The furthest kid out

Wow. So We just finished club not to long ago. And I just wanted to share a story with you guys to encourage you. Sorry it's kinda long so bear with me. So many of you know I have been tutoring for the AVID program since the beginning of this school year and while doing that I met this student named Rlynn (I changed the name to be safe since this is an open blog) But I can tell you who I'm talking about later if you desire to know. Anyway so my first encounter with Rlynn was a bad one she basically "SPAZED" out in class. She kind of went off and Yelled very loudly "every body please shut up shut up". Because a lot of people were trying to talk to her at once and giving her suggestions on her homework. And she just went off. And I was like ok she's crazy and has a whole lot of issues. Anyways time went on I learned more about her I found out she had a girl friend and did not get along with her mother at all. And many times when I would talk to her in class she wouldn't be that friendly. Anyways time kept passing and some days I would talk to her and some days I would not. I definitely think I internally labeled her as the furthest kid out and a kid who probably would not like YL or me. One day I saw her and found out that she played softball. So that gave us common ground and we talked some about that, I really felt like that was my way in with her. Anyways so on Friday I went to AVID after AVID I actually got the chance to ride home with her. I had invited her to YL that previous Wednesday so I had her number and after the bus ride she actually texted me and thanked me for attempting to find a basketball game on my phone. Anyways I was really surprised and was really happy for the progress. (sorry this is so long but keep reading it gets better) So this week I chose to pray for Rlynn all week. And Wouldn't ya know just as last week with Ashj. Rlynn had a HUGE break down yesterday. She stood up and yelled "o my gosh ms. Benjammin (the AVID teacher) I have to get the F#%@ out of this room right now!" and runs out!!! So I take it all in with the rest of the class and I am thinking wow did she really just do that then I calmly get up and go after her. I find her crying her eyes out in the stair well. I sit down next to her and ask her if she is ok. She is not responsive at all. I wait and after about 5 min of sitting next to her and listening to her cry, (felt like a life time) she finally talked to me. The first thing she said was I hate this school. And to make a long story shorter. We actually ended up talking about her life and school drama for like 15-20 min in the stairwell. That in itself was a victory I was really glad to have the chance to encourage her. But anyways when we returned to the classroom I gave her a flyer for club. And today Rlynn came to club!! And she enjoyed herself! I still hope and pray that God would completely transform her life. But I know today she was got to hear the gospel. In my mind Rlynn was the furthest kid out in AVID (I have one other in mind so maybe I should pray for him next). But she came to YL today! Please know that your work is not in vain and that your prayers are changing the lives of these kids just as sure as you can see these words. Thank you so much for everything you do. Please do not stop praying and building God's kingdom. This is just one small victory! God has much more in store for us!!!
- Kaleah

Too busy not too.....

What's up everybody, I realize this email with find most of you either on Spring Break or vacation this week so please enjoy it and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

I just wanted to send out a few thoughts to ponder for the week.

One thought that keeps floating around my mind lately is this: We are too busy not to pray!

I am thankful for Kaleah's emails to pray for a different kid every day for a week and though I haven't been 100% with it every day it has been a great reminder that it is the power of Christ alone that will change kids lives and not our program or anything we do for that matter.

It is his power working through us that we believe in faith and as we pray will transform kids lives.

I'll share a quick story that really nails the point home for me. I think I may have sent out an email to you guys a while back right after our ski trip that I received a text from KC saying he wanted to meet with me to talk about Purpose.

After about two years of leading a Campaigner group of all girls I was so anxious for the opportunity to pour into even one guy's life.

Fast forward and after at least 8 failed attempts to hang out with KC I'm realizing that even my persistence and best of intentions aren't getting me any where.

I need to pray and I'm way too busy not too pray.

Aren't we all for that matter. All of us are insanely busy , every single one of us is overwhelmed in one way or another.

Yet our efforts at putting together an amazing Club , taking a gazillion kids to camp, and doing Contact work is all futile unless we are lifting it up to the Lord and being empowered by the power of his Holy Spirit.

One quick Bidnez note: April 1st is fast approaching and we need to know by than how many kids we are taking to camp. By know I don't mean our best guess, I mean we actually have a deposit of $75 in hand. So I will be sending you a list tomorrow of kids names, and numbers so please let's not wait to make calls we have less than a month now.

In the past I have tried assigning certain kids to certain leaders and that has always been kind of confusing so this year I'm just sending out the list and to be honest I don't care if we all call the same kids/ parents because eventually they will either say please stop calling me or yes my son/ daughter can go.

Follow up from Leadership

Dear Leaders,
let me first say how encouraged I am by you all and I am humbled to see the help that God has provided to reach kids at Wilson High knowing that 7 years ago I walked into that school for the first time by myself not knowing what the heck I was doing!

