Tired

Today's post will be relatively brief for a couple of reasons. One, I am lacking quite a bit of sleep, so if I sit here too long, I may drift off. We learned last night just how much energy that kids can get from energy drinks and caffeinated beverages. Even though lights out was at 11:00pm, there were still guys awake and talking/giggling/passing gas/throwing stuff at 1:00am. Needless to say, their youth pastor is a little grumpy this morning. It was fun waking them up, though! :-) The other reason is because I need to visit two groups today, Corn and Soybean. I have already done my shopping for the day, though, so that gives me a little more time in the afternoon.

Last night we attended a great church service at the Holy Trinity World Outreach Mission. It was just like La Croix, except completely different. What we attended was what they call their Wednesday night Bible study. The topic was parenting, and many of the students expressed that they wished their parents were there to hear it. :-) It was interesting to have members of the congregation raise their hands with questions or comments. Many of us wondered what Pastor Ron would do if we did that at church on Sunday morning. Now that could be fun! God's presence was very evident in that service, so we were glad to be a part. Tonight we are having a cookout at the Craft Brothers Warehouse. The Craft Brothers is a construction company that focuses on remodeling houses. One of their warehouses has a stage and seating set up for concerts/worship gatherings/whatever. I have encouraged our worship people to lead us in a time of worship. There is also a very cool prayer room that students can use while we are there.

Last night, we had our team break up into small groups again for church group time. I think this has been very good as it has allowed many students to process a little more. I would encourage parents to help their kids process even more when they get home about what they experienced and how it has affected them. But before we broke up, we asked a few questions in the large group, including, "Do you feel like you are making a difference?" It was neat to hear many of them respond that they did, but also to hear the honesty of a couple who said that they didn't feel like they were making much of a difference. I encouraged them that they might not see the difference that they make by the time they leave, or ever for that matter, but that they are making a difference in people's lives. It's not about what we get out of the experience, but what we give.

A couple of stories. I think they're all funny today...not that inspiring stuff isn't happening, but it's what I have to work with today:

• Nate Nall noticed at his work site that the sink in the bathroom made a sound when you turned it on. I noticed it, too. When he came out of the bathroom, he asked me if I heard the sound the sink made. I told him I did, and he went on to point out that if you turned it a little further, it made a minor chord. Who would notice that except Chris Nall's kid? He also noticed earlier in the day that the reason the alarm at the nursing home was so annoying was because the two notes were only a 1/4 tone apart from each other.
• Derek and his team have been doing such a good job tutoring, but apparently he had a bit of a brain block as he wrote equations on the board. He wrote, "1+1=2 2+2=3."
• Danny, who is a plumber by trade, was suggested by someone during our leader time to do some plumbing. He made two comments that put us all on the floor with laughter: "My name and poop go hand in hand," and "As long as people poop, I can eat." On a more inspiring note, he mentioned to me that he was going to come back down here by himself and on his own time to help a ministry with their plumbing to save them hundreds of dollars. What a great guy and a great add to our team!
• There has been a drought in the area, and there are watering bans in Birmingham. Some of our group got to talking with some ranchers that were lamenting the lack of water. They encouraged them by telling them that their youth pastor - that would be me - brings storms with him wherever he goes. (They didn't tell them that I usually bring tornadoes, too) And at one point, it looked like it was going to rain, and there was a loud thunderclap, and many of the students shouted, "Fitz!" It's good to be known for something, I guess.

My wife will be glad to know that I played Scrabble - our favorite game - with Anthony, Derek, and a gentleman at the nursing home yesterday. It started off well, but before long, nonsense words were being played left and right. But that was OK because we were all in on it, including the gentleman we played with. We all had a great time! While we did that, the other guys visited and the girls painted ladies' nails. They were styling when we were done with them! I also had the opportunity to tell a couple of the ladies about how my grandpa used to make jewelry for my grandma because one of the ladies had a bracelet that reminded me of the stuff he used to make. They all seemed very impressed that he did that just for fun and for her.

There will probably not be a posting tomorrow as we pack up and leave pretty early. I will try to wrap up the trip from Memphis or when we get home. We will also ask the students to write a brief testimony about the trip and will try to post them soon. Be looking for those in the near future. I am off for B.E.A.T. now, and then to Kids Club. Have a great day, and check out the pics. See you soon!

