Be God's Clay, Don't be the worlds play-doh
First thing is first, my awesome quote for my title came from the lovely girls of First Baptist Church Graceville.
Now on to the rest of the entry...
This past weekend I went to Graceville, FL to be the girl's leader for disciple now. I did this with Britt's youth group from, of course, FBC Graceville. The weekend theme was Eikon: Discovering the Image Intended. The study was pretty good but was a little elementary for this group of girls. See, in Graceville there is the Baptist College of Florida and many of the girls fathers are professors at the college so all of these families are amazingly good Christian families. Honestly, many of these girls were probably on a higher spiritual level than I am and they were all between the ages of 13-17. So, therefore we ended up only doing 3 out of 5 sessions and then improvised the last session.
Friday me and my mom left Montgomery around 3 and headed towards Graceville. We got there about 5:15 and stopped by Britt and Heather's house so I could hop in the car with Heather and head to the church to meet the girls. We got to the church around 5:30 and helped Britt get the food ready. The youth started showing up around 6. I ended up having ten girls: Alex, Liza, Laira, Lindsey, Alianne, Lauren, Kayla, Jessica, Kara, and Courtney. I spent a little bit of time with the girls getting to know their names and a little bit about them. We ate dinner and then we played a bunch of crazy games that the youth minister of Cypress Baptist, Andy, had come up with. After all the fun games we all dismissed and went to our separate houses. The girls stayed at the Cox's house. Mr. Buford Cox (or as Caleb calls him "Hufford") is the music minister at the church. When we arrived at the house the girls settled in and then we had our first two sessions. I was truly amazed at how much these girls were ready to discuss and threw out a lot of good examples and stuff like that. So, the first two sessions went really well and I was very excited that I was able to bond with all of the girls so quickly. We all managed to make it to bed by 12:45.
Saturday morning we all had to get up at 7:15 for breakfast. We then went to the church at 8 to help with the Angel Food Ministry. We all helped unload a food of tons of food and sorted it and then gave it to people that came. It was alot of fun. We were there for 2 1/2 hours. We then headed back to the homes for another session and lunch. We then went *back* to the church at 1 to spend *3* hours painting the youth room. They decided to go with a coffee shop theme and painted it turquoise, mocha, and burgandy. We didnt get it finished but we did get the whole first coat on. But, even with just the one coat on it still looked really good. At 4 we all went back to the houses to get ready for the evening worship service at Cypress Baptist. We left for Cypress, which is about 45 minutes away, at 5:15 and were there by 6 for dinner and the service. We all had to prepare skits to perform before the service started so we all did those. They were all really cute.
Then the service started. It was truly amazing. There were only about 30 people there because there were just these two small churches worshipping together. But, they brought in a musician Louis and his girlfriend Ann. They both are very talented singers/songwriters. They started off by singing a couple of their songs. Then we sang 3 songs that everyone knew. Then Louis and Ann sang some more songs they wrote. Louis wrote an awesome song about how the world has been pretty much put God on the backburner. Then they sang a song that they had written together called "Unconditional Surrender". This song was amazing. It really touched me and I know it touched a lot of other people as well. It was talking about how until we give *every* aspect of our lives over to God we will not be truly happy. He then closed with a song that he wrote for Ann which was sooo sweet entitled "Like Jesus Loves His Bride".
After the service we all stopped at McDonalds on the way back to Graceville to get something to eat. We then finally made it back to the houses around 9:30 or so. Well, me and the girls had all decided that these lessons were a little elementary for them so we decided to just throw out the last two sessions and just have a discussion time. So, we spent 2 1/2 hours discussing different things that were on the girls minds. We then made prayer journals. We all got in to bed around 12:30.
Sunday morning we all got up and got all of our things together and headed to the church for Sunday School. We spent the Sunday School time having discussion about what we learned over the weekend and they also discussed how to improve their worship time and other things like that. We then went to worship. Then after worship me, Heather, Britt, Caleb, and mom went to Zack's for lunch. Zack's is a restaurant in Slocomb which is about 15 min. away from Graceville. It was really good. But, after lunch me and mom made our way home and we made back around 4:30.
But, I'm *really* glad I was able to have this experience. I hope I taught the girls as much as they taught me. I honestly see each and every one of them as a good friend now. I definately hope to go back soon to visit. And I believe that I am going to be a chaperone on World Changers with them this summer. Yay! I am really excited about all of this. God is really opening up doors.
So, I have a question for everyone. Anyone have any suggestions for any good devotional books or just good Christian books kinda like the Eric and Leslie Ludy book? Lemme know if you have any!
