Dress Rehearsal

The flooding back home has definitely not reached us here. The temperatures have been SCORCHING! This past week was spent in Monessen, Pennsylvania at another YouthWorks! site at what is called early bird. 4 different staff groups come to one site to practice the programming together. The week was spent hanging out with youth while they were doing service and participating in some awesome evening activities. Even though the mornings were early and the days were jammed packed, it was an awesome week! I am lucky to have the opportunity to be able to interact with the adults who serve as leaders of the trip. They are some amazing people who give up a week of their summer to spend long hours with teenagers. For some of them, they are youth pastors or youth group leaders, but others were asked at the last minute to come because they needed an extra adult. One of the adult leaders was saying that he really liked working with his hands and had a hard time being at kids club because he had to take a back seat role. But he then said that he realized it wasn’t about him at all, but about the youth and about how God was working through them. Pretty great perspective if you ask me! Now we’re back in Steubenville for one more week of prep before a group of about 50 people arrive!

The Home of Dean Martin

For 8 weeks I am going to be calling the little library on the 3rd floor of 1st Westminster Presbyterian Church my home. The church is huge and the first night was definitely a little bit scary, but as the days have gone on we've gotten used to it. This week was spent getting aclimated to Steubenville and starting to set up the site. In two weeks groups of about 60 youth will be coming and staying in the church for a week and there are tons of things we have to do to get ready for them. When we arrived we had to get all of our equipment out of storage in another church and move it to the church we are at now. I am definitely all about "girl power", but 4 girls moving lots of heavy equipment is not the most enjoyable task. But the fire department next store was so helpful so we made them cookies! (talk about stereotypical gender roles!)
The church and community have been so welcoming. Within the first two days we probably got 4 or 5 offers from people who wanted to take us out to dinner and they didn't even know us! Last year the church did not have a pastor and probably only had about 20 members, but a new pastor came this year and has really invigorated the church. They are now up to about 70 members and very excited about changes that will be made.

The community here is really unique. It was apparently a booming town some time ago when there were still cool mines, but when they closed a lot of people left. The downtown area where we are staying has a lot of empty store fronts and looks pretty run down, but there is a nice new amphitheater about two blocks away. about 5 miles away is a shopping mall and movie theater and some nicer homes. In such a short distance its like night and day. In our surrounding area there are a lot of kids who have nothing to do. I don't think the community runs much of a summer rec program and there is no YMCA or Boys and Girls Club. This summer we run a camp for kids so its great that they will have an opportunity to be part of something structured.

This morning I had to fax about 20 documents and spent about 2 hours attempting to do this. I checked out a laptop for the summer to have internet, but am the only person in this building who cannot pick up their wireless. So I'm thinking God might be trying to tell me something about me and technology, but I haven't quite figured that out yet :) So pl ease pray that technology cooperates with me!

Oh yeah...Steubenville is the home of Dean Martin and they have a Dean martin festival in a copule of weeks!

Calm Before the Storm

Normally I wouldn't set up a blog because I'm not sure about this whole concept of it being focused on just me and the things I'm doing, but I feel that it will be the best way to keep people updated on my summer if they want to be :)
I always fumble over my words when people ask me what I'm doing this summer because its kind of hard to explain. Myself and three other people will be working as staffers for 7 weeks of programming in Steubenville, Ohio. Each Sunday church groups of about 60 junior high and high school students and 10 adult leaders will make their way from different parts of the country to the church we are staying at in Steubenville. Throughout the week, the youth and adults will go out into the community and do service, ranging from painting projects on houses, to planning a camp for kids in the community. When they get back at around 4, we all make a large dinner, do different events in the community and a club time that consists of games, worship and really growing in faith and learning more about Jesus. Lights out at 11pm and it starts all over again at 6:45am the next morning :) The groups leave Friday morning, the staff does some inventory, goes grocery shopping, etc. and has some rest time until Sunday afternoon.

I'm really excited for what the summer holds and the challenges that will come, but also pretty nervous and apprehensive about all of the unknowns. Please keep me in your prayers that I will be able to be confident, yet humbled and have a safe summer.

Just because I'm working like 80 hours a week does not mean that I will be too busy to talk or email. So keep me updated!