Every Week is Different

Well, week 4 has come and gone and I can't believe that in the midst of this week we passed the halfway point in our summer with students. God has done amazing things in the past 4 weeks and I am just a little, ok a lot excited about what He is going to do in the last three weeks here in Nashville.

The week started off with a lot of promise, a high energy opening celebration got our hopes up that this was going to be a great group of students, who were energized and ready to go. As the week went on, though, their energy level began to drop drastically. Every AM Show was a challenge to get them awake and energized, and for my group that energy never really came. We do a lot of activities in bible study to get the students awake and active and this week nothing seemed to engage the students in my group. I pray that God spoke to them and worked in them somehow through the week of bible study.

Ministry site this week was the strangest of the summer so far. It started off normal enough, rough at first to try to get my students engaged with the kids at the center which is normal. The first couple of days I enjoyed spending time in the pool with some of my students and it was really great to get to invest in them each afternoon in the pool, but I realized that this was attributing to them being engaged with the kids so we started to split up in the afternoons. For the rest of the summer, I'm going to do a lot of encouragement the first night to prevent clusters of students throughout the week so that more ministry can be done.

Thursday at site was the most stressful, but one of the most rewarding days of my life. The morning went on as normal, but as we walked out of lunch there was a commotion at the end of the hall. I walked towards the commotion and when I looked out the door, I saw a girl laying on the ground after being tackled and a gun laying on the ground a few feet away. I immediately got my students and adults into the gym with instructions not to let kids leave the building. I then tried to herd the kids on site into the gym and away from the door. The kids were very resistant to this and started to hit, kick and push me as they ran back to the door. My nerves were on edge throughout, but we did eventually manage to get them all into the gym as the center went on lockdown. Even once they were in the gym they kept picking sides and I was afraid for a while a riot was going to break out in the gym. Finally we headed to the pool which did cool off the situation a good bit, but at the pool we had some things stolen which was a rough thing to handle.

The week finished up nicely at site, though. On friday, a new staffer was brought into the center and apparently a lot of structure is soon to be put into Easley which will make the last three weeks there a lot different than the first four. I will actually get to plan and assign some of my students to different tasks in the center which will be fun. I will miss the staffer that this new one replaced, but if it means structure than I will take it. I do think that the non-structure that I dealt with taught me a lot and taught the people there with me a lot as well. It taught me to roll with the punches and that ministry doesn't have to happen in the confines of a structured environment. I am really excited, though, because having structure means that a lot more intentional ministry will be possible because kids will be stuck in rooms with my students for an hour at a time which will be wonderful.

All in all i had a good week and look forward to making some changes and making the next three even better.