Disappearing post

Football

I'm back

So after a few months, many questions and a few scoldings, I am back on my blog.  I apologize for the delayed absence.  Over the summer I just got out of the habit of updating my blog and as with most things it was difficult to get back in the habit. 

So over the last three months, what are the most important things to update you on? Well, a brief overview of what has been happening since I last wrote back in July.  I took a vacation to Greece, which was amazing. Then I had some visitors, including my parents, come out at pther times in the summer.  Much of summer was devoted to planning for the coming school year.  I do not like planning, which might be a major understatement, so it was not what I would consider a fun part of the job.  We tried to get as much planning done as we could, club talks, games, special events, trips, small groups, etc so we would not need to spend a lot of time each week on planning. 

It is nice to be back in the swing of things with Clubs going again and school well underway.  Life here right now is busy. It might be the busiest I have ever been.  If I work less than 10 hours in a given day it is a bonus.  One reason things are so busy is I am coaching football at the high school. I am the offensive and defensive line coach for the varsity team. I will devote a blog in the next few days to that subject. 

I think thats enough for now. I will start posting much more frequently to try and catch you up on how things are out here. 

Back, but now leaving again.

We have returned safely from a great week in Romania. We took 8 students from our community, 4 boys, 4 girls, and along with a couple hundred students from other military installations in Europe went to work in Romania.  Our site was at a school.  We built a playground, did VBS style relational ministry, and also did a sports ministry for a week.  Seeing a hundred Romanian children running around and playing on the playground at the end of the week when we had completed it was an amazing thing to see.  But more than the labor, the relational ministry is what I believed left the biggest impression. A Romanian Mom was talking to Aretta, and their conversation went along the lines of the Mom asking if we would return next year. Aretta said she hoped so and if we came back we could build some other things and do more construction. The Mom then said that this ws not the reason she hoped we would return.  She said they really appreciated the playground and it will be really great to have, but it was our interactions with the children that make the biggest difference. She said people in that area, they don't smile a lot. After the first day when her kids came and played with the Americans, they went home and couldn't stop smiling and being excited.  She said we had brought some joy to them.  That was pretty cool to hear.

Sorry, no time to write more. I am leaving fro Greece in about 10 minutes.  21 hour bus ride back from Romania got us here at 7 a.m., now I am making a 20 plus hour car ride leaving at 1030 a.m. the very next day.  Not sure if that is smart, but it will be well worth it. This trip is just vacation, and I will be officially using my first vacation days ever as a "professional". Fun stuff. I am hoping to get a few more passport stamps, I added two last week, we'll see which borders will do it now.  I will write again when I get back. 

Romania

Just a quick note.  We are headed out soon for Romania. Please keep us in your prayers, that we have a safe trip, that we get a lot accomplished in the projects we are doing, that we have good interactions with the Romanians, and that the students learn more about God and having faith in Him through this project.  I will update you on when we get back, but please keep us in your prayers until then. This is the type of trip that can change lives, and therefore is one I fully expect spritual warfare to be raging during.  Help us fight the good fight with your prayers. Thanks.

First School Year = Over

So I have now completed my first school year w/ Club beyond.  HS graduation is tonight, last night was MS graduation, the night before was HS Baccalaureate, so fairly busy week with stuff to go to.  Last week we had our end of the semester clubs for both HS and MS. We had mid 60 hs students show up and a number of family members, so it was a good way to end the year.  We grilled, played some games, and spent some time saying good bye to those who will PCS this summer and to our graduates.  We did something similar for the MS. 

So now we are on to summer.  The biggest thing immediately is the service project to Romania. We will be gone for about a week and a half early on in the summer (can't get more specific than that in a public forum).  We have been doing a lot of prep work for this project, collecting supplies and taking donations and doing training with the students we are taking. We did an overnighter last weekend where we did team building exercises, did a Bible study on being a servant, spent time in prayer, and talked about expectations and what we all felt we needed to be successful. This will not be an easy trip. It is going to be long days and hours of tough work in extremely poor areas. This trip  has the potential to push some of the participants to the end of their rope.  But as I like to say being at the end of your rope is a bad place to be but a good place to have been. It is not fun in the moment, and very tough, but those are the times we see the most growth and development.  Those are the moments when God does amazing things and changes lives.  So please pray that we are challenged and pushed in such a way that it is only through God that we accomplish anything. 

