una familia grande!

We had a great Youth Night! I was so glad to be back! (I missed 2 Youth Nights while we were in Oregon.) With 17 youth and 5 adults we ran out of seats! Brad sat on a cooler to teach and I wandered around the outside of the circle. Brad taught a great lesson on Jesus being the good shepherd who loves us and gave his life for us and how we need to choose to follow him.

After Youth Night one of the youth needed a ride to the grocery store and then I went over to her house. They were having a crisis - her younger sister has a class picnic tomorrow and family members are supposed to come, but everyone is working so they want me to go. (I like it when I'm presented with issues that are solved so easily!) So I get to go be her aunt and represent the family! We hung out for a few minutes and 2 more youth showed up looking for us. Then we walked outside to go get food from another house and 2 more youth joined us on the way. We also talked 2 more youth from the house we went to into joining us so by the time we returned to the first house we had 6 extra teenagers. As we all sat around the table eating and talking the subject of the picnic came up and B (who is always ready to eat!) asked if he could go as her brother. Another asked if he could be her brother and his twin asked if he could be her friend (not sure how that works)! We made one big Mexican, Honduran, American, Mexican/American, African American/Puerto Rican family! 2 of the guys who were present don't speak any Spanish and others don't speak much English so there was lots of interpreting. We talked about school, work, family and Bible study tomorrow. I think another family is going to come. It was a good visit!

We also acted out the lesson as we walked through the neighborhood and one girl declared herself the shepherd and told us all to follow, but of course some of the boys had to run ahead and others off to the side but they didn't know where we were going so then they had to turn around and catch up. They were all being goofy, but it showed that they really were listening to the lesson and understood!

Back Home!

The week in Oregon was great!  I was amazed by how many people attended the conferences and it was exciting that many of them came with communities on their hearts that they want to reach.  Our team worked together really well to share different aspects of multihousing missions.  I was so happy to be back and we all enjoyed being spoiled by Bill and Joan's hospitality.  We had a beautiful sunny day to tour the coast on our day off!

We returned home late Tuesday night and were back in gear Wednesday morning.

Tonight a small group of youth came over to continue our study of God.  We were at the section on Jesus' resurrection, but I backtracked because we had a couple new guys.  It was a great discussion with good questions.   We talked a lot about Jesus' life and why He came to earth and why He willingly died.  We talked about the difference between believing someone is real and actually placing your trust in them.  "S" shared how for a long time she believed the Bible was true and like the idea of being saved from Hell, but wasn't ready to make Jesus the Lord of her life.  At the end of the conversation "D" said he was ready to make that decision and prayed telling God he wanted Him in his life!  It was so exciting to see God work in him and also in the other youth who shared how they believed and encouraged him! 

Please pray for these teens who want to follow Christ in a culture that is so opposed to God.