End of Year Updates

As we wind down the 2013-2014 school year and I look back over the past semester I am reminded over and over again how faithful the Lord has been to us and to the dream He has given us and each of you. Young Life is PLANTED… stake in the ground, not going anywhere kind of planted! This is exciting, not because it is Young Life (though we all know how much I love this ministry), but because adults are loving kids in the name and GRACE of Jesus and watching them move from darkness to light!

Before I give an update I want to share with you a verse that we talked about in our last club at Central: "When they saw the courage of Peter and John, and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus." (Acts 4:15) 

We had just finished a semester of a semester of talking about who Jesus is and a couple weeks of what sin, the cross and the resurrection mean for us. Alot of our high school friends have been to church before and have heard scripture read but Jesus is not the focus...they do not have a clear picture of who He is or what the cross means. A relationship with Jesus is a foreign concept to most, but it also the most life-changing when it is grasped. Jesus is being made tangible; kids can relate to him. We are getting to demonstrate this scripture to kids as ordinary people that offer extraordinary love because we have been with Jesus. And kid's hearts are opening up to the idea of what it means to "be with Jesus" themselves. Pray that these awesome conversations continue and we look to the Lord continuously for direction as we walk through this with our friends.

And now the updates J: At Central Eleuthera we are growing by leaps and bounds! At the end of the semester we have a rocking club, two awesome small groups (campaigners) covering three settlements and a BAHAMIAN leader going through training to start it in another settlement! Please continue praying for more leadership to join us! Specifically a girl and guy leader for Governor’s Harbor and a guy leader for Palmetto point.

At Windermere our combined Wyldlife/Young Life Club is going great and we have exciting plans to start a Young Life small group in the fall! This was a bittersweet last club for me because it will be my last time leading at this school…bitter because I’ll miss those kids but so so sweet because it means that our leadership team there is ready to take over fully. I am beyond proud of them and the way they love Jesus and those kids, please join me in praying with them this summer as they prepare for this new adventure!

In other exciting news, we will be starting two new clubs this fall, one in Spanish Wells (led by a potential new staff) and one at North Eleuthera High School. We have had people praying to get Young Life into these two schools for years now and the dream is becoming a reality! Please join us in praying for more leadership to come alongside these schools specifically and for us to be sensitive to how the Lord is leading us in these places!

I will follow this next piece of news with a separate blog post when we have more details in place but what we do know is that after two years of people in Nassau praying to get Young Life started there, the Lord is showing us that the timing is right. I just interviewed and went through training with our new friend Tyrra, who will be our first ever staff in Nassau! Please pray that the meetings we have with committee and potential leaders there on June 1^st go well and that the Lord’s direction is clear as He leads us in these next steps!

And finally, a personal note. Thank you so much to each of you who have been so supportive of Ben and I and our family and we walked with my Aunt Brucie to meet Jesus face to face. She was such an incredible woman and her legacy is that she loved well and unconditionally, the same way she knew Jesus loved her! She taught us to do the same. Her loss is unbearable at moments for our family but friends like you guys have loved us so deeply and pointed us to Jesus and His promises…and for that we will be forever thankful!

It has been a big end of the semester and I am still amazed and thankful that Ben and I get to be a part of all that the Lord is doing here! Thanks for being in this with us, making our work here possible through prayers and financial support and for being a part of getting to walk with kids into the incredible LOVE and GRACE of Jesus!

2014 Begins With A Bang!!

Hello from Eleuthera Young Life! I apologize for the delay in blog posts...2014 has proved to be a very busy year for Young Life on our little island! We got back the beginning of January from our whirlwind Christmas trip and training and hit the ground running!!

Our Young Life club at Windermere started right away, and it was so good to catch up with all the teachers, leaders and students after their Christmas break. We are starting a Wyldlife at Windermere this semester and combining it with the existing Young Life Club for now. This gives us two separate sets of leaders for the younger and older crowd as well as beefing up our club numbers. Club is always more fun with more people there and at a school as small as Windermere that can be a challenge! Pray for direction as we experiment to figure out the best way to grow here! It is an exciting time at Windermere as we begin to transition to our leaders there taking full ownership of Young Life at their school!!

At CEHS (Central Eleuthera High School) we started club back in the beginning of February and our students grades 10-12 came out in full force! Starting week one we gave some of our Grade 12 friends different responsibilities at club and they made all of us sooo proud!! They led games, helped work the equipment and helped their younger or new friends feel right at home! This is exactly what every leader dreams about: High school kids are catching the vision of Young Life and growing it...and that is SO SO AWESOME!

