Last Sunday

Today was my last Sunday at Pleasant Grove.  It was another tear-jerker.  All of my Kaysiks kids had made cards for me as a farewell, and had taken up money to support Jenn and I as we raise funds to go full-time with That Youth Thing.  I got an envelope that was literally filled with money from little kid’s piggy banks.  Wow.

Wow is about all I can think to say.  The heart of a child has got to be the coolest thing in the world.  It is so pure; so innocent; so loving.  I mean these kids gave us their own money!  It didn’t come from moms and dads.  No, it was little wrinkled bills from piggy banks and glass jars, and those bills were better than any check any one has ever written.

Needless to say we cried all morning.  I read all of their cards as soon as we got home from church (fighting back more tears).  I will miss those kids tremendously, but I sure am looking forward to them being essential parts of 704’s ministry in the coming years.  I can see so many of these kids as teenagers, serving their peers and being pumped about Jesus!  No matter how sad I am about leaving these kids, THAT gets me excited!

shoe-boxes

 

We had an awesome Wednesday at Pleasant Grove!  Our children’s ministry packed up 65 shoe-boxes for Operation Christmas Child!  Jennifer and I and some other parents went and did all of the shopping this past weekend.  We laid it all out by gender and age group tonight for the kids to fill up their boxes.  Yes, it was a madhouse, with kids running around grabbing all kinds of stuff for their boxes!  BUT, how cool is it to have OUR kids involved in serving OTHER kids all around the world! 

Service is one of my biggest goals with the youth and children:  teaching them to put others first and to live a life of service.  Jesus ALWAYS put others first, even to the extent of death.  We as Christians should be prepared to do the same for our neighbor or some homeless guy in Bolivia; our best friend or our worst enemy. 

We know God is going to bless our efforts tonight and give 65 children a stinkin awesome Christmas!

Wild West II

As I said in the earlier post, we raised $1050 from the basket raffle.  Here is a breakdown of what the kids will be doing with it:

1. packing and shipping 50 shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, to be sent around the world to needy children.
2. purchasing 5 ducks for a hungry family overseas who can use their eggs to feed their family, and extra eggs and hatchlings to sale for extra income.
3. purchasing water tablets to purify badly contaminated water in Kenya.  these tablets will provide safe drinking water for up to 250 children for a year!
4. purchasing 2 soccer balls for children in Africa who have nothing and could use some fun in their lives as a break from harsh and deadly reality.  we are sending money for soccer balls, but they are receiving treasures.

Numbers 2, 3, and 4 are made possible through World Vision.  They have a gift catalog with some awesome ways to change people’s lives around the world this Christmas.  If you would like more information about some of these opporunities, you can see my catalog or to the gift catalog site.

Also, if you purchase one of these gifts, like say, 10 fruit trees to a community in El Salvador for $60, you can give in honor or memory of someone else, which makes a really awesome Christmas gift.  The people at World Vision send out a card with the details of the gift to the person it is in honor of.  Last Christmas, in honor of Jennifer, I gave $25 to help train a young girl in Asia in a vocational trade that would help her provide a job for herself, and keep her from resorting to begging on the street or selling sex just to survive, a major and heart-breaking epidemic around the world.  Jennifer says it was her favorite gift.

I encourage you to check out their gift catalog.  You might just find a cool way you can give hope to an individual, family, or entire community this Christmas!

Wild West

Yesterday was awesome!  We had our Wild West Fall Fest (I wish I could think of a better name than Fall Festival or Fall Celebration…) for the kids and had a ton of people come out!  I got to meet 40 guests to our church and hang out with loads of kids!

I am paying today for eating so much chili, but all-in-all the food was wonderful!  A big thanks to everyone who cooked, ran games, cleaned up and showed up!  Everything went great!

Also, an enormous thanks to everyone who helped make all of the baskets for the raffle.  We raised $1,050 to spend on filling up shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.  We are hoping to put together about 60 boxes for kids all around the world!  This will be another project for the kids on November 7th.  Thanks for buying tickets everybody!

Home sweet home

Well, we are back.  Its nice to be home, although beach sweet beach was stinkin awesome.  Jennifer and I had an amazing time down in Myrtle and Wilmington.  Its time to get back to work though, so here are some things coming up in the life of Pleasant Grove that I am super pumped about:

• Giving the youth room and children’s rooms on the floor with my office a serious face-lift.  We are going to make this entire floor incredible, because our students deserve excellence and the very best!  They are the church of tomorrow AND today!
• Our Fall Festival this October for the kids is going to be the biggest and best ever, with a sweet Wild West theme!
• There will be a meeting on Sunday, August 19th, for anybody interested in working with teens in our student ministry, as we begin to install adult leaders and small groups. 
• We kick off our AMPED meetings on the 26th!
• We have a brand new CD library for the students to check out.  It is time we started responding as Christians to probably the most influential thing in the world: music.  The CD library is all about giving them options of Christian music they might not hear on 91.9
• We are working on some new curriculum for KAYSIKS and overall revamping Wednesday nights for the children!

 We’re pumped about this Fall and our student ministries, and excited to see how God moves in their lives! 

Good Friday pt.1

Ok, so maybe not that Good Friday, but yesterday’s Friday was indeed good (and beyond).  SOAKED 2007 was awesome!  The water slide worked perfectly and was a blast to go down…I mean…it looked like a blast…it isn’t like I slid down or anything…or, whatever…

We had a slip-n-slide made out of a huge roll of plastic and a bottle of Joy dish detergent.  We also had several pools and water balloons, and way too many hot dogs!  A big thanks to all my faithful parents for helping to make this day great!  We had tons of kids and even some visitors!

Here’s to my really sore body (I feel like I got beat up by a gang after yesterday) and here’s to SOAKED 2008!

SOAKED & TYT!!!

I am super excited about Friday!  SOAKED is going on from 2:00-5:00 pm at the church.  It is a huge water day for our pre-schoolers through 6th graders.  We have tons of water games, toys, and awesome things to do!  We are going to be SOAKED from start to finish!  Plus, today I bought this…

Look how much stinkin fun those kids are having!  Just imagine, those kids could be YOUR kids Friday!  All you have to do is bring them!  I hope tons of parents will stick around and play too!  We are going to wear ourselves out for hours and then eat hot dogs and popsicles.  Sounds like an all american day to me! 

I also got this sweet little pool for the little bitty kids.  It is too cute.  It makes me want to have a 2 year old.  (I’ll start with a newborn though…)  It has this mini slide, an inflatable palm tree that sprinkles water, and a double decker pool, all for only $20!  As much as I hate going to Wal-Mart, it always gives me the hook-up!  Anyways, we have tons going on for the kids Friday and I hope you will all come out!  I encourage all my parents and kids to invite a friend or 2.  We can never have too many!

 

 

That night, @ 8:00 the youth will be having a That Youth Thing hosted worship evening held in our sanctuary.  It will be a fresh, creative and fulfilling time of worship for our students.  It won’t run very long (we might not even hit 9:00 pm).  It will be a very intimate time with the God of the universe!  I hope to see all of my students there as we sponsor this evening!