Back to the end of the year thing. This is something I am slightly torn about. I am really looking forward to summer and a change in routine.  But I am torn about PCS season.  We have a lot of students who are moving, and it will be really sad to see some of them go.  It has already been sad saying good bye to some who have left already.  But at the same time it is exciting to think about the new students who will be here.  Part of this is out of selfish thought.  With this last years group of students, I have felt more like "the NEW club guy", which is true and what I have been.  Now, I will just be "the club guy." I am not new, and will have been here longer than a third of our kids.  It will just be a different dynamic that I am looking forward to.        

Pep assembly

For blog post 2 this week I want to tell you about last friday.  As I had mentioned before I was asked to lead the Pep assembly at the middle school.  Now, I have led a lot of games, activities, events, etc. in my not very long life, but I have never led something for over 500 middle schoolers.  This was a bit of a challenge and I was fairly nervous about it.  I got things all prepared and had activities planned out, but the morning of, I get there and realize, this is not going to work as planned.  One activity in particular was not going to work.  I had a quiz show type thing set up where incorrect answers resulted in getting a pie to the face, and correct answers allowing you to pie a fellow contestant.  The problem was we were outside (which I knew in advance) and had no microphone. I had been told i would have a wireless mic, but when it was set up, there was no mic to be found. So the whole assembly I had to yell loud enough that 500 plus energetic middle schoolers could hear me.  This meant any type of game that involved talking was out.  So that game was scratched.  On the plus side, it will work great as a club game so it will not have been a waste of time planning the game.  The competitions I ended up running were a walk off contest, where students and teachers from each grade acted as models and had to strike poses, which the other contestants would need to copy and elaborate on, then a relay race where a runner carries someone on their back and sprints, and then a big tug of war contest.  All in all, I think it went pretty well.  I was told by a lot of people how much fun it was, and the school already asked me to come back next year, so it must have been good enough.  After the assembly, I ran dodgeball tournaments for the rest of the day and helped out w/ various other activities they were running. 

As I said, I was not originally thrilled by this idea.  It was a bit overwhelming, and I doubted that I could do it well.  Was it the best assembly ever? Not even close.  Will the students remember it for the rest of their lives? Probably not.  But what it did was help me get more involved at the school and get the Club Beyond name and my face out there. Throughout the day, I interacted with hundreds of middle schoolers. I am guessing I talked to 100 kids who I had not had any contact with all year.  It won me some brownie points with school administrators for spending a whole day there and helping out.  I didn't mention God or Jesus once during the day (big no-no at school), but things like this help me get my foot in the door w/ students. It opens up communication, where I can say hi to more kids now and interact w/ them, and then down the road I am inviting them to Club and talking about what we do, and from those conversations I get to share the love of God with them. It is a process, and this is a really good first step to be able to take w/ some of the students.  Sometimes, I just need to get out of my own way and let God work through me in ways that I might be too scared to try, but through him all things are possible.          

     

Auschwitz

So I have fallen a bit behind on the blogs, and there is a lot to fill you in on.  So instead of writing one really long blog that no one reads all the way through I am going to post multiple updates this week.
So update #1: Auschwitz.

Over Memorial day weekend we went on a trip to Poland to see the concentration camp Auschwitz. It was a gerat weekend.  There were times it was a lot of fun, there were other times it was very sobering and educational.  The fun times were hanging out w/ the stuednts and families who came along.  It was a lot of quality time w/ some great people.  Each night we would do discussion time and debriefing from the day. After that we would hang out and play games.

Auschwitz is an enormous camp, w/ two main sections. There are a lot of parts to it, but the best known are Auschwitz 1 and Birkenau.  We went to Auschwitz 1 one day and had a guided tour, and then to Birkenau the next day and went on our own.  A lot of people will do both in the same day and do a three hour tour total. I would not recommend that. It took us three hours to see Auschwitz 1. It is also a lot to digest and is very overwhelming, so splitting it up worked really well.  At Auschwitz 1 we talked a lot about Father Maximilian Kolbe, who is known as the saint of Auschwitz.  He was a priest put into the camp for speaking out against the Nazis. One day a prisoner was to be executed and he stepped forward to ask if he could take the mans place.  The SS agreed and put him in a room to starve him to death w/ other prisoners. Throughout the next two weeks Father Kolbe led prayer and singing while slowly starving to death. After two weeks he was still alive, and needing the room to punish other prisoners, they gave him a lethal injection. To be at a place, see where he stood, where he was punished and died for such a selfless act, to learn about something so amazing in such a horrendous place was awe inspiring.  In the midst of one of the most evil events in the history of the world God used someone to inspire and give hope.  

It was an experience I will not ever forget. It was also great to be able to share it with students, to be able to discuss it with them and see how they reacted to things we were learning. 

Ok, enough for now. In the next few days I will post about end of the school year, leading a pep assembly at the middle school, and what is coming up in the near future.      

