On June 2th, we're going to go downtown and minister to the homeless again. I've written about that before and how touching it can be. We'll likely hand out sack lunches or hygiene kits. Denny said we could put little inspirational notes in there if we wanted, so I had the kids write some notes as if they were addressed to themselves, homeless in the future. Okay, I threw in that last part at the last minute -- sometimes you wing it. But the results were pretty cool. I thought they were worth sharing.
So without further ado, here are the best of their notes, to themselves, as if they were homeless.
"You are special to God. He loves you so much. Never Give Up."
That one was basically what I was looking for. Something comforting, sort of inspiration. Loving. The last three words don't seem to fit but whatever, it'll do.
"God is always with you, and watching you because he loves you."
I liked that one more. Its a reminder of never being alone. Also very short and digestible.
"Winners never quit and quitters never win! Never Ever Give up OKAY!"
This one I put in the pile of "maybes" because while it might be appropriate to yourself I thought it sounded just a tad aggressive to someone else. There's that "Never Give Up" thing again.
"You may be thinking 'I'm so poor I got no life. Worthless.'
But there is always a soft spot in God's heart for people like you. Never give up!"
Wow, that's poignant! Again, just a tad too aggressive and possibly slightly condescending. I also put this one in the pile of maybe's just because its conceivable that it could be taken the wrong way. Note the common refrain of "Never Give Up." Somehow all the kids had that phrase on their minds. I think there's something interesting there worthy of some study.
Lastly, here is the one that got "first prize" by me. I think we can hand this one out. In fact, I'd like to make 30 copies of it and put it in each sack. Note that common refrain in this one too.
"My mom was homeless for about six months, and lost her children.
She stayed strong in God and prayed everyday.
She now has a loving family, a good job, and a roof over her head.
God truly works miracles, and if you never give up
on him then he will never give up on you. I Love You."
I got a chill down my back when I read that one. I am a lucky man to get to witness what these kids say and do.
One of the kids' favorite Youth Group events is this thing we do called "Destination Unknown." We, the youth leaders and the youth council, work up some a destination, usually with a little spiritual message woven in, and we don't tell the kids where it is.
Every time we do this, each one of the kids will pull me aside and whisper, "David, where are we going?!?!" because they all think that they have a special relationship with me that I'll tell them. In fact, they ALL have a special relationship with me as far as I'm concerned but I still don't tell them.
In the past we have taken the kids to:
Snoqualmie Falls - God's Power
The Police Station - Sin is like a Jail
The Snoqualmie River - God's Power within you
The Museum - with a Native American speaker
Women's Shelter - an Immigrantion story
Well on this particular evening, there was a Destination Unknown that the council had planned and they'd put it on the calendar and hadn't told me where it was. That's never happened before I didn't think too much of it. So on April 28th, I arrived at the church, and once all the kids had gathered, we got in the van, and they put a T-shirt around my head so I couldn't see anything.
Then Gordon, one of the other youth leaders, drove around until I was sufficiently disoriented and then we arrived at our destination. They unveiled me just I arrived AT MY OWN HOUSE! My wife, Amy, had set this all up, months in advance! This was HER plan to have a giant birthday party and she got all the kids in youth group to collude. About 30 people knew (maybe more!), including twenty kids under 15, and SOMEHOW they kept it a secret this while time!
Amy had made sliders and potato salad and cookies and two cakes. I've never had a surprise birthday party before, it was awesome.
Thanks to Amy for giving me such a wonderful birthday present!!!
Another one of our kids' favoritest youth group events is this thing called the "Phone Home Program" in Seattle. There's a man named Denny Hancock who runs a couple of charitable ministries in North Bend. For one of them, he has a tour bus he uses where he rounds up a youth group and whatever sandwiches, hygiene kits or warm coats they've collected and he brings them downtown to hand out to the homeless. While the kids are doing that, he stands there with a guitar around his neck cultivating personal relationships with each of the homeless.
