Anna, College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, MN

This summer I had the pleasure of being Program staff in Coastal Carolina. I could share story after story of God’s faithfulness throughout my summer. I could share about my amazing staff who blessed me beyond belief or I could share stories about the wonderful community of Coastal who loved us and supported us more than any of us expected, but one story sticks out in my mind and appropriately, it is a story about a youth.

During Early Bird my Area Director challenged our entire region to spend time with youth who were not like us. It is great when you meet youth who are very similar to yourself, those that you hit it off with right away, but it is always a challenge when you encounter youth who are not like you, those youth you don’t think you have anything in common with. Typically, those are the youth who need you the most.

The second week of programming this summer we had a young lady come to our site that had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was quickly set apart from the rest of the group because of her facial features, her shy and quite nature and her slower overall functioning. She was very difficult to communicate with. I would attempt to talk with her but sometimes she didn’t understand me or would respond with very short simple answers. It was hard to get to know her but I continued to pursue a relationship with her. I spent a ton of time with her sometimes talking sometimes not. When I discovered she loved art I borrowed some art supplies from Kids Club. We drew and colored during free time and began to enjoy one another. I attempted to share about my faith with her but it didn’t seem like I was getting much of a response so I just continued to spend time with her and love her.

Thursday night as I was heading out to the community cookout I felt drawn to check my Happy Fun Bag. Typically I do not check my bag until the weekend so it was weird that I check it then. When I looked in my bag I found a note from Kayla and attached to it was a fish necklace she had been wearing all week. The note was hard to read and looked like it was written by a five year old, but it was the most beautiful note I have ever read. Kayla thanked me for spending so much time with her that week and that she had never felt so loved. She also told me that she had decided to accept Christ that week and felt happier than she ever had in her life. That night we sat and talked for a good hour about God and faith. It was one of the most amazing conversations of my life. I was so blessed and honored to share and be a part of one of the most important experiences of this young lady’s life. This is one example of how God changes lives through YouthWorks. This story is actually an example of two lives being changed.

If you would please take a moment to pray for Kayla as she struggles every day with her disease and her home life. Now she has the confidence that she has a Father who thinks she is the most beautiful person despite her facial features, who loves her more than she can comprehend and is waiting for her with open arms.

Scott, Taylor University, Upland, IN

It seems like after a summer doing something such as YouthWorks people ask, “What’d ya learn?” Missions is supposed to bring about change, right? God wouldn’t let me go through such an experience without the plan to teach me something, would He? No, he would not.

What have I learned? I could go on and on and share for hours about what I learned this summer.

There were so many experiences so different from what I am used to, how could I not learn? How could I not be changed?

Prep Week - I learned how different suburban America is from the Navajo Nation or any reservation. It doesn’t matter how much you try to imagine it, until you see it, you will never know.

Week One- It doesn’t matter how much you prep, sometimes you have to learn on your feet.

Week Two - The difficulty of sharing the Gospel with a group of people whose spirituality and culture are one. If you tell them their religion is wrong, you are telling them that their culture is wrong. If you tell them their culture is wrong, you are telling them that who they are is wrong. This is wrong.

Week Three - Perspective- sometimes stuff happens that stinks, but when it comes down to it, a little perspective can do a lot.

Week Four - The joy that there is in high school students.

Week Five - When the Gospel is proclaimed it is a good thing, in fact a great thing. No matter what...it is a good thing.

Week Six - The joy that there is in junior high students.

Week Seven - The blessing of falling off a roof.

Week Eight - How encouraging a summer of change can be.

These are things I learned, but if someone asks me what that one thing is that will stick with me, I will tell them I learned I know nothing and I understand nothing. I came into this summer thinking I was going to leave with understanding and knowledge of who God was and what He is doing. Sure, I gained some of this, but really I learned I know nothing. I know nothing of His sovereignty, His strength, His wisdom and the depth of who He is. I realize I may never understand these things, but at the same time I am excited to question God and to wrestle with Him for these answers. I know He is good and I know He is faithful. He will give me the strength for the next day. Sometimes this is what a summer in a world far different from ours can do.

Johan, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

I learned this summer that God put basketball on this planet for one reason, and that is to share His love with people, not to score baskets, humiliate the opponent or dunk the ball over someone. No, it is all about loving people.

