The Messenger - April 2012 - (Page 3)

The Messenger Making Gentle A Bruised World APRIL 2012 Youth Ministry By George Swank A lot has been taking place in the Youth Ministry Program. As you may recall, we started a monthly event that we are calling Thirwed. To freshen your memory, Thirwed meets every third Wednesday (hence the name) and is all about growing spiritually. Our students do a lot of learning, connecting and even helping others, but there remains one area in which we were lacking . . . spiritual growth. Enter Thirwed; a time of worship and learning spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation. We had our first Thirwed meeting back in February and we will have had our second one on March 21 and again on April 18. Our first Thirwed was great! We sang together in worship and we took a hard look at praying. We settled misconceptions and got down to the absolute basics. This proved to be an excellent discussion. Then we took time to practice prayer. The students loved it and I came out of it thinking "Yeah! This is what we should be doing". We have also been continuing our every other month meeting for both the confirmation students and their mentors. This is a place for them to talk with one another, grow as a group and grow as a mentor/mentee pairing. These have been great for both the students and the adults. We often forget that we can learn just as much through interactions with a student as they can learn from us. New for the confirmation program this year was a daylong retreat at Gretna Glen. We discussed what exactly confirmation is and why it is a practice of ours. The students also started to work on their faith statements, which is part of the requirement to becoming confirmed. Then, later in the evening, the mentors joined us, and they broke off into their pairings and worked through the faith statements together. I was impressed with what came out of that day. Coming up this month, we have Rock Climbing at Reading Rocks (our favorite place!) on the 21st of April, from 12-5:30pm. We also have the One Day Without Shoes event on the 10th. April 10th is when we are asking everyone to go the whole day without shoes as much as possible. Why? To raise awareness about children in developing (and our own) countries who do not have shoes. There are many diseases that can be prevented just by wearing a pair of shoes and schools usually do not let children come if they do not have a pair of shoes. TOMS shoes is a company that helps these problems in a creative way. Instead of just raising money to acquire shoes through either donation or purchase, they sell shoes to anyone who wants them (many of our Youth, including myself, have a pair). "So how does that help?" you’re wondering. For every shoe purchased from TOMS, they give a brand new pair to a child in need. So not only do you look good, you are helping a child to fight disease and go to school. Cool, huh? April 10th, the youth are having an event at the Church from 6:30 until 8pm, to talk about these issues and to help raise awareness where we can. Check out www.toms.com for more information. That wraps up what’s happening in Youth Ministry. Happy Easter! 3 http://www.toms.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Messenger - April 2012

The Messenger - April 2012
Inside
Council’s Corner
Youth Ministry
Nothing But Spokes
Mission, Faith & Action
College Connection
Change of Address Updates
Reflections of Gratitude
Ministry Manna

The Messenger - April 2012