The Way

Saturday marked the start of our new youth group which the kids decided to call "The Way." It is a monthly group for 10-13 year olds to supplement The Book Club. Practically we don't have the resources to run it any more frequently than monthly - would anyone like to consider moving here to help? LOL!

When we first talked about doing this there were about ten or twelve kids who were interested, but when the invites went out nobody was responding. We prayed for the Lord to send the kids and WOW! did he ever respond! As of Friday afternoon we had one boy who had confirmed he would be coming, along with Andrew and Nicholas. There were three who also wanted to come but couldn't this time. At The Book Club that night three girls confirmed they would be there. Six sounded like a good number to start with.

Saturday morning that total went up to nine confirmed altogether, along with a local teen who volunteered to come and help. God blessed us even more with three more kids who came with friends. This quickly became larger than we had even hoped! God is so good!!! Some of these kids are new to Christian groups. There must be a reason he is putting them in our path. It is so much easier for kids to hear the message and feel comfortable asking questions in a small group.

The kids made suggestions for activities they'd like to do (movie night, bowling, skating, swimming, sleepover at camp, international foods night) and then we got started with the rest of our planned evening. They were here from 4:00pm to 7:00pm and had a great time.

They had fun doing all the prep work for the pizzas and veggie tray - they did all the washing and cutting of vegetables, spread out the dough and made individual pizzas, some of them never having done this before. Our kitchen had more kids in it than ever before and Adrian was close to panic-mode a few times! lol! He's not a 'large group of people' type of person and laughingly told me to stop praying for more kids to show up. I think he was only half-joking.

We talked about what Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Sometimes things pile up and we feel we have so much to do and not enough time to do it in...and God is left for last. The kids were challenged to get to know God better and to call on him for help when they are feeling under a lot of pressure - he can make our burdens lighter! To reinforce this idea, each child was given a circle of paper with this on it: TUIT. It is a "round TUIT" to remind them that getting to know God isn't something you should just say you'll get around to it someday. Now that they have a "round TUIT" they have no excuse!

We played a game until parents came to pick them up and there was much laughing and silliness, which was really lovely to hear.

For next month we are looking at starting to get to know the books of the Bible and will be providing Bibles to those who do not have one.

Please pray that God reaches this group of kids and that they will want to return next month.

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6