Rich has been trying to persuade me into coming over and serving with him in the Youth Department at our church for several years. After 3 years of begging, I finally agreed to leave the Preschool Department & make my switch to High School. One of the main reasons I was not ready to come over was my fear of high school girls. I had a horrible time in middle school and high school as far as girls were concerned, most of them were just plain mean! Another reason was to get my “baby fix”. My first 2 years n Preschool were in the 2 and 3-year-old classes & my last year was in the nursery. I just loved being around all of those babies! The non-crying ones that is.
We started the school year late August & that’s when our new classes began. I’ve gone from 1-year-old babies who wear diapers, don’t speak and are sooo adorable to 14 year old girls! Yikes! What a difference, but you know what??? I LOVE IT! I love my teenage girls just as much as I loved my babies and they are great girls.
So about my new project… Pastor Victor approached me a few months ago & asked if I would be interested in being the “go to” person and start planning and organizing mission projects for our High Schoolers. He is my FB friend & saw all of my posts for mission projects I’m passionate about along with my journal from my experience in Uganda this summer. He thought for some reason I’d be a good person to help get this thing off the ground. I was up for the challenge & things are going very well!!
We are dividing the kids up by grade and I have assigned them a local charity/organization to partner with for this year. The 9th graders are going to work with Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa, the 10th graders are going to work with Lifecare of Brandon, the 11th grade is working with A Kids’ Place in Brandon and 12th grade is working with Good Samaritan in Wimaumau. We are going to introduce these projects to the kids in 2 weeks at Straight Up Weekend and get them excited about serving!! As of now, I am going to plan the projects with my contact person at each place, but then, the directors of each grade along with the teachers & students will be able to take off together and really get this moving!! Our goal is to complete a service project for each organization every quarter & over the next few years, make them completely student driven.
Take a look at these organizations & see if there are ways you can help too!
A Kid’s Place http://www.akidsplacetb.org/
Metropolitan Ministries http://www.metromin.org/
Lifecare of Brandon http://www.lifecareofbrandon.com/
Good Samaritan http://www.gsmission.org/joomla/
~Melissa