It may sound silly and far fetched at first, but when it really started to sink in, I understood that not a step I would take on that basketball court in rural

Marvell with the teens of the community would have any eternal impact whatsoever unless the steps were taken with purpose – purpose of showing people the love of Christ.

Because I was an alumni staff returning to Marvell, I had the privilege of having established relationships with the community. Last summer was spent trying to get a foot into the community teens' lives, and now it was time to get deeper. They knew me now by name, but it was time they knew my heart and I theirs. God placed the basketball playing community teens so heavy on my heart. Yes, it is fun to play basketball and yes, it keeps you in shape, but there is more to it. I came to fall in love with these trash- talking, hard fouling, streetballing guys. And I really got to study the beauty of people even in the toughest situations I faced on the court.

Time after time, daily, I had the chance to be Jesus with basketball shoes on. Slowly, but surely after investing four hours a day with these community teenage guys I became the one they would come to and talk about relationships, college, premarital sex, God and just to chat. I was asked to come and fish for catfish one weekend with one of the older teens and even though plans never worked out, that offer was more important to me than any basketball game could ever have been. Since inter-racial relationships are not common in Marvell, Arkansas, it was a big step and through something as simple as basketball I started seeing more and more of this.

I dreaded the day I would have to leave the trash talk on the court, the serious talks on the sidelines and the communal prayer after one of the players got hurt. It wasn't basketball anymore; it was a place where we all found common ground leaving prejudice and backgrounds aside. And as the last day approached the guys could not have made it harder for me when player after player came up to voice his dismay in my leave asking me to move down, asking why I couldn't even just stay for the rest of the year. I was so taken back, so humbled, but most of all I know now that every time I put my basketball shoes on it is for nothing but one reason, sharing the love of Christ.

Ben, St. John's University, Collegeville, MN

Last spring when I first received word that I was offered a Kids Club staff position I was overwhelmed with joy! I was even more excited a couple weeks later when I finally received word that I was placed in Daytona Beach, FL. Now I knew what I would be doing for the summer: living somewhere away from home, meeting and working with three other young men and women on my

staff (who would become some of my closest friends) and basically just hanging out/playing with kids and showing them the love of Jesus all summer long!

It seemed like it would all be pretty smooth and easy…

After our first week of programming, I could tell that the summer was not going to be quite as easy as I thought. The virtue that became the theme for the summer was “patience.” This was especially true in my specific role in running Kids Club every day. The kids who came to Kids Club in Daytona Beach were, at times, quite challenging to work with.

On the first day of Kids Club we had over ten kids show up, which was a great success considering we didn’t have any type of pre-registration. Gradually, by the end of the first week, and then by the end of week two, fewer kids were continuing to come. However, one young boy named Modarian didn’t miss a single day of Kids Club in those first two weeks. For the others, attendance was very much day-to-day. It was never easy to tell whether we would have fifteen kids coming for the day, or perhaps only five or six. This struggle to bring more kids from the community to our great program of Kids Club really weighed me down, but Modarian was one kid that I could count on to always come. One weekend in the beginning of the summer he even helped me recruit more kids by riding his bike around his neighborhood with me and telling his friends how much fun he had coming and learning and playing every day.

As the summer went on, more kids started to come to Kids Club. By the end of the summer our average number of kids each day was in the 20s. There were often kids who didn’t want to participate in activities, who wouldn’t listen and participate in the skits, and who would disobey the rules simply because they wanted to break the rules! There were even a couple minor fights that broke out between the kids. No matter what the situation, the policy for discipline at our Kids Club was to talk about the situation with the kids involved and try and solve the problem through discussion. This approach always took a great deal of patience. Perhaps the one thing that I stressed more than any other while introducing the kids to the high school and junior high youth there to serve each week was, “God does not create bad kids!” The kids only need our patience, attention and love. This is what Kids Club is all about!

I am so happy that I was given the opportunity to work for YouthWorks this past summer. I am especially grateful that I was given the Kids Club staff position. There were days this summer when I wished that I had responsibilities other than leading 15 youth and 25 five to ten years olds, but looking back I know that I was in the right position. I miss all of the kids from Daytona Beach that came to Kids Club so much every day! What makes me happy and excited is to know that YouthWorks will be back in Daytona next summer, and that Kids Club will continue to be a safe and fun place for the kids of this community to hang out and come and learn the love of Jesus.

