Monday, December 1, 2008

2 blogs in one day?

Okay, so after my bible study tonight I had to blog and tell you all about the amazing kids that I'm privileged to work with. 

I absolutely love my Monday night group. They're such a joy to work with and they always start my week off on a good note.

So tonight things started off normally I had my younger group from 7-8:30 and there were alone four kids (Sam, Matthew, Graeme pronounced Graham, and Hannah) even though there isn't very many of them they are so much fun and so clever for being so young. In case you were wondering they're Year 8-10 ages about 13-15. The theme for tonight was more about reflecting I guess you could say. We sat in silence for a few minutes and located our favorite Bible verse or just a random verse that they had found. Catherine (my minister) went around the room asking the kids what their favorite verse was and why and it was very interesting to see what they said. Then they were asked to sit in silence for a second time and Catherine asked them if they were getting a picture in their had that could go with their verse. You might think that this was over their heads, but it wasn't at all. Some kids grasped the concept better than others but they all did brilliantly. At eight Matthew and Graeme left for Scouts and then it was just Sam, Hannah, Catherine, and myself. We just talked among ourselves and then Catherine asked them how we could get more people to attend youth group. They blew me away by coming up with serious answers and you could tell they really wanted the group to grow. So, needless the say by the end of their time I was immensely proud of them.

My second group is absolutely fabulous and I love them all to pieces. This group is much larger and their ages 15-18. I'm going to go through all of their names so I can refer to them later and yeah. We have Oli, Andrew C, Catherine T (Year 11 Catherine not the minister), David, James, Hannah, Andrew H, Lucy, Becci, Jonathan L, and Jonathan S. I work with all of them except for a few of them in school so I've formed pretty solid relationships with the majority of them. I love how close knit they are, it reminds me of my relationship with the my year group at church. This group is unique though because there is an age range but they don't seem to care at all, I love that. Anyways, we did something a little similar with my older group but it was quite more mature. We sat Lucy in what Catherine called our "Chair of Prayer" she chose Lucy because she always seems so stressed and she just wanted to make restore some peace to her. Words don't even begin to describe what an amazing experience this was for me. Catherine was asking the group for scripture that would apply to Lucy, or words, and pictures. I think my area of expertise is in scripture and words and I found Proverbs 3:5-6 and it applied to Lucy beautifully. Oli, Andrew H, and Catherine T also found scripture that really seemed to hit home with Lucy. We did that for awhile and then Catherine wanted them to focus on pictures for Lucy. Oh my gosh, my girls did amazing. Becci who is normally a wallflower and doesn't speak much did wonderful. Side note, I absolutely adore Becci Smith she is such a neat girl and we're already getting close but I know our relationship is going to keep growing this year. She actually reminds me a lot of my best friend Taylor Elledge, which is great....haha she's my British Taylor! Back to my story, Becci had not one but TWO pictures for Lucy and they were dead on and I was just amazed. The night ended on one of Becci's pictures.

Needless to say I have one of the coolest jobs ever with some of the greatest kids in England. I mean I get to work with them on a daily basis and build relationships and share the love of Jesus! I mean really what could be better than that?

-Kelsey

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