July 2013 Archives

So once again, I (Gabriel) am late in updating. One of these days I'm going to get this blog thing done on time, and it will be great. However, for the time being, I guess I'll just have to tell you all about what happened two weeks ago. Never fear, though, it will still be a good update, mainly because our group two weeks ago was absolutely fantastic, and God was working in huge ways in them.

So for starters, just a basic rundown on the group. They were from Grace Mennonite, in Berlin, Ohio. They were our biggest group of the summer, coming in at the impressive number of 54. The fact that there were so many of them presented some new challenges for us, but we were up to it, and excited for them to come. However, there were also other challenges that week. The first few days of the week, as we got to know the kids and interacted with them, we as a staff (or maybe it was just me...) were struggling a lot. The vast majority of the youth were not coming into the trip looking for ways that God was going to work and excited to jump on board with that. They were coming  mostly just looking to have fun and hang out with the others in their youth group. So as we went on outreaches with them and they did the Prayer Challenge and service projects, it was difficult to get them to engage and dig into what we were doing. So as much as we tried to stay positive and joyful, it was hard to not let it affect our attitudes at least a little.