truth or dare. All of the sudden one of the girls decided to go streaking through the snow, just as the boys were coming up to raid our cabin.
6. Piedmont's Winter Camp. Oh that was the year both myself and my intern Jenn were in casts, so we hung out on the lodge deck in our shorts and our casts getting a tan in the sunny snow.
5. My first winter camp with CPC. Two days into my first week at CPC I went to winter camp. All the volunteer staff did an awesome job organizing and planning winter camp. The one thing they didn't count on, having no snow! Thankfully my Modesto Covenant Trip came in handy because we went to a skate rink in Longbarn that weekend. So since there was no snow we went to the skate rink. That night, there was a blizzard and the next day we had just enough snow to go intertubbing and held a new record of 45 people connected together with their tubes.
4. My first winter camp with CPC part 2. When Jeffery Allen and Daniel Ferrera, two of our eighth graders, led impromptu worship. It was amazing watching these two guys lead worship as 8th graders and how the other 50 kids responded. The Holy Spirit was at work that night. Later in the evening Jeffery and Daniel serenaded my girls cabin with a song they wrote called "chick magnet." Jeff and Daniel are just finishing up college! Daniel just took a job as a worship pastor!
3. Winter Camp 2002 with CPC. Yet another blizzard hit while we were staying at Zephyr Cove. We had chartered a bus at the last minute because our bus driver had to have an emergency spinal tap. That year an accident occurred on 50 and it took us 18 hours to get home. Thank God for bathrooms on charter buses.
2. Winter 2005 with CPC. The Storm of the year hit. We had made it to the Young Life Lodge just before the storm hit. We woke up in the morning to all the main windows of the Lodge covered with snow. We couldn't find the vehicles because of so much snow. The winds were whipping through that the slopes were closed and we could hear the dynamite blasts from Sugar Bowl for avalanche control. The leaders and kids spent all day on Saturday digging out the vehicles while it was blizzarding. We had a one hour window of no snow on Sunday morning so we woke all the kids up, packed and cleaned and got out of their before the next blizzard. The kids were so great that year!
1. Piedmont Jr. High Trip to Hume. When I was at Piedmont none of my students were believers. We decided to go to Hume that winter. I was sitting behind my former churches Jr. High group, kind of envious of my dear friend, because all her kids were into worship and my pagan kids didn't get what was going on. I can't remember the speaker that year, but he was unusually good. One night the speaker gave in invitation to start a relationship with Christ and my whole youth ministry went forward. I was humbled and dumbfounded, excited and blown away at what God was doing in this ministry.
Well, YS is over. I always enjoy the convention. This year was no exception. Unfortunatly, I had to leave during the middle of the last session, so I'm looking forward to downloading the last session and listening to it this week. It was a great time with friends, staff and meeting new folks and seeing what God is doing elsewhere in the world. Yet again, the YS crew did a fantastic job with encouragement, teaching, worship, fun and everything else they do for youth workers. Kudos to the video and sound guys too! Loved the picture in picture this year! Very cool. I'm still mulling over Francis Chans and Doug Fields talks. I'm also praying about how our ministry can support another youth ministry somewhere else in the world. Thanks again YS for all your hard work, I really appreciate all that you do!
got word this morning that another group from the convention lost their church building in the fires today. Pray for these pastors as they discern what to do next. God is often found in the ashes of our lives. God brings beauty from the ashes and these churches are going to have some amazing stories to tell about God's provision, grace, hope, and love.
Woke up to the smell of smoke due to all the fires in San Diego and Malibu. A lot of fires going on with a lot of evacuations. And it's going to be hot and windy today. Keep all those firefighters in your prayers today as well as those who have been evacuated. There are a bunch of folks from YS who live here and have homes here so I'm praying for them too!
Being a jr. high pastor, I love going to any seminar that has to do with Jr. high. So I'm sitting in Marko's class today when he asked if anyone had any questions. We were in a huge room and a guy raises his hand and asks a question and Marko wants to know his name. Tom? No Todd! Tom? No Todd! This leads to Marko telling about someone who is blogging at the convention and how they screwed up on the name of BOB the tomato on veggie tales in their post and called him Tom the tomato. He talked about his comment he left on their blog, and I just started cracking up, because he had know clue I was in the audience and it was me who screwed up the name of BOB the tomato! So I shout from the back of the room, "thanks Marko!" He replies, are you "sandyssayings?" Which I thought was funny, because I've never really been refered to by the name of my blog before. I just assume the only people who read it is my dad, Ben V. and a couple of Jr. High kids. We all start busting up and Marko says, "now that's an awkawrd moment." I just had to laugh. Thanks for a good seminar and a good laugh today!
Had a great lunch with the folks over at Walnut Creek Pres. We are both doing ministry to 5th and 6th graders and often feel in the dark with this age group! It was great to hear that they are having similar issues that we are having, as well as having fun navigating and learning about this age group.
While in General Session 4 this morning, the Malibu Pres youth staff got word that their church had burned down in the fires this morning. We stopped and prayed for them. I know for myself, my heart went out to them, but it got me thinking, what would happen if our church burned to the ground? It would certainly solve our space issues! Obviously the "church" is not a building, but would our city care? Are we as the "church" impacting our community that they would rally around us? Or would they be doing a "happy Jesus dance" because their noisy neighbors (our building and the people who occupy it) would be gone?
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