Finishing up, sort of

School is beginning to get into the finishing up stages for the year and we are in Club as well, but this in no way means we are slowing down.  We only have two weeks left of Club for the semester. Next weeks clubs are big end of the year ones, where we are having a big bbq for the high schoolers and inviting all families to attend, and then a "moving up" club for middle schoolers, as the 8th graders are heading off to high school. 

As the weather has turned nice, we have started doing a lot of games outside.  The weather has been amazing here for much of the spring.  I love after a cold winter the beauty of spring that comes, and in my opinion it can only be truly appreciated after a cold winter. 

One exciting development here is the middle school has asked us to run games at the end of the year pep rally.  Aretta will be gone on that day, so it is my show to run.  I must admit that I am a little nervous about this. I have led a lot of games in a lot of settings, but never for over 500 students.  At first when I was asked, my mind went straight to the "I am not ready to do something like that, that is too big a step for me. I have never done something like that and I do not know if I can handle it." Then, not so coincidentally, I did a club talk on Gideon for the middle schoolers, and as I was teaching them it was not by our might or ability, and not about how "good" we are or how capable we are, but in how great God is that we can do anything with his help, I was definitely humbled and was reminded I need to be practicing what I am teaching.  So this is another example of where I need to rely on God.  It is a great opportunity to be able to do this.  We have a really good relationship with our schools, but that is not always the case.  So to be able to help out and serve the school really helps put Club Beyond in a good light for the teachers and administrators. It is also a chance to get seen by lots of students, which is always a plus. 

We are not into PCS season here.  In the next next month, we will lose well over a third of our students from Club.  This is something I am used to growing up a military brat, but to be honest it never really gets that much easier. You learn how to deal with it, but good byes are always difficult, and we are saying good bye to some amazing students.  I will really miss them. But then at the same time in the next couple months we will get hundreds more new students here on post and have an opportunity to build new relationships.  So that is exciting. 

Ok, I am off to Poland with some high school students to go and see Auschwitz.  We are doing a study on a Priest who was held at the concentration camp.  I am definitely looking forward to this.  I'll make sure to let you know how it goes.  God bless.

 

Staff conference and training, w/ some sights along the way.

Hello all. I am back in Graf after 10 days in Italy. It feels like everytime I write to you it is right after I have returned from somewhere.  I was at a Club Beyond staff conference and training with all of the club beyond staff in Europe.  It was a really good trip. I feel like I learned quite a bit during the trainings, from topics such as the differences of high school and middle school ministry, leading small groups, time management, running weekend retreats and more.  My favorite thing about the trip was time spent w/ my peers.  It was great hanging out w/ them, talking about how we run clubs, getting new ideas, bouncing ideas off of each other, but also just spending time together w/ people who go through the same things as me.  I have grown really close to some of them and I really appreciate the time I get with them.  It was especially nice doing so without students around. When I see other staff from different communities on trips, I don't get to really talk with them because my priority is spending times w/ my students.  So it was nice just being able to hang out as friends. 

We stayed just outside of Pisa.  I went one morning and saw the leaning tower.  I have always been amused by how people make such a big deal out of it. To me it seems like a celebration of workers incompetence.  They failed at building a tower that stands upright.  But it was cool to see.  I do not feel the need to see it again though.  Where we stayed was right on the beach, so I got some good beach time in inbetween the trainings.  I really miss being by the water.  There was a town nearby, Marina di Pisa, which was gorgeous. White rocky beach, rocks that you could walk out on, beautiful water, it was great to spend an afternoon there.  We also took a day to go to Cinque Terre, which means the five lands. There are 5 towns connected by paths, and it is amazingly beautiful. I went hiking there between some of the towns.  My favorite part was cliff diving. Cliff might be too grand a word. It was really a big rock, 40 or 50 feet up maybe.  A few of us went and jumped off for about an hour. We got a failry big crowd watching us and people taking pictures. A restaurant from overhead threw down a few Coke's for us since we were serving as entertainment for their customers.  It was fun.

We also went to a vineyard, who's owners are big in Youth for Christ in Italy.  They were an amzing family. We got a tour of the vineyard while Giovanni (the Dad) gave a great talk about the vine and the branches and really helped bring what Jesus talked abot to life for us.  They also made us an amazing lunch.  If you think about Tuscany, and eating in Italy and idealize it, that is exactly what that experience was.  But more than food or location, it was a day of talking about what God has done for us and what he is doing in us right now.  People in youth ministry get burnt out very easily, and having a day like that was extremely refreshing. 

