shopping at Wal-Mart with teenagers

I had a fun evening tonight. I picked up 4 youth and we went shopping at Wal-Mart for food stuffs for our Seder meal that is fast approaching. I've been reading (within the last 6 months) a book on youth ministry and one of the suggestions was to incorporate youth into your daily activities when you could. It would probably take you more time to do your errands, but it would be meaningful to the youth accompanying you and give them some one-on-one time with you that you wouldn't normally have. Well, I haven't tried that, per-say, with my personal grocery shopping, but I figured it might be good to have their help and participation with the dinner that they are "putting on." It DID take longer with them, BUT the shopping got done because it was planned that we would do it as a small group tonight (which means that tired Jean on Sunday couldn't procrastinate and put it off until Wednesday when she's freaking out), and the youth had fun hanging out together and getting the food put together. 

I really had a big light bulb come on tonight about including them more in what we needed to accomplish. It wasn't me accomplishing something for them or making sure that it got done for them, but it was me mobilizing them to accomplish something for us, as a group. And that felt so good and it is kind of liberating. I really need to do this more often and maybe then they'll catch on to being more of a youth group that wants to do things together, including studying God's word together on Wednesday nights and on their own throughout the week.

One day at a time. Praise the Lord that He's moving me forward. I've needed a breakthrough. Maybe I'm starting to get it, just a little.

Guitars, my second love

Today is guitar recital day! I unbelievably have 18 students performing tonight on a "supposed to be" shorter concert. I think that it will last about an hour and a half tonight. That's a lot of music. 

I was thinking earlier this week as I was getting frustrated with the order of the songs (I finished the last edition last night at 12:30 am) and remembered the very first recital that I held for my students back in Idaho. There were 4 students that played (so cute) and the concert lasted 10 minutes at the most. That was embarrassing to me, but it was good for the kids and they were so proud of themselves and I was so proud of them for doing such a great job. I guess it was fun, too, for me because I actually taught them how to do what they did. It's so fun to see young people learn and enjoy learning. Yep, that's why I'm in this biz.

Better go, my  brownies are hopefully not burned. :)