So Here's the Deal

Far away at Coolidge, on the edge of the city, my crazy little classroom holds a catastrophe of events as the days pass on, edging us ever further to the next Federal Holiday, when we can all sleep in and breathe easy. Among those events are the following:
~ Wednesday, Sept. 24. See You At the Pole day. Coolidge has NO flag pole. Who knew? So I took the steps in the front of the building. I prayed alone for about 40 minutes. Dr. Bennett forgot, as did the kids, apparently. But it was good. I like Jesus and I felt like he showed up. Until...
~ 2nd Period: when I screamed at my kids so loud I promptly lost my voice until yesterday morning. Jesus seemed to evaporate from my soul that hour. It was sad.
~ Thursday, Sept. 25th: Lots of teachers start commenting on my sign up poster which clearly states YoungLife Bible study. "Is that legal?" "Are you allowed to do that?" "Does the administration know you're doing that?" To which, I probably shouldn't roll my eyes, and say "Yes, silly, this isn't an undercover operation, obviously." But I do that. The questions continue until one teacher actually says, "Hey! Can I help?"He's cool. I don't know who he is. But I'll find out.
~ Friday, Sept. 26th. No kids showed up again for YoungLife Bible study. Neither does the cool teacher who said he would. But it's all good. I don't know what I would have done if they showed up. It was not the best week in the world. Even in perspective. It was the worst one. Even with the right perspective, which I maintained.
~Monday, Sept. 29th. Two girls (Tia and Tania) who are not in my class but who have taken up hanging out in my class during lunch time instead of roaming the halls promptly inform me that because that morning Tania's boyfriend's 3year old daughter just died that she no longer believes in God. Clearly, its a challenge. Which I meet. Or rather, God does. And they leave overwhelmed and believing in God and maybe not hating Him. So they sign up for YoungLife.
~Tuesday, Sept. 30th. Tia and Tania come back. Not unusual. Tania asks me about the sacrament and what the purpose of two years of Catholic Confirmation classes are and why don't fish bleed. Fish do bleed and I explain the rest. We decided that we are in, fact, holding YoungLife, and so they sign in and I give the sign in sheet to our after school program lady and YoungLife is set to go. Just in the nick of time. (Oct. 1 was our deadline to meet.)
~Also, because of the many students I have coming up to me explaining they have band and football practice after school on various days, YoungLife will now take place during lunch period for those whose lunch hours fall on the same hours as mine, as well as after school on Tuesdays and Fridays and this Thursday. Because there is no school on Friday.
~ Also, at some point during the day, two students, Tziania and Iesha put their names and grades on my sign up sheet. Score!
So we'll see how this goes. Clearly out of my hands. I'm just there.
See you all in a few weeks. Football will end soon and then my kids won't be devastated they don't see me on Friday nights. As if it isn't enough trouble getting them to come to class on time. Sometimes the mixed signals they send are enough to make a teacher go mad.

Saturday Surprise

First of all...I feel honored that my picture is gracing the inaugural post of this blog! On to my story...

Friday night after our stellar leadership meeting I hopped in bed and begrudgingly set my alarm to wake up at 7a.m. the next morning. My boss had pulled a last minute "I need you to be at this volunteer event Saturday morning." A colleague picked me up around 8am and we set out to the Geico building at Chevy Chase for a Boys & Girls Club event. I was feeling somewhat frustrated with the disorganization of the set up and lamenting over lost hours of sleep when two young men came up to me asking how they could help. Apparently I looked like I knew what I was doing. We got to talking and it turns out they both attend Wilson High School. Suddenly my morning just got better! I was so excited to just talk to them and see what they were about.

Alonzo is a Senior at Wilson and plays on the football team. (Awesome, I thought...someone to cheer for at the next game.) Louis is a Senior as well. He doesn't play sports but has trombone and clarinet lessons on Wednesdays. Like most high school kids they had left the majority of their 100 hours of required community service to finish their Senior year. That is why they were at the event on Saturday morning helping kids throw bean bags through a hole and playing Geico "plinko". Both of them live off the Georgia Ave. metro stop and neither of them had heard of Young Life. Louis continued asking questions about it though and at the end of the conversation sounded interested in checking it out at one of our kick off events.

My lesson learned (one God unfortunately has to continually beat me over the head with) is that God strategically positions us where He wants us. So as we think about contact work with kids it's good to remember that we just need to be ready and willing to talk and God will provide opportunities whether on campus at Wilson or on a random Saturday morning.

Contact Work at Wilson High 08/09

Hey guys so here's the blog I was talking about at Leadership last Friday. I think this is going to be a great tool for communicating opportunities for Contact Work, our goals as we continue to add kids names to our list , tips on how to do Contact Work effectively, as well as prayer and praise reports from the field.

Only our team will have access to this page for security reasons and you will all have the capabilities to add and edit things on the page so feel free to add names and posts etc.

I hope you guys are having a great week and I hope this is helpful.

Let's keep praying and encouraging each other as we see this list of kids grow and as we impact Wilson High School with the love of Christ.