On the way back to Germany a few of us went to Florence for a day. No biggie.  Saw Michelangelo's David statue (which is amazing) went and some other works of amazing art at the Uffizi, the big art gallery there, and just enjoyed the city. 

No new news about ministry here in Graf since I have been gone for a week and a half.  As soon as there is new news, I will let you know.  As I look back at some of my posts, it seems like all I do is travel. One of the many great things about my job is that I get to do so much travel as work and with students.  In the coming blog posts, I will be sure to include more daily things from here in Graf, so you have that to look forward to.  

Adventure Camp and staff conference

So last wednesday, well technically thursday morning, we returned from Adventure Camp.  It was amazing.  5 days of running around, doing activities like rock climbing, caving, biking, go karting, lazer tag, high ropes courses, and crawling around through tunnels, and spending time w/ some really cool middle schoolers and taking the opportunity to share w/ them Jesus love is my idea of a great time.  Exhausting, but definitely worth it.  My favorite events we did were rock climbing and the high ropes course. Seeing students scared out of their mind, but pushing through fears and conquering them is such a cool thing to be a part of. Talking them through rock climbing, letting them know what is coming up and good foot and hand holds, encouraging them, hearing them repeat "I can't do it" dozens of times and then watching them do it, is so much fun.

During the day we would do 2 of these activities, then at night we would have club.  We had a band from England come and lead us in music and a speaker who is a professor from Purdue.  We talked a little trash about that, as I was wearing a michigan state sweatshirt the first day.  She walked the students through the gospel, and then afterwards we had small group time and were able to delve deeper with the students.  We had some really good conversations in our teepee (we stayed in teepees, it was fun, but the beds were not near long enough, it stopped at my shin). 

One major highlight from the week was playing the "big brother" card.  As often happens when you get a couple hundred teens together, there was some flirting and interest from members of the opposite gender in each other.  I was keeping a close eye on things and decided to have some fun with it. i let the young gentlemen callers know that i was very protective of the girls from grafenwoehr, and that I was way bigger than they were and that I see everything.  I would go and sit in between students if I thought they were sitting too close.  For the most part, my girls really appreciated it. I even received requests to scare off guys they thought were getting too friendly.  It was fun to keep sharp on my intimidate guys skills, since I am not near my sisters anymore and have to do my intimidation from a distance (although sometimes this is even more effective). 

Tomorrow I am headed down to Italy.  We have a staff conference and training for the next week and a half. I am really looking forward to it. It is a great opportunity to learn more, and also to spend time w/ my peers, whom I have become very good friends with.  I will be getting back on the 7th of May.  I will let you know how it went upon my return.       

Italy, movies and Belgium

Gross Gott.  Hope you are all doing well.  Italy was awesome two weekends ago.  It was really nice to do some relaxing and sight seeing. I went w/ some fellow Club Beyond staffers :Storey from Hohenfels in Germany, Elizabeth from Menwith Hill in England and Laura from Vicenza in Italy. Storey and I drove down on Thursday to Vicenza, where there is an Army base and Club Beyond is there, and met up w/ Laura and Elizabeth who flew in that day. We spent Friday seeing the sights in the area, going to a castle, and just relaxing.  On Saturday we went to Venice for the day.  Venice is a beautiful city, very different from most place w/ all the canals.  I really enjoyed it. Pictures are up on facebook.  Then Sunday we slept in, hung out for a bit, and then made the drive back up to Germany. Gotta love living in Europe where you can take a weekend trip to other countries. 

Life here in Graf is going well.  The main new thing to post about is small groups. We have started two new small groups for the high schoolers.  One i am doing w/ our freshman guys. We are meeting on Sunday evening and will be going through the book The Invisible War.  It is on spiritual warfare.  The guys really wanted to study Revelations, but I feel this is more pertinent to their every day lives.  Our other small group is a movie ministry.  We will be getting together to watch a movie, not religious movies but watching them through a religious perspective. This last friday we watched the film 127 Hours.  We discussed how the story mirrors peoples spiritual lives, how things might have been different had he relied on others for help, and made some good observations about Jesus offering us living water. If you haven't seen the movie, none of that probably makes any sense to you, so I recommend you watch it. Be warned, it is very graphic at parts.  One of our students, Jobee, is leading the group. It was her idea, Aretta and I will be there to offer help w/ planning/organizing, and to throw in my two cents in discussion times, but she leads it.  This is something that is really cool to see, a student be passionate enough about her faith to get a group like this going.  She is the type of student you love to have a few of at Club, someone who actively recruits others to attend and is willing to share her faith, and also to question things about it.  Sadly she will be heading out of here this summer, but such is military life.

