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!

October (a little late)

I am so sorry to be late with the monthly blog post but whew, October and November have been FULL months!

Our schools and clubs are back in full swing. We are still doing Windermere Young Life Club after school on Tuesdays with Melissa and Ryan Yates. The students get to hear two of their teachers call them to life to the full in Jesus and it is beautiful, holy chaos! Also we get to watch them rock at basketball which Melissa has a sweet spot in her heart for!!

We have switched Central Young Life to afterschool AT the high school (thank you Principal Galanis) and it is booming! The other "official" leaders for this club are Keith and Lori Doster who the kids adore, and we seem to attract a lot of visitors that we are praying will turn into more leaders so that we can continue to grow!

These clubs are the favorite part of the week for a lot of people-me included!! Thank you Lord for the chance to laugh and sing and learn about Your incredible love with these awesome friends!!

Ben and I have been really blessed this semester to get to know the teenagers in our settlement better through the Small Group (Campaigners) that we have at our house every Thursday. The girls and I had started with this last semester but it is so cool to have Ben and the guys with us as well. It is crazy the stuff we have been allowed to see as our friends give us pictures into their world. I won't share more but will simply ask that as you see this you take a moment to pray for these friends that have captured our hearts so fully!!

 

 

 

I have to share these pictures with you as well. We were a part of the Ride for Hope on island the last weekend in October, which is a 100-mile bike ride on Eleuthera to raise money for cancer! Our sweet friends have been praying for and fighting along side of my Aunt Brucie back in the states who is fighting the battle against cancer right now. The day of the race while we were volunteering the took pictures holding a sign that said "4 Brucie". Please join my family and our friends all over the world as we pray for my incredible Aunt and all those that we love who have been impacted by this disease!

 



Thank you, each of you, for your prayers and support of Young Life on Eleuthera!! The Lord is doing amazing things here and because of you we get the chance to be a part of them!!