Brett, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN

Spending my summer as a Work Projects staff on the Mohawk Reservation, I experienced what it means to be part of the Church. This was not confined by a physical structure or associated with a specific congregation. It was the body of Christ that came from many different places and different congregations. The crazy part is that it was comprised of seven different weeks of people that never met each other, but they were doing the same work. The Mohawk community saw us as a single Church comprised of many individuals that came to love and serve their community. It blows my mind that I, as a YouthWorks staff, saw what the Church is capable of making happen.

Every week this summer, new high school youth spent their time serving in the nursing homes. Because of this consistency, Michael always had a partner that he could beat in Monopoly. Frank had many ears to listen to his stories. Grace had someone to hold her hand. After only two weeks of serving there, a nurse mentioned, “We’ve already seen an improvement in the emotional states of the residents since you started coming.”

I led many high school youth in painting various homes. They took this time to build relationships with the homeowners. As a result, homeowners like Ernestine learned that young people are willing to serve. Angie started searching for a church in the community. Theresa simply made new friends.

It was through a continual presence of having 60 new people come each week that we were able to stretch so far into a community. A buzz of our presence was created, and it wasn’t the negative buzz that they previously knew from Christians. It was a buzz that some Christians were there to simply serve. It was love. By being there all summer, it was something that I could watch develop. This was unlike weeklong trips I have been on where I only see an impact on an individual level. Here, I saw our impact on a community level. God just blew my mind away by showing me a new definition of what it means to be part of the Church.

Karen, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Vernon Hills, IL

An excerpt from Karen’s summer journal:
This week, I experienced so many simple pleasures. On the first day that we worked at Ellen’s house, she fed our youth a huge dinner of chicken dumplings, two types of cake, and green beans from the garden, biscuits, mashed potatoes and sweet tea! When Drew and I dropped off Ethyl’s tupperware at her house, she invited us in and I experienced the hospitality of a woman who quietly loves through feeding people. We ate huge chunks of banana bread, iced tea like Grandma makes it and chicken casserole.

During our Wednesday evening church service, as I listened to Pastor John say how thankful he was to preach to so many different people this summer, I realized that God had given us to this ‘country-boy from up a holler’, as he refers to himself, as a gift, perhaps for his faithful service over the years. Thursday, our last day of programming, the Lord gave us this unique day in which the sun seemed to shine with a deeper light than I had noticed all summer and the clouds were puffy and big, like those in Colorado before the afternoon summer showers.
Our adult leaders this week served us as a staff. One man in his fifties from Iowa who earned the name ‘Cookie’ on a previous mission trip did little things all the time for the staff and kids, like serving quietly by cleaning. When I went down to prep for breakfast crew at 6:30 on Wednesday morning, another adult leader, Tom, had already made the coffee and put out the first part of breakfast. And now as I write, I sit at Jan and Ken’s coffee shop, Country at Heart, stomach full with a pimento cheese sandwich. God gave me so many simple pleasures this week that made me smile and bubble over with excitement. I also experienced the pain of people that I could not stop. So I just sought Jesus in the gospels and in our lives to see how he walked and what he calls us, his people, to.

At our community cookout, I got to meet Lizzy’s (Kids Club child) mother, a woman with blazing blue eyes who was the first female coal mining foreman in the state of Kentucky and who has walked with her six year old daughter through a brain tumor that doctors did not believe was a problem. Lizzy’s mom had only left her at two places in the last year and a half and allowing her to go to Kids Club made three. When they left on Thursday, her mom cried because this was the first place Lizzy had not been made fun of because of the paralysis of her left side, and because Lizzy had experienced the love of Jesus with the kids, our youth and my staff.

Also on Thursday afternoon at Kids’ Club, I listened to two of the children talk about drug use in their area. One lost his father to a drug overdose (prescription drug abuse down here is the big thing people get hooked on, although marijuana is used by many) but wouldn’t acknowledge it when his younger sister said their dad had done drugs. Instead he vehemently lashed out at her. The knowledge of drugs among the community children was shocking. One boy wanted to work for change, but said violence was the answer and that he was going to become a police officer and kill all the members of drug cartels. His junior high friend shot back that it was hopeless, that this was Kentucky and people just did drugs. Why do kids go through this?

I’m not sure what the answers are. I think the challenge of the Christian is to daily die to ourselves and live to Christ, and I have faith that as we seek to do so, we will find more and more delight, joy and security in Jesus.

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