Being a disciple of Christ means a lot of things. For starters, it means learning about Jesus and growing closer to Him, practicing your faith and serving others. We've got opportunities coming up that will allow you to do all of those things!
Here's what we've got planned for the next few months - (mark your calendars, set your sights on Christ!)
Learning - finding out more what it means to be a disciple!
Food for Thought! every Sunday at 11:00 in the Youth Room
Winter Retreat! Friday January 24-Sunday, January 26 at Michindoh. We will be a part of their teen retreat weekend. (Cost $105)
Practicing - doing stuff! Youth group on the 2nd and 4th Sunday evenings from 6:30-8:00. This is not just a time for fellowship, but also a time where we can be doing some service for others, and sharing our faith. Sunday nights are perfect times to bring friends!
September 22 - making care packages for college students, games and possibly campfire (weather permitting)
October 13 - Corn Maze
October 27 - campfire/s'mores and stuff
November 10 - Operation Christmas Child (extended youth group time)
November 24 - possibly bell ringing for the Salvation Army
December 8 - Christmas Cards for seniors, treats and movie
December 22 - rehearsal for Christmas Eve service
Serving - serving others means serving Christ!
October 13 - Crop Walk (after church)
October 26 - Running games at Trunk or Treat 4:00-6:00
November 3 - Sandwich Ministry (after church)
November 10 - Operation Christmas Child (we will collect and pack shoe boxes to send overseas)
November 17 - Serving Breakfast to the Homeless Guests at FUMC in Plymouth - 5:30-7:30 AM
November 24 - Ringing bells for the Salvation Army during youth group time
December 8 - Making Christmas cards for seniors during youth group time
December 26 - Boxing Night! all night long!
January 5 - Sandwich Ministry (after church)
January 11 - Taking donations to Fort Street
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
It's almost time for fall!!
Here we go!
We're getting ready to kick off another great year of High School Ministry at Geneva. I'm looking forward to all the activities and events we're planning, but I'm also looking forward to being able to see everyone grow in their faith and grow closer to Jesus.
In a side column you can sign up to bring food for our weekly fellowship/education/small group time called Food for Thought. (Now you can click on the date on THIS site and it will take you to the Sign-up Genius site! How easy can you get??) We meet EVERY Sunday during the 11:00 service in the Youth Room.
Also in a side column, you can see the events and activities planned for each month. These activities are subject to change, so check back often! FYI We'll have youth fellowship on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month from 6:30-8:00. I hope everyone can come, and BRING FRIENDS. The more people we have, the more fun we'll have!
Are you ready??
Sunday, July 28, 2013
We're back... now what?
Hey everyone, we've been back from our mission trip for a week now. I hope you are thinking about how the trip impacted your faith, how you met and served God in Minnesota and how you can continue spending time with God and serving him here in Michigan.
Every year Youthworks, through their magazine Reverb (you ALL got one as you left ....) lets us know about their 1K challenge to kickstart some service/community minded ministry in our area. I'd like to challenge you all to think about this seriously. Would you like to start a once a month lunch/sandwich ministry in Detroit? (We made a big impact in the few we handed out in June, we could make it a once a month bigger project, maybe even get more youth involved!) Would you like to start and run a community garden in the back of our church? (thoughts are already forming on this with some adults from the church) Is there something else you can think of?
Give it some thought... let me know, and I'll help you fill out the paperwork to submit to Youthworks/Reverb.
For more information on the 1K challenge, click here
Every year Youthworks, through their magazine Reverb (you ALL got one as you left ....) lets us know about their 1K challenge to kickstart some service/community minded ministry in our area. I'd like to challenge you all to think about this seriously. Would you like to start a once a month lunch/sandwich ministry in Detroit? (We made a big impact in the few we handed out in June, we could make it a once a month bigger project, maybe even get more youth involved!) Would you like to start and run a community garden in the back of our church? (thoughts are already forming on this with some adults from the church) Is there something else you can think of?
Give it some thought... let me know, and I'll help you fill out the paperwork to submit to Youthworks/Reverb.
For more information on the 1K challenge, click here
Sunday, July 21, 2013
We are back from Red Lake!!
What a week! It was brutal at times and oh so beautiful at other times! I learned so much and saw God doing such wonderful work through the greatest group of young adults I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with. I am sure we are all glad to be home enjoying family and the comforts of home, but we will all remember this mission and pray for those we served and served with this past week!
Friday, July 19, 2013
Our last day at Red Lake...
