Communication: A Two-Way Street

The theme for Sunday, 9/24/06, was Communication. Before program, had picnic supper in outdoor chapel with MS youth, Christian Adventurers (and ~a billion mosquitos, if my count was anywhere near correct). Also heard pep talk from Barb Munch about CROP Walk (next Sunday). Once assembled in SH room, new advisors Laura Jones and Gair McCullough introduced themselves, and everyone else shared name, school, class, and one thing about themselves. Then discussed what goes into communication (talking, listening, topic, body language, tone, choice of words, relationship, etc.). Volunteers role-played 4 scenes where communication was not effective, and group pointed out problems and suggested fixes. Amazing THESPIANS among us! Also discussed how communication with God is also two-way street, but different from talking with other humans. Thanks to those who shared from the heart. Looking forward to more practice talking and listening with SH's in future!

Corn Maze!

Today we had a group of 13 kids and 4 advisors go to our local
corn maze. The fastest group made it through the maze in an
unbelievable 34 minutes! They really had some good intuition and
found the mailboxes quickly. As always, it was a fun activity and
good exercise. We got back to the church a little early, so some of
us played games and we all just had some nice "hang out and chill"
time. In this week's Pow's and Wow's, several of the kids said they
were having a rough time adjusting to their school schedules and
classes. We also lifted up in prayer a schoolmate who has been
diagnosed with bone cancer.

September 10th Theme Intro

We had another great turnout last night of 24 kids! We introduced our theme for the year, which is "IM God, (through prayer) because I'm not God (and can't make it without him). The "IM" stands for Instant Messaging...for those who might not be up on the internet terminology. Our focus, will be on building a stronger relationship with God through emphasis on spending more time in prayer and specifically in praying from the heart, not just at meal times and bed time. We first played a communications game called "Buddylist/Caveman", in which we had to figure out without talking to each other which of 3 different stickers the advisors had placed on our backs. We introduced the acronym F-A-C-T-S, which stands for Feelings-Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication, and defines the different kinds of prayers that we commonly use. We followed up our theme discussion with another game, called "Circle of Prayer/Human Ring Toss" in which the teams (determined from the first game) held a relay race in tossing hula-hoops over a praying/kneeling team member. We had a little extra free time at the end, so we went outside for another silly relay race, called "Banana Olympics". We closed the meeting outside with Pow's and Wow's in which several youth expressed sadness about the tragic death on Saturday of one of their classmates, and some also have family members who have cancer or are now in hospice care. We will all be keeping these families in our prayers this week.