I will also say this I sense that God is on the move not just at Wilson but in us. I got the great feeling at Leadership this Saturday that we are on the same page and that we are expecting God to do huge things at Wilson but again I believe that he's going to blow us away with how he stretches our own faith in the process and that our ministry to kids will not be something forced or akward but more like an overflow of the love he is showing us in our own lives individually and together as a family in Christ.

Ok, so since it's been a while since I blogged I've got to say one more thing before I get to bidnez. I look to you guys as my starting A team. In the same way that a coach often seems to be the hardest on his best players because he knows how great their potential is I feel the same way about you guys.
I feel like up till now I have been super laid back YL leader and have kind of been like, " come when you can and do what you can, whatevs" , but I feel like our team is to sharp for that kind of Leadership and we need to be pushed because we are on the edge of something great and I don't want us to miss it.

Ok, that's it for now on motivational speeches we covered some great stuff on Saturday so for those who missed it and as a reminder to those who were there here's what we discussed.

• Leadership/ Time- kind of jumping off what I just said just realizing that the more YL grows at Wilson the more important it is for us to meet together outside of Club etc. to pray together , for each other, for kids, and to build community w/ one another.
  

Time- just the understanding that if we want this to work we're going to have to give of our time some how some way to do Contact Work and just being present consistently in the lives of kids outside of the hour we do our Club program.
We established that it is perfectly fine and encouraged for you guys to take initiative and do things w/ the kids outside of planned events ex. having girls over for a sleep over, showing up after school for a game of ultimate frisbee whatevs.
Let's not make this complicated Contact work is about showing up consistently and even if you've got 30 minutes to give every week it will make a difference. Bottom line it needs to happen and we all need to be doing it. You can also use this Blog to post ideas or times you're available to do Contact work so the rest of the team can see it and join you or Kalean and I to do it together.

• Club- Feedback- It's been encouraging to see it grow, Themed Clubs can be confusing and devisive so if we use a theme it will be more for our programatic planning purposes and we won't for example sell it on Facebook as "Glow in the Dark Club" but just "YL Club" , we won't tell kids to dress up so as not to ostrasize kids that may forget or come for the first time, and we will keep the flow/ format of Club the same each week so kids and leaders know what to expect.
  
• Campaigners- We decided that Volpe will take the lead on this which doesn't mean she will do all the work but will be the point person to get it organized. So anyone that wants to help out with it get in contact w/ Volps as we figure out when the best time will be.
  

As of now it looks like we're leaning towards either an early morning pre-school Campaigners or some time on the weekend and we are going to talk to the girls we think would be interested this week to get their vote/ feedback. So please take a few minutes this week to make some calls to girls/ send a facebook message so we can get this going again.

• Camp July 12-18th @ Syranac- So far leaders who've confirmed that they can go : Volpe, Kendall, Fagley, Samantha, Kalean and myself. If you're not on that list it's cause you either already told me you can't go or cause I don't have a confirmation from you so please let me know ASAP.
  

We decided that our goal for this year is 30 kids from Wilson! and that we need to make it a priority now to get our regular / Campaigner kids locked in. So any kid whose been to camp already or shown interest we need to be making calls to parents now and getting deposits of $75.
As a reminder the total price is $300 and the deposit is $75 due BEFORE APRIL 1st!!!!

To up the anty a bit I've decided to make this a competition so whoever get's the most kids signed up for camp (you talked to their parents and have recieved a deposit) by the end of March will win $50 and as a team if we get to our goal of 30 kids by the end of March we will have a party to celebrate at Dave and Busters!!! Let the games begin.
Also as for who contacts who , I don't care it's every man for himself whoever get's in touch w/ a parent and get's the deposit get's credit for the spot.
*Kaleah and I don't count but Kaleah if you beat me I'll take you out to eat or something

I know that's alot of info. but as I said at Leadership this is the time of year when we are starting to get tired and maybe not as excited as we were when we started but let's dig in and see how God will redeem our time.

Vs. to ponder for the day
John 1:12 " Yet to those who believed, to those who called on his name he gave the right to be called Children of God!"

In hot pursuit

So what does this picture have to do w/ hot pursuit? Not a whole lot but I thought it was a pretty funny picture from camp last summer and Blog's are more interesting w/ pics right?

So it's been over a month since the last blog and for my newbies leaders checking out the blog for the first time , welcome and know that you can not only read stories/ inspiration that I post but you along w/ other leaders can post your on stories and lessons learned and such on this Blog along w/ having access to our Gmail Calendar of events and our ongoing tally of kids met this year (our goal is 200).

So back to the hot pursuit. Isn't it funny how God pursues us? I mean if we think back on our lives all the places God has met us , especially the times when we weren't really looking for him but he found us? He just has this uncanny way of showing up at times when we need him the most in places we'd least expect to find him.

