Ahhh Youth!

This past spring Chad and I committed ourselves to getting involved with a church plant here in Edmonton. We weren't exactly sure what that meant as far as what our involvement would be but we felt it was what God wanted us to do and we were excited about it. We hosted a get-to-know you BBQ, I helped plan a church/community event, Chad helped build portable storage boxes and we have jumped in to help in other areas. One thing that was really on my heart was to help with the youth. It has been so very many years since I have worked with youth and I have missed it. I got together with the youth leader from the church and we had a talk about it all. She is a great girl. She didn't go to CLBC but she was involved in other camps for years and there is just something about "camp" people that connects us all in a way that we don't connect with others and that has happened with us. She has an amazing heart for youth and is so very good with them! 


So, we offered our home for the youth group to meet at and last night we had our first ever youth home group. It was great! There were 7 kids which was great for our first time. What a fantastic core group of kids! They were all so comfortable and talkative and telling stories and willing to pray and share prayer requests and answer questions. It was so good to hear the laughter and see the smiles and listen to the stories. So very good to be with youth again. 


I am so looking forward to what this year holds. So looking forward to learning from these kids and sharing my experiences and lessons learned with them. So looking forward to watching them grow and be stretched, knowing that I will likely be stretched as much if not more than they are. It will be a good year and I am excited to see our group grow in numbers, in maturity, in our walks with God and our hearts for the hurting. My prayer is that they will find our home to be a place of refuge. A place where we can rejoice together and cry together. A place where they feel free to be who they truly are and where we as leaders are transparent and open and real with them as well. 


Ahhh youth, how I have missed you!