My youth group was has been a huge part of my life and I would like to tell you about that journey. Where to start...there are so many things I could talk about. Well the kids are a good place to start, they are not just friends of mine, they are my brothers and sisters. We were not just a group of youth that meet and worship together and talk about God. We are a family, yes under Christ, but even more so just a family. You could ask Page or Becky, even Ruthie and Mary Piper, Amy Kate or Katie and Hannah that outside of youth group I still call them my little sisters. There are some of us that fight and others that start drama but in the long run, this youth group is still a close family at heart. Having all these kids my age who are so close to me has been a big help over the years. Being able to share anything you want with other kids is a huge thing. It helps to have someone else that is “on the same page” of the book we call life at any moment in time. It is really helpful to have these kids close to me that are “on the same page” not only in life, but also in Christ.
Other ways my youth group has helped me over the years is teaching me how my faith is mine and not just something I picked up along the way like another fact of life from being dragged to church. To think back on my faith is easy, it’s always been there. It was really easy to have a faith as a little kid; I was always at the church, my mom worked there. For most of my childhood, my mom was always volunteering for everything and when I was 3, she became the Director of Christian Education. We were pretty much at church 24/7. We even set off the alarm a couple different times on Saturday night while setting up for Sunday School.
The turning point, when I said my faith is not going to exist just because mom and dad were dragging me to church every Sunday, was around 8th grade. Before that during my 6th grade year our youth director, Chris Sarkowski, had left to move to Tennessee for family matters. Chris was not just my youth leader for three year but more like a friend. The faith I had as a little kid had kinda become mine.. by this time, but it had now become hard to care about youth group anymore. The youth group had gone downhill. Most of the youth had stopped going and or didn't care. I was one of a few that stuck with it. I mean there were times I didn't care and wasn’t going to go, but mom would drop me off and “make” me go. We would have sit around play games and stuff but there was always so much drama that it made it worse and didn't seem like a youth group. My faith in the youth group was mostly gone.
Then came 8th grade, that turning point I mentioned earlier. Sam had been hired as the new youth director. I started going to youth group again every week. Some things didn't change. We still played the same games but started having some more discussions. I began to feel like I was part of something important. I had a place to explore my faith. We learned what it was to have faith, not just to believe but to have faith in what we believed. Youth group was returning to a place where you felt God's presence.
There was one week Buck Edwards spoke to us. He had us ask ourselves “how we were Christians”. This question stuck in my head for weeks, I couldn't answer it. The fact that I didn't know how I was a Christian bothered me because I knew that's who I was. I started searching for this answer and I have found it in some crazy ways and even the simplest of ways. I remember one way I found it was through texting Sam at 6 o'clock in the morning when I was on the school bus and asking him how I was a Christian. We talked about it for a little bit, then the sun started to come up and that’s all we could talk about. It was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. You could just see God’s glory in the sky that morning. Sam helped me understand my faith is a part of me. It is who I am and he could see that. He sees me living my faith and can see it in everything I do.
Each summer the youth attend a senior high youth conference at Montreat College in North Carolina. Two summers ago when I was at Montreat, I heard a call to mission. I was almost knocked out of my chair! I had been sitting in small group...which Small Group is a time when you meet with a group of other youth from all over the country. You are not with youth from your back home church. These are new people you've just met at the conference. It was the third day of our small group so we had begun to get comfortable with each other. A group discussion had begun on the sermon topic of the night before. The fact that was brought up was that 620 children, not youth or adults, but just children would die of starvation the hour we were sitting in worship. At this point in the discussion I was pretty much zoning out. I had never been into discussing mission work in third world countries. While I was sitting there daydreaming, not really hearing anything being said in the room, all of a sudden I could very clearly hear the words “GO DO MISSION WORK”. I turned to the guy next to me and asked him what he had said but he hadn't said a word. I had been leaning back in my chair and this voice literally knocked me forward in my chair. The feeling was one I had never felt before. I was confused at first. I didn't know what it was. But by the time I got back to the house from small group, which was only about 10 mins, God had made it clear to me. I remember calling my mom to tell her what happened.
I had decided to take off two years before college and explore this calling. As with most ideas we have, God sometimes changes what we think we will do. I heard about Sam taking a group of youth to do mission work in Nicaragua. This was a perfect way to begin to explore this call and led me to go to Nicaragua with Sam last spring. The mission trips to Nicaragua support the work of Casa de Esperanza, which means House of Hope. Casa de Esperanza is a compound of houses that shelter women and little girls who have been rescued from brothels and who have chosen to live a Christ filled life. These women and girls were forced into prostitution at a young age, by the male members of their families, as their only way of making a living. As you would expect, these women and young girls have a deep fear of men. That trip was incredible, the glory and power I felt was almost unbearable. The realization I came back with was unbelievable. I had witnessed how strong Gods love can be. There was a girl named Jennifer who was afraid of males and wouldn't even go near them. We had only been there 3days when on the last day she laid a cross that she was given in my hand and told me to keep as a way to remember her. To think about how much God must have worked though us to show this girl that we were okay and how much He loved her is amazing. The way His love was shown that week was so off the wall but yet so true. I had found a feeling I had been longing for ever since the 6th grade. This trip showed me there are so many other ways to explore my calling to do mission work besides taking off 2 years.
Ever since I heard that first call I have challenged myself to listen to God in anyway He may be calling me. I have felt a call to youth ministry over this past year and I love what I have found. I feel that this call has been around since my 8th grade year because it has been since then that I've had a strong desire for God to be in my every day life even more than He was. I feel that this call to youth ministry is a perfect answer to how I will explore my call to mission. To think I will be able to show youth the feeling I felt in Nicaragua is incredible. I am excited at the chance to do mission but on a different scale like showing youth how God's love can impact their lives while they are impacting others. When Sam and us youth went to Nicaragua, we went to do mission work. While there yes – we did mission work but the women and girls of Casa de Esperanza did the true work of changing our lives. I think it would be fantastic to be able to show youth that feeling. The feeling that your life can be changed when you are doing mission work that you thought would be changing other people's lives but in reality those people end up changing your life. God works in crazy and off the wall ways...it sure has been a strange way He's helped me see my faith more clearly.
No comments:
Post a Comment