From Beth:
Working in kids club today was amazing. Josh & Paul, another teen from our crew (Wisdom Rocks!), were leading the Bible story time. Yesterday was a little difficult because many of the kids didn't want to sit and listen to us talk. Today, however, many of the kids responded when we asked them questions and all of them were excited to help us do the review puzzle we made that said "Jesus ate with people like us!" It was so much fun to see how much the kids were enjoying themselves and so many of them wanted to be the one to put a word together. The best part was probably how happy the kids sounded when we read the phrase out loud together.
All in all the day went smoothly and I'm looking forward to being able to use this experience when I help out in VBS next week back home!
From Angie:
We spent our morning today doing work projects at two locations. Seak was at the woman's shelter and Wisdom was at the senior care center. We spent a few hours working and then took our lunch break. After lunch it was back to kids club. I was impressed by our youth. YW runs the kids club similar to a VBS. but for each center, OUR youth made up the entire lesson, with very little help, and then ran their lesson. When Beth mentioned the puzzle they made - they actually came up with the idea and MADE the puzzle. Awesome. Dinner was a community cookout at the Mission church. However after having the threat of rain every day and never seeing a drop, we got rain, lots and lots of rain. Kudos to Mike for getting totally soaked bringing all the food back to the school so we could still have our community picnic. It was good to meet some of the parents of kids club kids and hear that the kids have been telling their parents about Jesus! Our club time tonight included the YW tradition of foot washing. It is very emotional as each of us has our feet washed and are then individually prayed over. Our youth kept up the Geneva tradition of washing the feet of the YW staff. Then we had a fun bed time song which included Aladdin (ask Josh about that one!) we had a good week but are really excited to start heading home. :-)
Working in kids club today was amazing. Josh & Paul, another teen from our crew (Wisdom Rocks!), were leading the Bible story time. Yesterday was a little difficult because many of the kids didn't want to sit and listen to us talk. Today, however, many of the kids responded when we asked them questions and all of them were excited to help us do the review puzzle we made that said "Jesus ate with people like us!" It was so much fun to see how much the kids were enjoying themselves and so many of them wanted to be the one to put a word together. The best part was probably how happy the kids sounded when we read the phrase out loud together.
All in all the day went smoothly and I'm looking forward to being able to use this experience when I help out in VBS next week back home!
From Angie:
We spent our morning today doing work projects at two locations. Seak was at the woman's shelter and Wisdom was at the senior care center. We spent a few hours working and then took our lunch break. After lunch it was back to kids club. I was impressed by our youth. YW runs the kids club similar to a VBS. but for each center, OUR youth made up the entire lesson, with very little help, and then ran their lesson. When Beth mentioned the puzzle they made - they actually came up with the idea and MADE the puzzle. Awesome. Dinner was a community cookout at the Mission church. However after having the threat of rain every day and never seeing a drop, we got rain, lots and lots of rain. Kudos to Mike for getting totally soaked bringing all the food back to the school so we could still have our community picnic. It was good to meet some of the parents of kids club kids and hear that the kids have been telling their parents about Jesus! Our club time tonight included the YW tradition of foot washing. It is very emotional as each of us has our feet washed and are then individually prayed over. Our youth kept up the Geneva tradition of washing the feet of the YW staff. Then we had a fun bed time song which included Aladdin (ask Josh about that one!) we had a good week but are really excited to start heading home. :-)
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Immersed in Red Lake
Hi Geneva Family from Dan! Today we all got to experience Red Lake in every sense of the word. Though we are on separate work teams, we all ended up working together today. After a morning orientation from Jenna, we set off to work at kids club. When I was here in 2005, kids club was in the elementary school,and the Youth Works staff had the entire building at their disposal. This year, the elementary school said "no" to their building request. As usual, the YW staff had to adapt on the fly. On the reservation, there is an organization called "Boys and girls club". This is a non-religious organization that works with children from ages 4-13(ish). When YW asked them the unthinkable...."hey,would you let us come into your club, bring dozens of teens and their adult leaders, and run an 8 week program teaching who Jesus Christ is to the kids on the reservation?" .....they said "yes!" Praise God for his mysterious ways! So the entire Geneva team spent the day teaching scripture "then Jesus replied, 'I am the bread do life, He who comes tome will not go hungry, and he who believes in me will never thirst". And we played games, and we did art projects, what a day! After the club ended, we had to drive some of the kids home, which in itself was a trip! These kids wanted to milk every minute of time with our kids, and purposely told us the wrong turns in order to prolong the ride home! They are precious children,though many of them have seen and experienced things no child should. I was shocked and near tears when I dropped off Carl and his little sister to a trailer that had a sinking foundation, broken and boarded windows, no grass, mud everywhere, and it was worse inside. I was once again reminded of how blessed we are,and how far we have left to go to get our world back to the order in which God intended it. After a physically and emotionally draining day, it felt awesome to go swimming in beautiful Red Lake! We drove to the beach and had about an hour to relax and swim. I decided to swim out and down the lakeshore , and as I swam, I looked up and saw an eagle flying out over the water. I had to stop swimming and just watch it fly. It was so beautiful. When I returned, I told the group what I had seen, and asked them to guess what bible verse I thought of when I saw the eagle flying. It didn't take long for Jessica to say "Isaiah 40!" Our group never ceases to amaze and bless me! Thanks for all your prayers, we feel the power of your love here every day. One more day with these wonderful children, and we will be homeward bound! Peace and love, Dan.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Tuesday at Red Lake......