Now on to the rest of the entry...
This past weekend I went to Graceville, FL to be the girl's leader for disciple now. I did this with Britt's youth group from, of course, FBC Graceville. The weekend theme was Eikon: Discovering the Image Intended. The study was pretty good but was a little elementary for this group of girls. See, in Graceville there is the Baptist College of Florida and many of the girls fathers are professors at the college so all of these families are amazingly good Christian families. Honestly, many of these girls were probably on a higher spiritual level than I am and they were all between the ages of 13-17. So, therefore we ended up only doing 3 out of 5 sessions and then improvised the last session.
Friday me and my mom left Montgomery around 3 and headed towards Graceville. We got there about 5:15 and stopped by Britt and Heather's house so I could hop in the car with Heather and head to the church to meet the girls. We got to the church around 5:30 and helped Britt get the food ready. The youth started showing up around 6. I ended up having ten girls: Alex, Liza, Laira, Lindsey, Alianne, Lauren, Kayla, Jessica, Kara, and Courtney. I spent a little bit of time with the girls getting to know their names and a little bit about them. We ate dinner and then we played a bunch of crazy games that the youth minister of Cypress Baptist, Andy, had come up with. After all the fun games we all dismissed and went to our separate houses. The girls stayed at the Cox's house. Mr. Buford Cox (or as Caleb calls him "Hufford") is the music minister at the church. When we arrived at the house the girls settled in and then we had our first two sessions. I was truly amazed at how much these girls were ready to discuss and threw out a lot of good examples and stuff like that. So, the first two sessions went really well and I was very excited that I was able to bond with all of the girls so quickly. We all managed to make it to bed by 12:45.
Saturday morning we all had to get up at 7:15 for breakfast. We then went to the church at 8 to help with the Angel Food Ministry. We all helped unload a food of tons of food and sorted it and then gave it to people that came. It was alot of fun. We were there for 2 1/2 hours. We then headed back to the homes for another session and lunch. We then went *back* to the church at 1 to spend *3* hours painting the youth room. They decided to go with a coffee shop theme and painted it turquoise, mocha, and burgandy. We didnt get it finished but we did get the whole first coat on. But, even with just the one coat on it still looked really good. At 4 we all went back to the houses to get ready for the evening worship service at Cypress Baptist. We left for Cypress, which is about 45 minutes away, at 5:15 and were there by 6 for dinner and the service. We all had to prepare skits to perform before the service started so we all did those. They were all really cute.
Then the service started. It was truly amazing. There were only about 30 people there because there were just these two small churches worshipping together. But, they brought in a musician Louis and his girlfriend Ann. They both are very talented singers/songwriters. They started off by singing a couple of their songs. Then we sang 3 songs that everyone knew. Then Louis and Ann sang some more songs they wrote. Louis wrote an awesome song about how the world has been pretty much put God on the backburner. Then they sang a song that they had written together called "Unconditional Surrender". This song was amazing. It really touched me and I know it touched a lot of other people as well. It was talking about how until we give *every* aspect of our lives over to God we will not be truly happy. He then closed with a song that he wrote for Ann which was sooo sweet entitled "Like Jesus Loves His Bride".
After the service we all stopped at McDonalds on the way back to Graceville to get something to eat. We then finally made it back to the houses around 9:30 or so. Well, me and the girls had all decided that these lessons were a little elementary for them so we decided to just throw out the last two sessions and just have a discussion time. So, we spent 2 1/2 hours discussing different things that were on the girls minds. We then made prayer journals. We all got in to bed around 12:30.
Sunday morning we all got up and got all of our things together and headed to the church for Sunday School. We spent the Sunday School time having discussion about what we learned over the weekend and they also discussed how to improve their worship time and other things like that. We then went to worship. Then after worship me, Heather, Britt, Caleb, and mom went to Zack's for lunch. Zack's is a restaurant in Slocomb which is about 15 min. away from Graceville. It was really good. But, after lunch me and mom made our way home and we made back around 4:30.
But, I'm *really* glad I was able to have this experience. I hope I taught the girls as much as they taught me. I honestly see each and every one of them as a good friend now. I definately hope to go back soon to visit. And I believe that I am going to be a chaperone on World Changers with them this summer. Yay! I am really excited about all of this. God is really opening up doors.
So, I have a question for everyone. Anyone have any suggestions for any good devotional books or just good Christian books kinda like the Eric and Leslie Ludy book? Lemme know if you have any!