Ok so what that has to do with Young Life is that just a few moments ago I was about to walk into the Starbucks near Wilson to get some work done pre- Contact Work and I was thinking about this kid Nick Hakim.
For those of you who weren't there when all the girls at Campaigners freaked out, Nick Hakim they say is the best looking guy at Wilson and even the possibility that he would be joining us at Winter Camp put them in a frenzy.

The funny thing is before I knew how "cool" he was I had no problem talking to him and asking him to come to camp but after I saw how crazy they all went I started second guessing myself, like maybe he really doesn't want to camp and don't get your hopes up cause he probably doesn't want to come etc.

So like I was saying I was walking into Sbux and I was thinking about Nick and that I should get in touch with him and wondering if there was any possibility he would come and how crazy it would be if he did.

So I'm waiting in line for my fruffy Coffee drink when yep you guessed it Nick Hakim walks up and the first words out of his mouth are, " Hey man we still on for the trip on the 30th? "
We talked for a bit and after wards (right now as I'm typing this actually) I thought to myself man God is crazy.

I mean crazy the way he pursues us that at just the right time when I happened to think about Nick he comes walking out. At just the moment when I started to doubt God showed!

The moral of the story is don't sell God short, never think any kid is too cool for God.
He / she might be too cool for you (hehe) but no one is too cool for God so just trust and beleive that we all need him and will be drawn to him.

The name above all names - Immanuel

For some reason this has always been one of the parts of the Christmas story that I love the most, the name Immanuel - "God with us" .

I guess it's most powerful in the context of the Christmas story because even though we know that Jesus was both God and man I think we tend to forget and like many of our kids feel like , " Jesus is perfect because , well he's God and it's easy for him to be Holy cause he can perform miracles when ever he wants...."
But I think the biggest miracle is that Jesus choose to make him self vulnerable to the point of being a baby.
One thing I've learned from having Gideon around is that babies can't do much of anything besides being cute!
I mean isn't it crazy that God decided to go through 30 normal years of earthly existence as a carpenter before his full on ministry started.

It's the time of his life on earth that we know the least about but how amazing is it that we have a God who willingly endured 30 years of hum drum life as a carpenter in a poor family with tons of brothers and sisters patiently awaiting the destiny that was set before him to die on a cross for our sins.

What does this have to do with Young Life and kids? Pretty much everything.
It's the truth that comes with the name ... Immanuel....God with us.

When we go up to the school and embrace the awkwardness of trying to start conversations with kids we don't know and who may reject us we know that HE is With US.

When we wonder weather or not our ministry is ever going to take off and explode we know that our God waited 30 years before his took off!

We know ultimately that when we think about what we have to offer kids that we don't have anything apart from Christ but as Peter said to the beggar asking for money, " Silver and Gold I have not but what I do have I give you , be healed in the name of Jesus Christ. "

I am Second

Hey guys check out this awesome website I just found.

It's basically just really cool short video's of people telling their testimony and why God is first and they are second.

It's really powerful and I hope is a good reminder for us.

http://www.iamsecond.com

He knows whats up...

So the only reason I am doing this is because my minifeed on facebook (in reference to Chris Girardi) said...

Chris is man that's so great, any way you could rewrite that at some point on our blog it's too good not to share.

HAHAH. That is so funny to me. I'm always nervous for the day where it says..Kristen is Andrew Addison and the world will know who I am stalking...o wait. opps...(jk jk)

So last week before Stake and Egg I was walking over to Wilson from the metro and just had the normal sense of, "Oh great, what am I going to do now that I am here." This sense of uncertainty and awkwardness doesn't seem to ever fully disappear and I have realised the best way to cope with it is truly pass it over to God. I had level 1 contact work in my head, just be there to be seen. I knew that the Lord would just have it pan out according to his will. Anyway, I also started praying to see our campaigner kids, and for some reason Abby popped into my heart. Abby is someone who doesn't have any set beliefs yet but she is great because she is so open to finding as much information as she can to make her own decisions, and eventually have a faith of her own. So, as I was thinking of Abby, the school bell rang at 3:15, and Abby was the first kid out of the high school that day. I literally bumped into her trying to enter the school while she was leaving. She quickly asked what I was doing there and I think I said, "I don't know, hanging out? Wanna go to stake and egg with some of us?" She was game and then spent rest of the afternoon really opening up. Chris told me that she signed up for the ski trip on facebook and I know she seemed pretty into too. Also, she is a kid who is not afraid to introduce us to her friends...which is BOMBBBB. I just really think it is so cool how I had no real clue of what I was going to do at Wilson that day, then the Lord put Abby on my heart and then literally had me bump into her two seconds later. He knows whats up...