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Thursday, January 27, 2011

[WHATS LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?]



We are going to a local [YOUTH RALLY]: "What's Love Got To Do With It?" We are looking forward to hearing about what God has to say about love, dating and relationships. Should be interesting since God is the one who created us to love, and we are able to love because He loved us first!

I am so thankful that God protected me during high school and college, because I definitely had the opportunities to be stupid or for stupid things to happen especially when it comes to guys. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted in a man and it took an even longer time for me to figure out that what God created in a man for me is [MOST] important.

Now that I have married the one that God created just for me I know how [AWESOME] God's plans are and how awesome things can be when I trust in Him.


I'll let you know what we learn about God and love at our up coming youth rally.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

[LOCK IN] Joy Baptist Church

My husband and I are the teen leaders for a small Baptist church in Westland, Michigan. Our usually has about 100-150 on Sunday mornings. Westland is about 20 minutes west of Detroit. It is a middle class area with a lot of blue collar families.

Currently in our HS (high school) group we have about 5 "kids" that come regularly. In our MS (middle school) group we have about 10 "kids" that come regularly. We usually only work with the HS-er's but sometimes do "combo" nights. A lot of our big events are both groups together.


[Joy Baptist]


Recently we had a [LOCK-IN] or an "all nighter." We were planning on about 20-25 kids since we usually have about 20 on Sunday nights + a few friends. We ended up with 40 kids! and 5 adults. AWESOME! The event started at 9pm and went until 8am the next day. We had a lot of fun.

Below is the flyer we made using [PICNIK]. I like to think I'm a pro... but I'm not really... Teens also had to have a signed permission slip to attend the event.



[ACTIVITIES]
more are listed on the flyer, i'm just highlighting a few.

We made [T-SHIRTS], which I thought were a lot of fun. We bought t-shirts from Joann Craft Store and Michael's using store sale promos, cheap black spray paint.

Rented a [BOUNCER] from Time To Play
The kids LOVED it. It was rented for $200 for 8 hours and well worth the money. The only issue was the tiny child size opening, but we made it work!

A lot of the night was spent in the gym (with the bouncer set up) playing [BASKETBALL].

[MINUTE TO WIN IT] We looked for stuff around our apartment and church, bought some things from Dollar Tree and improvised a lot. We had 2 people compete against each other for each game. The winner chose from the [1st PLACE] bucket and the looser chose from the [2nd PLACE] bucket. 1st place prizes were movie size candies from Kroger and Dollar Tree and some other $1 items. 2nd place prizes were fun size candies and 5 piece packs of gum. [TEENS LOVE GUM]

[FOOD]
I was super panicked about not having enough food- but I actually had to take some BACK! YES- KROGER DOES RETURNS!!! AWESOME.

We bought tortilla chips from Kroger- $1 a bag and cheese from GFS to make [NACHOS]

Bought candy and chips and stuffs from Kroger, all Kroger brand, kids didn't even know!

Served [ICE CREAM] after the Bible lesson... was a little disorganized... but we made it work.

Ordered 10 pizza's from [HUNGRY HOWIES] the guy thought we were pranking him. We had a 25% off coupon from our $5 "damaged" Entertainment Coupon Book.

We had more than enough food, because as the night went on people were eating less and less.

[IMPROVEMENTS] for our next Lock-In
Scavenger hunt
More structure (for younger teens. they did a lot of wondering)
More, More, More- it would be better to be over prepared... at some points the night dragged a little bit.

Overall it was fun and hopefully we can do another one soon[ish]

[Re-do] Starting my blog again

Well, here is try number two. After thinking of a cute name and laying out my blog my summer went pretty quickly. I spent the months leading up to my wedding at the poolside and with two action packed kids. I spent a lot of time getting ready for my wedding and trying to find a job after I had been laid off.

[2011 UPDATES]

[JOB] Currently I worked for a charter school in Taylor. I am a parapro (a kind of teacher assistant)

[LIFE] I have been HAPPILY married for about 4 months now. It has it ups and downs, but we couldn't be happier.

[CHURCH] My husband and I are working with the high school teens at church now and trying to figure out how to get that all under control and organize and EXCITING for the "kids."


I'm not sure what the goal or audience of my blog is yet. I'll probably just be posting updates about things we do with our teens at church and how we are getting our lives started as newlyweds!