Halfway done

I can't believe that we are already past the halfway mark of the week. It has flown by! It has been a great week so far and I expect that to continue. Many of the students are tired, especially Taylor, who has been officially cut off from Monster drinks. He was bouncing off the walls yesterday afternoon when we got back from the ministry sites, so we made the call and had an intervention with him. Not really, but we did cut him off to preserve his young heart. :-)

I hung out with the Wheat Group yesterday for a very brief time. I ate lunch with them in the park, then went to their site. When we got there, we were told that we needed work gloves to pick up trash in a lot the organization owned, which we didn't have. So I headed to the Family Dollar to pick some up, except the store wasn't where I was told it was, so it took much longer than I intended it to take. By the time I got back, I was only able to work with them for a half-hour before I had to run to Wal-Mart for some supplies...and before it started to thunder, lightning, and rain. So they didn't work much longer either.

Last night was a treat as the Civil Rights Institute was opened for us for a little more than an hour. It was definitely not enough time, but it was eye-opening for all of us to see what went on in this country just a half-century ago. The museum is an excellent display of the injustices of segregation in the South and the steps that were taken to turn the tide. Earlier in the day, while having lunch in the park across the street from the museum, a gentleman from the area (he may have been homeless) gave us some of the history of that immediate area. Very enlightening! One of the most disturbing elements of the museum was a picture of two young black men being lynched, while a large crowd of white folk not only stood by, but posed and smiled and pointed at the bodies as they hung in the background. It was disgusting! And to see pictures of KKK members holding Bibles was a good wake-up call for the students. I challenged the students to think about what in our world today is the Church not dealing with that, in 50 years, we will look back on and say, "What were we thinking?!?" I personally think of the Darfur crisis in the Sudan where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed simply because of their race. May God open our eyes to injustice in the world around us, and increase our determination to do something about it.

Last night's Club had a La Croix feel to it as Anthony, Nate, and Lauren helped lead the worship time. Way to go!

Last night for our church group time we broke up into small groups for our discussion time. This worked well as many of the students that don't want to talk when there are 44 other people listening are more willing to amongst eight or ten. I heard some great reports from the SIMYs that God is really doing some working the hearts of our students. God is starting to blindside some of them. Praise God!

So who is YouthWorks? Well, here is a brief intro to our staff:

• Emily is our site director and is from Arab, Alabama. She has graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in family counseling and will be moving to Miami after the summer to work in a children's shelter. This is her 2nd year with YouthWorks.
• Jori is our urban staff, which means she is the contact for the ministry sites. She is an education major at Cedarville University
• Andy is our program staff, which means he lines up the special events and club time for the participants. He is a sophomore at the University of Arizona studying English, Creative Writing, and Mandarin Chinese. He hopes to be a long-term missionary. He also loves DDR.
  
• Aaron is in charge of Kids Club, one of the projects our students do. He lives in Tucson, Arizona and is a former youth director. He is a crazy good NCAA 07 player, too.

Now that you know our staff, here are few anecdotes from the past 24 hours or so, some funny, and some inspiring:

• During small group time, our Andy told his group that he was going to Korea for a year to teach English. Sydnei asked, "For a year?" Andy told her yes, to which she replied, "Tell them I said, 'Hi.'" I guess she wants all of Korea to know that she said hi. Hilarious!
• Also during small group, Kim asked the question, "Why did God bring you on this trip?" When it came time for Michael to answer, he said, "I think God brought me on this cruise..." I don't know what kind of cruises he's been on, but they must have been different than the ones I'm familiar with.
• Ken got pulled over by the police yesterday because he was lost, was driving about 3mph, and looked confused. At the time, he was driving another church's van, so he couldn't even tell the officer what church he was with. Now imagine a guy with a shaved head and tattoos in a church van that he can't identify. Sounded suspicious, I'm sure. But the officer let him off. Ken's response: He nearly turned the wrong way down a one-way street. Funny stuff!
• Even though Myles got mocked by old folks while calling Bingo, he feels like not only did he come here to serve, but he feels like God really brought him here to teach him something about himself. I'm not sure what God is teaching him exactly, but that's cool to hear.
• Curtis mentioned that he feels like we could be here to be an encouragement to the people that are already ministering here.
• Nate Nunnery feels like Jesus is starting to blindside him. (Look back a couple of days to see what that's about)
• When we debriefed the Civil Rights Institute, Kylie said that she is sick of sitting around and that she wants to do something to make a difference. That was so awesome to hear! I nearly cried...but I kept it together.
• Emily told all of the leaders last night that she was impressed by how polite and nice all of our students were. She also pointed out that one of the La Croix students took her plate up and cleaned it off for her so she wouldn't have to. Great job!

One change in the work assignments: the Soybean and Corn Groups have flip-flopped so that the Corn Group is now doing Kids Club and the Soybean Group is at B.E.A.T.

So what is a Happy Fun Bag, anyway? The first night of a YouthWorks trip, they have all of the participants make a Happy Fun Bag. These bags hang in the Club Room all week. There are slips of paper in the room, too. The idea is that students and leaders can write notes of encouragement to each other throughout the week. It is a highlight each day to check out who has written you a note each day. (I got four notes yesterday!)

