T minus 4 days and I will be in the airport in Des Moines, Iowa, waiting for my sister to pick me up. And to say I have mixed feelings about it is a bit of an understatement.
Am I excited to go home? Of course! It's always wonderful to be with my family. But at the same time, things have sort of leveled off here with the roomies and life - I've finally readjusted from my last trip home - and now it's transition time again.
I'm starting to wonder if life is just one tranisition after another. It sure seems that way sometimes.
Regardless of the emotional implications that come from adjusting from one environment to another, I'm glad for the opportunity to experience it all. It's definitely forcing me to grow into a flexible human being!
Work has been completely unstressful, which is amazing! I don't think I've had this low of a level of stress since 4th grade!
But after last week's confirmation class, I think we deserve a little bit of a lull! We had a pretty intense class, which involved blindfolding 70 14-17 year olds and requiring them to be absolutely quiet for 40 minutes. We couldn't have done it without the Holy Spirit's help!
The overall theme for the year is "You have a God who loves you and will be at your side, no matter what". The sub-theme we've been focusing on the last few weeks is the idea of being named - What is our name, and what name does God call us? The first week we had the kids draw comic strips of different situations in which they are called different names - when they're with their friends, what do their parents call them, and what does God call them? - and how what they are called makes them feel.
The meditation last week played off the last question - What does God call you? - by focusing on the auditory sense (hence the blindfolds). The whole thing started off with a dialogue between a person and God - God saying things like "I love you"; "I created you"; "You are mine", and the person saying "But I don't feel loved"; "I wish I'd never been born"; "I'm alone" - things everyoen feels at some point in their life, but emotions that teens most likely encounter on a daily basis.
Then we read part of a story we read the week before about a gang member who was in a juvenile detention center, talking with a priest, and shedding his tough layers, until he gets to the point where he tells the priest what his mom calls him when "she's not pissed at me".
Since last week was the feast day of The Virgen of Guadalupe (she's HUGE in the Latino culture), we also read part of the story of Juan Diego (if you're interested in finding out what it is, look it up! It's a charming story).
Mingled in with these stories and dialogue were a few songs - one being Tupac's 'Dear Momma', which really pulled them in.
Man, I can't tell you how amazing it was to see these kids go from not being fidgety and unable to resist lifting their blindfolds to sitting quietly, mouthing the words to a song they knew by heart and really connecting to what we were saying. They GOT it.
What happened last Tuesday with the kids is one of those events that gives you the energy and inspiration to keep going in spite of the challenges and failures that people in ministry/education/anything having to do with youth face. Praise the Lord for that!
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