EVERYTHING!

We just finished with the 'Disciple Now - 2009' program offered by our church. The theme this year? EVERYTHING! We opened our home to young participants. Our initial expectation was one or two 'kids' would stay here with activities at the church. When called to plan for our 'kids', we discovered we would have around 10 (TEN) eighth grade boys!!! The good news was the 'package' deal came with a small group leader and a helper which for us turned out to be a wonderful young man, Jared, who's seeking a counselling post-grad degree, and Spencer, a parole officer!

Wednesday night we got to meet most of these people. We learned a lot about this program by participating and really enjoyed our group of 8th graders though parts of the house looked like a dorm room (no picture needed!). Activities really started Friday afternoon at the Olney/City View Basketball games (girls & boys JV & Varsity), followed by a large group session at 10 p.m. (included a Christian band and an awesome speaker who seemed to relate well to the kids.
Truck the kids back to the house (they ALWAYS wanted to ride in the bed of the truck) for a small group session and bedtime at 1 a.m.! You have to know that Mike's bedtime is 10 p.m., and I was totally impressed that he hung in till 1 a.m. on Friday, and AFTER 2 a.m. on Saturday!
Saturday included more large and small group sessions. We were responsible for breakfast and dinner on Saturday (food and paper goods supplied by church).

Each group came up with some sort of a skit. Skits were performed Saturday night and some were VERY moving and some were fun and musical.

While the band was practicing, Keelan experienced 'rock star' status on drums, since that's what he's learning to play.

Our church provided a great pancake breakfast on Sunday morning and the morning worship was essentially another large group session. There must have been at least 150 participants from 7th - 12th grade!!! It was a BIG deal!!!