Sharing God's Faithfulness With You This Thanksgiving

An update e-mail to staff members earlier this week from David Clark, head of our youth outreach ministries.

Guys,

I just wanted to highlight a few things that happened over the weekend that I am excited about. God is moving in the lives of our young people!

To start things off, Friday night at foCus our high school-age youth leaders played a major role in every aspect of the service – from choosing the theme for the night: “Why Worship?,” to putting together a drama/skit, facilitating a time of prayer in small groups, and sharing short testimonies on what they learned at the Save Your Sex Summit. One of the teens gave his debut break dancing performance. The skit/drama that they performed (they found on youtube.com) portrayed the various temptations that can come at a believer and effect our relationship with Christ, but how Christ can give us the power to endure and overcome. It didn’t have any words, but the message was clear and they did really well. We once again had youth from the neighborhood come out – many of whom came last month as well. On Sunday, another one of the teen leaders asked if we could have a foCus step team. It is encouraging and exciting to see the core teens of our youth outreach maturing in their faith and looking for opportunities to use their gifts and talents!

On Saturday night we had a game night here at the building. It was supposed to be a FAM collaborative event. And although, no young people from Christ Bible or Canaan ended up coming, we had a good turnout of just over 20 young people. We had a Nintendo WII station, a Taboo table, a Spades table, and a Monopoly table. Everyone brought $5 to put in on pizza from the one and only B&B Pizza King. We concluded the night by watching the documentary “Invisible Children.” It highlights the child soldier crisis in northern Uganda where young kids are being kidnapped from their village homes and being forced to become rebel soldiers at a young age. Thousands of kids walk miles each night to sleep in hospitals and bus stations together in order to avoid being kidnapped. After the movie, we broke up into groups to talk about what we had just seen, to pray about it, and to talk about how we might be able to be involved. As you know, this is a part of our larger, more concerted effort to bring other nations, other people groups to the attention of our youth. Each of the youth were “moved” by the movie, were eager to pray for the kids of Uganda, and had BIG ideas of ways in which we could get involved. These kids with the big dreams...they're some of the young guys you and I often see talking around Woodlawn late at night, sometimes getting into trouble. Continue to pray for these guys. Four of them are now apart of Club 2-5-2 and are loving it!

To end the weekend, Sunday night we had a volunteer appreciation party here at the building. Although not everyone was able to come, we had a good mix of young leaders, Moody students, and two of our moms from the community. We had one of the longest and most competitive games of Apples to Apples ever!! We have been blessed this fall with some really solid volunteers for Club 2-5-2! It is a beautiful thing to see local jr. high and high school students, Moody students, and parents from the community working together and building relationships.

Going into Thanksgiving, I am thankful for our young people and for our volunteers and for what God is doing in all of our lives.

In His Service,

D.C.