I'm off to hang out with the Barley Group. Don't forget to check out our new pictures. I wasn't able to upload all of the ones I took since yesterday because the camera battery died. but there are still some new ones to view. Keep praying for us and for the people we are ministering to and with and that are ministering to us...

A full day in the books

We now have a full day of work in the books. All of our students had many good stories to report last night during church group time, which is our time to process together. Too many, in fact, so we will be breaking them up into their work crews tonight and probably tomorrow for processing time. Otherwise, many of the students don't get the chance to talk about their stuff. Plus, it's difficult to go real deep with 45 people, and we certainly don't want this to be a shallow experience for them. Last night, I encouraged them at the end to be looking for God and how He is at work. It's easy to get wrapped up in the task of serving and forget about what God is doing in the midst of it, and I don't want them to miss what God is doing.

I think the lack of sleep from the first night is catching up to some of the students. Many of the guys in our room were more than happy to accept earplugs from me last night before bed. While many of them lost sleep the first night by their own choice, they didn't want to lose any more the second night due to Wounded Bear Ken. Many of them reported sleeping much better. Surprise, surprise!

I made it to one site yesterday, but not the one I was intending to hit. As mentioned yesterday, one of the groups locked the key to their vehicle in the SUV. Fortunately, it was the only one we had an extra key for, so instead of dropping off the key and heading to the site I planned on going to, I just stayed and worked with them. It was the Rye Group at the Southern Environmental Center. We pulled lots of weeds and mint and cleaned up a landscaped area at Birmingham-Southern College. It's an intentional effort by this college to promote preservation of the environment. The students were taken on a tour of their facilities and learned about conservation of resources. And the tour included artwork made from garbage and the option to flush yourself down a toilet (see the pictures). It was educational and good outdoorsy work. I have a few scratches on my arm from pulling some sort of bamboo stuff. But that's better than Drew who took a dive and now has a nice gouge on his arm (don't worry, Nalls, it's not bad, but we'll keep an eye on it). At least he didn't break it for a third time. :-) This crew worked real hard. I was proud of them.

We had a great evening activity last night. We went to The Foundry, which is a rescue mission and recovery center for people coming out of drug- and alcohol-addiction. They currently have 185 residents participating in their 12- to 18-month program. You can seeall of the ministries of The Foundry by clicking here. They led a worship service for us that included music, several testimonies from residents, and a short message of encouragement. It was powerful to hear how God has rescued these people out of a life of addiction to everything from alcohol and crystal meth and given them something to live for. The students I spoke with were impacted by it. Tonight, we will be going to the Civil Rights Institute, which was a highlight the last time we were in B'Ham, and I expect it to be the same this time.

It has been rewarding to hear from the non-regular SIMYs - Danny, Ken, Kristy - about how impressed they are by our kids. Our students work hard and don't complain. The stuff we usually have to worry about is things like not going to bed and throwing candy in the vans. but when they get to the sites, they work hard and with good attitudes. Parents, thanks for making our job easy!

A few funny and/or inspiring stories from the week thus far:

• Shelly reported that her crew - the Soybean Group - created games (David and Morgan), sang and did skits (Sydney), did some fun crafts (Blake and Matt) and were good shepherds for the kids in Kids Club (Adrian, Mick, and Tyler). The kids there wanted to fix our students hair and climb on their backs, but most of all they wanted hugs and lots of love. David also told me that he learned how to two-step.
• The Barley Group had an interesting time as many of them had to remember how to add fractions with unlike denominators before tutoring others to do it, but it went well. At one point, Kasey was standing up in front of a mini-class of five students teaching them quadratic and linear equations and parabolas on the white board. "Great teacher!" says Gretchen.
• Blake Kidd apparently was working hard doing yard work yesterday and was asked if he has to do that much yard work at home. He said no, and that he hopes his parents don't find out how hard he can work. Sorry Blake... :-)
  
• Sydnei Lemmons reported to her group on Monday that she actually broke a sweat for the first time in her life. "Way to work hard for Jesus!" says Kristy.

Two changes since yesterday:

• The Rye Group is at Child Safe today. This is an organization that offers tutoring and other various activities to give students a safe place to be. They will be doing neighborhood clean-up and will be sitting in on a discussion about racism.
• The Wheat Group in the afternoon yesterday and today is going to the Old Firehouse Shelter, which is a homeless men's shelter. They are helping with anything the needs help. Yesterday, they snapped beans all afternoon.

That's all for now. Don't forget to check out our picture here. I think I'm going to go figure out who has my lunch and end up there. Thanks for your prayers...

We made it!