We started small group in Gregory Town back up the beginning of January and have loved to getting closer and closer with this amazing group of kids we love!

Keith and Lori Doster, two of our Central Leaders, began meeting with their JC/Hatchet Bay small group in February and are so excited to grow with that group of High School friends.

Small groups (in the states we call them Campaigners) in each settlement are going to be the key to lasting change on our Island. Because it is so long and thin, transportation is extremely difficult for everyone especially high school students. Having the support and community that a small group offers right in your settlement makes a HUGE difference. We are asking people to pray for future Young Life leaders that live in Governor's Harbour and Palmetto Point. These two settlements have a ton of kids involved in Young Life Club but no leaders from their areas to do a small group specifically for them!

Another piece of huge exciting news it that we will be doing our first EVER Eleuthera Young Life camp this summer. We are pulling together an expeditions team from the states to help put the camp on. They will do everything from serving meals to leading games, freeing the YL leaders up to bond and grow with their high school friends! All of us are so excited about this opportunity!! We still need quite a few volunteers so if you would like to be a part of this, please contact me and I will send you information and a link to apply! Please pray that we have enough volunteers sign up to make this week truly an excellent one, setting a great precedent for years to come!

In other news, the Lord has opened up many doors this last month to partner and connect with other Bahamian adults who are passionate about ministry to young people! I can't even begin to describe what an incredible feeling it is to be in the room with these friends and know that the Lord is pulling all of us together for His good will! Please pray for these relationships to deepen and grow and for wisdom in how to bring us all together!

The Lord has showered Eleuthera Young Life with blessing after blessing these past couple months and Ben and I are so grateful to each of you for being such a huge part the work He is doing here. Thank you for sharing your lives, resources and passion with us and allowing us to do the same!

A Month of Thanksgiving!!

November left us with a lot of stuff to be thankful for, well every month does but it just happens that November has a whole holiday dedicated to the idea of giving thanks- so that will be the theme of this post!

The first weekend in November we got to attend our Regional Committee/Leader weekend in Puerto Rico with Melissa Yates (leader at Windermere), Chis and Ashley Darling (potential Central leaders) and Nicole McCardy (potential first Committee). It was so cool to be able to see what we do through our Bahamian friends eyes and see them catch the excitement for what Young Life can be on the island. These new Bahamian leaders and Committee are key to creating sustainable ministry here and I ask for your prayers for them and their involvement with us!

We also got to have Ben's parents visit for the first time! It was an amazing visit and so wonderful to feel like a little bit of "home" had come to this new home! We got to play tourists for a few days and it was amazing to Ben and I all the parts of the island that we take for granted because it is our home and "real world", not vacation. We got to share so much of what we do here with Carla and Brad and it was fun to step back and be reminded of all the things the Lord is doing through Young Life here! As the kids kept popping by, anxious to meet them, I could see Brad and Carla really getting why we are here doing what we are and their hearts being captivating the same way Ben and I have been!

Thanksgiving lasted about a week for us this year! We shared the holiday the Friday and Saturday before with our Bahamian friends and families. Pam cooked a Bahamian feast Friday night and we all cooked our traditional favorites to bring to dinner together on Saturday!

On the Real Thanksgiving Day we had a potluck dinner with all our Gregory Town YL Small Group kids! Everyone brought something whether it was a can of corn or a hug tin of Macaroni and we watched the Polar Express! As we went around saying things we were thankful for, I totally got chocked up thinking about how so many things I was thankful for that were sitting in that room! Have I mentioned how much I adore these friends?!! Also the picture is of our home decorated with lights for this celebration...lights that slowly fell down as our duck tape succumbed to the moisture of our little Bahamian world! The kids (and Ben's) reactions were priceless!!

And finally the next day we shared Thanksgiving dinner with our American community on the island. There were about 10 adults and a handful of kids that have become so dear to us. We shared hearts and stories over our traditional meal and were thankful to realize that we are surrounded by such wonderful friends that share the same mission- to make Jesus's love known in whatever way we have been called to! Note: the power went out so the picture is more for our amusement that actually being able to see everyone's faces haha!

And as November came to a close that weekend, we celebrated the marriage of our dear friends mentioned above, Chris and Ashley Darling! It was a beautiful day full of love, laughter and most importantly centered on Christ!

Thank you, each of you, for the role you play in this ministry! Whether it is praying for our friends, encouraging Ben and I or providing the financial support to keep Young Life going here, we would not be here without you and we are thankful for you! Hope this Thanksgiving was a wonderful time to count the blessings that the Lord showers all our lives with daily!