This weekend was my church's youth retreat (Discipleship Now). I think we had 97 youth total. Jolene DeHeer was the speaker again. She did a great job.
We had a Bellarive concert in the sanctuary on Friday night. No broken stained glass or concussions, so success! They did a good job of keeping the youth interested and being worshipful.
When it was time for everyone to go to there rooms, I was in charge of a room with 17 girls. Three of them walked in and said, "Melissa, you know we're not going to sleep tonight, right?" I told them that no one could be forced to go to sleep, but regardless, they were going to lay down silently with their eyes closed for eight hours, whether they slept or not. And they were very well behaved, which I appreciated.
On Saturday, the kids played "The Amazing Race" which was basically a scavenger hunt. They loved it, although a couple of the boys did get talked to by the police for standing in the middle of the road. The kids collected nearly 200 cans of food for this soup kitchen.
We also played laser tag in the church basement which was a big hit. And again, no concussions, no broken windows, nobody fell through the wall this time.
Sam and I both taught "break-out sessions." Our theme for Youth retreat was made in God's image. We ended with Jolene speaking and we all took communion together. It was very special.
Fortunately, working with youth is invigorating, or I would probably have fallen over asleep half way through. I worked over eighty hours last week, but it was worth it. It was really exciting to see God working in the kid's lives, and exciting to have Him working on my life too.
