Young Life

On this blog I have already mentioned Young Life several times. This is because it is one of the most important pieces of my life here in Ohio. In fact, last year when I was trying to figure out what to do and where to go after college the first thing that I felt God telling me was that I needed to stay in the Springfield area so that I could still be involved in Young Life.

Young Life is a high school outreach ministry. Leaders are assigned to high schools and the teams of leaders at each high school reach out to kids in three big ways; club, campaigners and contact work.

I was assigned to Southeastern High School in South Charleston, OH. I serve there with three co-leaders: Nicole, Dave and Kyle (in the photo L-R).

Nicole and Dave are a married couple and Kyle is a Cedarville student. I am really lucky to have them as my "COs" because we get along really well as a team and they are so fun to be around.

To explain the basics of YL:

CLUB-is an hour-long time of singing, playing games, doing stupid skits, and basically having fun and making kids laugh. At the end one of the leaders shares part of the gospel for about 10 minutes. We progress from explaining who Christ is to what He did to why He died. Club is for kids who don't know who Jesus is and are probably not going to church to learn about Him. At Southeastern we are unique because we

have club on Thursday mornings before the kids go to school. We have three old men who cook breakfast for them, we have club and then send them to school right down the street. It is the best way to start the day!

Campaingers- is a bible study we have every Thursday night. It is a great time to talk to kids in depth and for most of them it's the only time all week that they read or talk about the Bible.

Contact Work- is basically just hanging out with kids and getting to them. It starts out with

having fun but it usually grows into sharing my heart with them and listening to them talk about their lives. I go to a lot of high school sporting events, plays, coffee dates and the county fair to hang out with my kids. (That's me and my girls at camp ->)

Being involved in Southeastern Young Life has been the best part of living in Ohio. I grew up hearing about my mom's adventures as a Young Life leader (yes, I am second-generation!) and I knew that her YL relationships were still a huge part of her life. So, even before I knew all the details of YL and before I made these relationships I knew that God was going to use Young Life in my life and it was going to be a great thing.

Because of being a leader I get to stand in front of 40+ kids and talk about Jesus AND I get to

listen to the details of girls' lives and talk about Jesus. I have been challenged in huge ways and have done things I never thought I would do (Exhibit A: I ran a half-marathon with 14 other leaders to raise money for our kids ->)

I am sure I will write about Young Life and my time at Southeastern more on this blog so I am glad that you can know understand a little bit more about it :)