From Josh:
Today the Wisdom group went to the only church on the reservation for its work site. When we got there we split into two groups. The first headed upstairs and began painting a room. The second headed outside to begin moving things around to prepare for a garage sale. This involved moving lots of heavy objects, including furniture, from building to building. I spent my morning painting. It was hot and stuffy, but we pushed through. We had the entire room covered in one coat of paint by lunchtime! After lunch I switched over to to help move things around to get stuff for the garage sale ready. We had to move a room of heavy items into the gym and make it presentable for sale. It was very inspiring to see the incredible work ethic each and every person showed. Near the end we had to move a large couch. As we were trying to relocate this couch to the gym, we had a lot of difficulty getting it through two doorways. We were even forced to take a door off! However we persevered and got the couch where it needed to be. I cannot express how thrilling it is to see God all around us in so many ways!
From Angie:
Breakfast today was waffles and sausage. It was prepared by the Seek group. That means some of us had to get up earlier than usual to make it. The rest of us appreciated it!
After breakfast Wisdom group had to do building clean up - yep, we cleaned the bathrooms. I hope everyone appreciated that!
After clean up time we have Devo time, aka devotional time. This is done alone, just each of us and God. Today's lesson included the "un" story. We talked with God about how we see ourselves, and others, using "un" words - unworthy, unloved, un accepted, unhelpful, etc. but God doesn't see us that way at all. I like that, in addition to work, these mission trips include time to pray and time to praise God. Then we went to work.
As Josh said we spent the day painting and moving heavy items. The Seak group joined us after lunch. None of the areas had air conditioning and like Michigan, it was in the 90s today. HOT! We really needed showers today.
Dinner was pizza at a park in Bemidji (look it up on a map!) It was fun to play and be near Bemidji lake. Then we got Dairy Queen - yummy!
Well, time for lights out. Like Josh said, I have been amazed by the work ethic of all the teens here. God is amazing in how he is working in the lives of so many teens from different places in our country. Praise God!
Today the Wisdom group went to the only church on the reservation for its work site. When we got there we split into two groups. The first headed upstairs and began painting a room. The second headed outside to begin moving things around to prepare for a garage sale. This involved moving lots of heavy objects, including furniture, from building to building. I spent my morning painting. It was hot and stuffy, but we pushed through. We had the entire room covered in one coat of paint by lunchtime! After lunch I switched over to to help move things around to get stuff for the garage sale ready. We had to move a room of heavy items into the gym and make it presentable for sale. It was very inspiring to see the incredible work ethic each and every person showed. Near the end we had to move a large couch. As we were trying to relocate this couch to the gym, we had a lot of difficulty getting it through two doorways. We were even forced to take a door off! However we persevered and got the couch where it needed to be. I cannot express how thrilling it is to see God all around us in so many ways!
From Angie:
Breakfast today was waffles and sausage. It was prepared by the Seek group. That means some of us had to get up earlier than usual to make it. The rest of us appreciated it!
After breakfast Wisdom group had to do building clean up - yep, we cleaned the bathrooms. I hope everyone appreciated that!
After clean up time we have Devo time, aka devotional time. This is done alone, just each of us and God. Today's lesson included the "un" story. We talked with God about how we see ourselves, and others, using "un" words - unworthy, unloved, un accepted, unhelpful, etc. but God doesn't see us that way at all. I like that, in addition to work, these mission trips include time to pray and time to praise God. Then we went to work.
As Josh said we spent the day painting and moving heavy items. The Seak group joined us after lunch. None of the areas had air conditioning and like Michigan, it was in the 90s today. HOT! We really needed showers today.
Dinner was pizza at a park in Bemidji (look it up on a map!) It was fun to play and be near Bemidji lake. Then we got Dairy Queen - yummy!
Well, time for lights out. Like Josh said, I have been amazed by the work ethic of all the teens here. God is amazing in how he is working in the lives of so many teens from different places in our country. Praise God!
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