upcoming

We have a couple of big youth events coming up this summer, and I'm getting really excited about it! The first one is coming up really soon in early July, and it will be a missions trip. The second big event will be summer camp in late August.

Because Eric and I work at the same place, we can't take off time together, so I'm going on the missions trip and he's heading up the camp. We've asked one of the young adults to help chaperone with him. She'll be great!

For the missions trip, we're going to be traveling all over! We'll be at a conference in Sacramento, then we'll join up with Bridgetown Ministries in Portland for an event, then we'll wrap up the trip in Yakima. It's going to be exhausting, but I'm excited too. I just hope we can get more kids signed up! :)

Summer camp is always a fun event, and the timing for this one makes it right before school starts back up, which we're hoping will get our teens pumped up and ready to start spiritual wildfires at their schools. Also, we hope that we will be able to have non-Christian students attend and hear about God. So many hopes for this summer!

Together, these events will cost about $500. If you are reading this blog and would like to bless the youth of Rainier Valley, consider helping financially. We can always add to the scholarship fund!

If you do want to contribute, please send a check (w/ youth scholarship fun in the memo line) to:

Trinity Life Center
4402 S. Graham Street
Seattle, WA 98118

Thank you!

Shtuff

Life has been crazy busy for us and those around us lately. Last week, Eric and I both shared our testimonies at TYM, and the youth attending were very receptive to what we had to say as well as being grateful that we showed them our trust in sharing some painful experiences from our pasts. God is good, and I praise him for using what the devil meant for evil to bring glory back to God. He is awesome.

Friday night, we hosted a board game night at the church for the youth, and the first wrench in our plans was the wedding that was going to happen the next day which they were already setting up for that night. We had to make some adjustments to our plans and hosted downstairs, and it was incredible how many kids showed up. I think we had around 20-25 teens show up, which is a lot for our little church, and it was a great night! We also had a couple of younger neighbor kids come in, and even though they were a lot younger than the target audience, we were hard pissed to kick them out.

Several of the teens that came don't attend church and/or believe I'm other faiths, so it was great to see them join our community even for a little while.

There have been two recent births, one from church, one from work, and both deliveries went well and babies and mothers are healthy.

My folks are sharing at TYM tomorrow about missions, and one of our girls who recently returned from a trip to Guatemala will also share about her experience. Our co-youth pastors are currently in Africa on a missions trip, so we continue to keep them in our prayers. They started in Uganda and are now in the second half of their trip in Ethiopia.

This Saturday, my mom is graduating with her MA in Missional Leadership, so that entire day is going to be pretty crazy busy, but my grandma is coming up, so that is very exciting! She had brain surgery last fall, and her recovery was slow and discouraging, so this is great news that she can still travel and is well enough now to be able to do so!

As you can see, lots going on!

for the love of God

Today, one of our "yutes" performed at Fine Arts Festival. Eric and I brought a host of other yutes up to cheer him on during his performance, and we continued on through the "celebration service" where winners were announced and the "meritorial award" winners performed their gigs on site.

It was pretty cool--I'd never been involved growing up since I lived in Africa--and even though our guy didn't place this year, I really hope we can push this to our group for next year. Best part of today, besides hearing our guy rock his performance (he SHOULD have placed!!!) was watching how he took not placing and going on to nationals. He at least didn't show his disappointment, and he took it like a champ. Good news: he's a sophomore this year, so he has two more years, and a whole lot of time to polish his work and style. Also, he's only been writing since about November of 2011--and he's amazing already!

A lot of the students that come to our youth group are wicked talented. We have dancers and singers and musicians and artists and one of the gals placed second last year in vocal talent, was invited to nationals, and didn't enter this year. (WHAT?!) That said, my creative juices started flowing, and I really want to push these guys and gals to be confident in their talents, to show their talents to the world, and to use them to glorify God.