When we had to stop for potty breaks twice in the first half-hour, I thought we'd never get to Birmingham. I could just see me calling Emily, the site director, and telling her, "Sorry, but our people can't get their bladders and intestines synced up, so we're not going to be able to make it." But, despite the early setbacks, we made quite good time. We arrived in B'Ham at around 5:00pm, well within the time frame we needed to arrive. We unloaded quickly and then hung out for a while. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for one of the vehicles that now has van clean-up duty thanks to their desire to throw candy throughout the van they were riding in.

We are staying at Woodlawn UMC, an old UM Church. It's right across for a boarded-up Piggly-Wiggly, much to many students lament. The Pig was a popular junk-food stop each afternoon when we were here two years ago. Darn, less sugar for the students! What will we ever do?

Last night consisted of orientation for the leaders and the students, the main church leaders from each group - Gretchen and I for ours - breaking the team up into work groups (which is a lot easier when you have two students as opposed to 36!), Club (which is a mini-youth group) and church group time, during which we have time as a group to debrief. I asked the students, "Why did you come on this trip?" The most popular answers I heard were to serve God, to have fun, and to meet people. I asked them, "What if you don't have fun?" I was encouraged to hear so many students say that it didn't matter because they were still serving Jesus, and that's what counts. I then told them what I hoped would happen this week, and that is that they would all be blindsided by Jesus, that he would wreck their lives. It sounds harsh, but if they come away from this week realizing that the life of a Jesus-follower isn't about their happiness and contentment, that it's about serving the 'other' person, then I think that will be a very good thing.

Sleep was hard to come by last night as many of the guys had, shall we say, difficult times winding down. We'll put an end to that tonight. Not to mention the fact that Ken snores like a "wounded bear" (his words, not mine). So thank God for coffee even more today than usual! Currently, the students and SIMYs are at their work site. Here are the breakdowns and a brief description what they are doing:

Rye Group
Southern Environmental Center: Gardening with an organization housed at B'Ham Southern College whose purpose is to highlight and educate people on urban environmental issues. These gardens have provided hope and beauty to communities that have seen rough times.

• Wendy Blankenship - SIMY
• Danny Rees - SIMY
• Molly Powell
• Chelsea McDowell
• Matt Leimer
• Drew Nall
• Kylie Goodier
• Lauren Kalb

Soybean Group
Kids Club: The students will run a Kids Club each afternoon that includes skits, crafts, songs, Bible stories, and games. The theme for the week is "Be a Hero."

• Shelly Stone - SIMY
• Tyler Camp
• David Watts
• Adrian Gomes
• Mick Grace
• Sydney Ozbun
• Morgan Bean
• Blake Stone
• Matt Griffith
• and students from another church

Wheat Group
Restoration Ministries: The book I have doesn't have a description of the ministry, so I will try to update later.

• Kim Holman - SIMY
• Ken VanWinkle - SIMY
• Myles Edwards
• Nate Nunnery
• Curtis Mathson
• Michael Denmark
• Blake Ozbun
• Lexi Smith
• Julia Simmers
• Casey Mehner
• Taylor Quade
• and students from another church
  

Barley Group
Family Life Center: The goal of this organization is to provide supportive educational services for urban school-age children. The participants will be tutoring children.

• Gretchen Taylor - SIMY
• Anthony Watts
• Shelby Halter
• Nate Nall
• Kasey Rutherford
• Kara Goodier
• Derek Adams
• Ashley Curnell
• and students from another group

Corn Group
B.E.A.T. (Bethel-Ensley Action Task): They exist to provide low to moderate income houses for families in the Ensley neighborhood. Students will be painting primarily.

• Andy Stieff - SIMY
• Kristy Mehner - SIMY
• Meredith Grissom
• Cori Shockley
• Sydnei Lemmons
• Garrett Arnold
• Jacob Gentry
• Blake Kidd
• and students from another church

Some of the groups will stay at the same site all week; some change partway through the week; some change at lunchtime. I will try to fill you in later in the week on changes that are made. Also coming up in future posts:

• Meet your YouthWorks staff
• Inspiring stories
• Funny stories
• What the heck is a Happy Fun Bag, anyway?

Pray for our students and SIMYs as they serve. Now, I'm off to Wal-Mart to pick up supplies that people forgot - pillows, socks, etc. - and to take extra keys to one group that locked their keys in the van. Don't forget to check out the pictures on Flickr. I did something wrong so they loaded up into a different account than I told you about in the postcard you received on Sunday. They can be viewed here. I will try to fix things by tomorrow. Thanks, and be God's...

Leaving Soon...

Well, we are leaving for B'Ham in less than three days and I am nowhere near ready. What's new, right? Check back for updates from The 'Ham...