The first time my youth group did this, I arranged to meet them under the freeway (since I work in Seattle). When Denny's bus pulled up, all the homeless people came out of the woodwork. My youths jumped out and they'd clearly had some instruction on the way down. Three phone teams went among the homeless, helping them call home. If the family member on the other end agreed to take them in (and sometimes this took 3 or 4 calls over a month) they'd also have to agree to put up half of the money for a bus ticket ($50 or so), to show their investment in this process. It works out that about one person a week gets sent home that way. That doesn't sound like much but over the years, Denny's organization has bought 700 bus tickets!
As an adult, I don't work the phones -- we leave that to the kids (homeless don't get to see fresh-faced optimistic youth every day, it is a treat for them). So I usually stay with the rest of the kids who are handing out the sack lunches. Last time, we ran out of sack lunches and the kids ran back to the bus and got their OWN sack lunches and gave those away too.
On most trips, some poor soul will shuffle up. You can tell they want to say something; their face is full of emotion. Often all that comes out of them is "Thank you. God Bless you." And they cry. And they accept the sack lunch.
When we get on the bus to go back to Snoqualmie, the kids always say the same thing. "David! We should do this ALL THE TIME." I say "I know." And they say "No, really! We're serious, we should do this EVERY WEEK! This is what we're supposed to be doing as Christians!" They are so moved by what they've done and by what they've witnessed. I am glad that they understand at such a young age what it has taken me 25 more years to figure out.
If you are thinking about doing this with your youth group, I highly encourage you to sign up. What you should know:
If you have little, little ones (like under 12), don't bring them along on this one.
Bring something to distribute, like sack lunches, or in the winter, warm men's coats or socks or gloves
Prepare to leave at 5:30ish and be back around 8:30ish.
Here is the link for the phone home program, along with the sign-up sheet. Good luck.
This is Andrew. He is one of our most active youth and a leader among the kids. He is on my A-team, in that he will volunteer for anything and he's good at everything.
Andrew is active in the regional conference leadership team, whose initials are (S)eattle (U)nited (M)ethodist (Y)outh (T)eam. He somehow gets himself to all the weekend retreats and I'm proud that he's our representative.
On March 19th, he and I left Seattle on a ferry across the sound to Bainbridge. Then we drove up to Camp Indianola and checked in around 7:30. Andrew and I, complete manly men that we are, were assigned 6 other male youth to watch over in the evening.
For three days, we basically partied with kids from other United Methodist churches around Seattle. Fairwood had HUGE representation and provided a great band to sing songs to. The food, like it was at Lazy F, was phenomenal.
I got to share my faith journey. I tried to be quick and I hoped I didn't bore the kids, me being the eldest speaker and all. I'm so old!
For those three days, I didn't see much of Andrew personally -- he was always with the rest of the other leaders (perhaps 10 of them, maybe less). That team of kids organized three days of rallies, small groups, and activities. Incredible. We are lucky to have such great kids in our churches!
On March 14, the youth of our church put on both services. They performed all the functions from Greeters, to Ushers, to reading scripture, performing the sermon and even children's time!
To be honest, on a few occasions prior to the service I had some fleeting thoughts about things that could go wrong. I thought about kids not waking up on time, or getting cold feet. But you know what? They all came. On time. And then they performed flawlessly. I have not been more proud of any kids, ever.
When we first decided to do a youth service, I had no idea how meaningful it would be. I'm so glad we did it. Proper credit must go to our education director, the fabulous Laurie Edwards, who did most of the work and local rock star Toddie Downs who infused the service with her music.
The baby played a very prominent part in our service, as is the case with many meaningful moments when you think about it. :)
Some of the kids and I went on a hike to Cedar Butte today. The hike is rather short -- perhaps 3.5 miles round trip with about 800 feet elevation gain. Total hike time 2.5 hours.
In this picture above from left to right are Kent, Kylan (KIE-lyn), Hope and Kaleb. Except for Hope, they are all siblings. Hope is one of my favorite people in the world, I don't mind saying so. And the other are such great kids, too.
Afterwards we stopped at Chew Chew for milkshakes. And when I got home I fell asleep. What a great day.
