We had a youth leader Christmas party last night, and the whole intention of the thing was to honor our leaders. I think it went really well. It had kind of a coffee house look and feel to it, with alternating music acts, students and staff speaking, skits, etc. I think the leaders really felt appreciated, which was the overall goal. It was neat to be a part of.
A very very rough paraphrase of what I said (everyone only had 2 minutes):
This past summer, we took a team of middle schoolers
to help out a missionary supported by Grace, a guy who
sends fixed cars all over the world.
One of the ways we served him was by mowing the edge of a cow pasture.
On the outside edge of this pasture was a electric fence
that had been turned off.
When we got up there, I held up one of the wires to get our mowers through
and about 20 seconds later, I got shocked. And it really hurt.
One of our leaders, NLind, was mowing all day but was really scared of the
fence. She was just petrified of it.
And I remember right after she got shocked, we all got shocked that day. Her face was really red,
she was half crying and half laughing, and she was really jittery,
hyper. She also had this look like she had just gotten this huge rush.
I think its a great picture about all of you in this room. You take students
to this edge, and sometimes we are scared of it, sometimes its unpredictable,
and sometimes we get shocked. It's risky, hyper, jittery.
But in the end, thank you all for being willing to go to that edge with
your students, and thanks for being willing to get shocked like that
every once in a while, for the sake of these kids around here.
Oh, and I work with a staff team that is incredible.
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