Snoqualmie United Methodist Church Middle School Winter Camp 2008 Lazy F Ranch on the Manashtash River, WA
TRIP REPORT On the weekend of February 23rd and 24th, five of the Snoqualmie United Methodist Church middle-school youth went up to the Lazy F ranch for UMC winter camp. The hardy souls were (clockwise from top left):
Andrew
Kelcey
Elizabeth
Hope
Kathleen (Kelcey's mom)
Molly
David Holmes (yours truly)
Kelcey's mom Kathleen was the other "Adult" besides myself. As per Marcia Reinert's suggestion, we stopped at the McDonald's in Ellensburg for lunch, where Elizabeth was shocked to find a hair in her french fries. Her face has this ability to convey intense amounts of disgust and horror. After getting some new fries, she and Kelcey went up into the playland area where they found a half-eaten SUBWAY MEAL. Gross! Elizabeth also reported strange grimy puddles up there. Again, the disgust was palpable.
As we arrived and registered I found that my plan of sneaking off in the middle of night to Ellensburg's accomodating Cowboy bars was foiled when the good Lord saw fit to put me in charge, at night, of not only Andrew but three youths from Wallingford who had no male youth leader with them.
Elizabeth and Kelcey tubing
The highlight of that afternoon was a couple of hours of tubing on the sledding hill. The kids went down the hill over and over again, sometimes solo, sometimes as part of a train and sometimes sharing a tube. The kids pleaded with Kathleen and I to join them but we chickened out; my idea of "Cold weather Gear" is a coffee-cup with a LID on it so I didn't want to get my jeans and sweatshirt wet.
Molly had no cold weather gear either but that didn't stop her from sledding and also attempting to walk in 3' snow. I watched her lose her shoe in deep banks of snow a few times and wondered what goes on in her mind.
After sledding there was barn-time where the kids played pool and ping pong. Molly likes to hit "home runs" with her ping pong paddle and this made for very short volleys. Kelcey showed some aptitude but before she and I could properly square off (and she be properly schooled) the dinner bell was rung.
We had all heard that the food at Lazy F was delicious and dinner did not disappoint. Dinner the first night was PASTA BAR. How cool is that???? Yum! And SUNDAES FOR DESSERT. After dinner we split up into small groups. I was in a separate group so I didn't see what happened with any of the other Snoqualmie people. Our group had three Davids among ten guys and, honestly, we spent most of the time playing Mafia. I'd never played that game before and I was intrigued by how the play seemed to involve very small amounts of public information. However, it appears that all players were using side-channel attacks because when I did an informal poll afterward, almost everyone admitted to cheating.
We called this kid "The Dolphin" in Small Groups.
The movie of the evening was "Night at the Musuem" which I had never seen, so I happily hung out and watched it while the kids furiously networked with each other. Hope can make friends in an instant; in fact, she's so good at making friends that we hardly ever saw her. Andrew is like that, too.
Our cabin that night was FULL; twelve dudes in six bunk-beds. It was hot in the room thanks to an eager heater but fortunately there was no snoring. Everyone was well behaved and slept well from what I could tell. Day two started with breakfast of b & e and cinnamon rolls too. And some decent coffee as well. There was another small groups session and then some play-time in the snow. In one of these pictures, you can see Andrew resting after pelting some of his new-found friends in a snowball fight.
After lunch (Taco Bar) there was a long rally that I think all of us were initially dreading. But you know what? It turned out to be very moving. It was cleansing and inspiring and there were more than a few moist eyes in the crowd. I got something in my eye, too, but with some discreet rubbing I got it out.
At one point during the service, I mean rally, some back-up singers were needed and Elizabeth and Hope stepped up to the task. See them here. Sorry for the poor video and audio but I was far away with my small group of guys.
Elizabeth and Hope step up as back-up singers
Lastly, here is my favorite video of the trip. Its a technique called "fauxtography" where the camera operator pretends to be setting up for a single still shot but is actually filming video the entire time. Just as Kathleen is about to snap a photo, Elizabeth decides that Kelcey doesn't need to be in the shot, and indeed, she is no-where to be seen in the final picture.
Elizabeth is a Diva
As promised, we returned all the children to their parents with limbs and brains intact so the trip was an unqualified success. But on a serious note, I honestly do thank the Lord that he gave me the opportunity to get to know these wonderful kids last weekend.