Now to look ahead. Next Saturday we are heading out w/ 24 middle schoolers from here and going to Belgium for a week. Well, 5 days.  It is spring break and we are headed to adventure camp, along w/ the other military communities in Europe.  We will be doing activities such as mihntain biking, rock climbing, water rafting, laser tagging, and more. At night we will have club and a speaker and then go into small groups.  Please pray that the Spirit moves during the week, and that lives are changed.  This is thetype of week that has the opportunity to make a lasting impact on these teens lives, so prayers are needed.  With the chance to do so much good in the spiritual lives of these teens, that also means an increased risk of spiritual warfare, which I must admit we are seeing here and in other communities.  Thankfully, we serve a God greater and more amazing than anything in the world.  I will send out an update probably right before we head out, and then for sure after we get back and let you know how God worked during the week. 

God bless.
   

Hello

Hello all.  Hope life is going well wherever in the world you are.  Things in Germany are going really well.  Spring appears to be upon us, as the last few days have been in the high 50's and may even have reached 60, with lots of sunshine.  It feels good to go outside not bundled up.  The last couple weeks here have been good. Nothing too out of the ordinary. We had a lead training, which means our student leaders and us got together and did trainings, watched a movie, and had an overnighter. It was a lot of fun. Only got 45 minutes of sleep before getting up for church, but it was well worth it. Had some fantastic conversations. 

Last weekend was filled primarily with basketball watching.  I love the ncaa tournament.  It is tough here though, because so many of the games come on so late, or rather earlyin the morning.  I stayed up until 530 in the morning to watch Michigan State lose.  It was unfortunate. What was fun though was I was on skype w/ my sister, Cristina and Bethany, who are in Washington d.c. and Grand Rapids, and we were all watching the game "together". What was really funny, slash annoying, was that my video was 30 seconds behind theirs, so I would hear their reactions, and hen be waiting to see what the reactions were too. Mostly funny, sometimes annoying, but I really enjoyed being able to do that with them.

This weekend I have decided to take a quick little trip.  I am heading out in a couple hours to dive down to Vicenza, in Italy, with some club beyond staff people from other bases, and then we are going to go to Venice.  Just a relaxing trip spending time with friends. I am really looking forward to it. 

On the way down I think I am going to listen to Rob Bell's nw book. Even out here in Germany I have heard all about it. I want to hear it for myself before making any judgements. 

I will write again after I return and let you know about the very exciting next couple of months coming up, which are going to be crazy busy and challenging but should be amazing.     

Training for Afghanistan

This last Thursday I spent the day in Afghanistan. Well, not really, but let me explain.  I spent the day helping a group of chaplains train for deploying to Afghanistan.  They will be leaving in the next few months to head out for roughly a year. They were doing training for conducting field services (preaching out in the field to soldiers) and in meeting w/ religious and community leaders.  We went down to Hohenfels, which is a post that is technically a part of USAG Grafenwoehr, about an hour away. They have a big training area, where they have built up small villages that look as they do in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The training area is known as the box, which always makes me think of something like a sandbox and playing. But these are big kids, and instead of playing with toys, they play with things that go boom for real, guns and bombs. And instead of a cowboys and indians thing, it is for going to actual war.  They do a fair amount of role playing in the box, with people "playing" the role of terrorist who are hidden in towns and surrounding areas and they train how to go in and find them and what to do when they do find them. 

I was not playing the role of terrorist. Hopefully the chaplains won't get too close to any terrorists.  I was playing the role of a contractor (not hard to get into character since that is what I am to the Army) who was out in the field with soldiers, who had suffered KIA and WIA in the last few weeks (killed and wounded in action).  A group of soldiers were voluntold to help out as well and play the role of soldiers down range.  After the service (I listened to 4 different ones), I stayed back w/ the chaplain, chaplains assistant, and the chaplain in charge of training, and went over an AAR, after action report, and gave feedback to the chaplain and chaplain's assistant on what I thought went well and what could have been done differently.  The chaplain who was in charge of all the training had called me a few days before asking if I would come help out.  Growing up the son of a chaplain, I have heard my fair share of messages from chaplains, and being in ministry myself now he thought I might be able to give some good feedback to the training chaplains. 

It was definitely a different and unique experience. I enjoyed being able to help out, and to go to the box, where civilians are usually not allowed.  before we entered the box, we were being given instructions, and told a number of times in no uncertain terms that we must follow the direct path to the town to remain safe. The other towns were being used for NATO training purposes (well, that is what I gathered from different soldiers I saw), and there would be serious issues if we were to randomly show up in one of their towns. So different, and a good experience overall.          

Weekend in Czech

Ahoj. It is spelled with a j. Last post I spelled it wrong.  The weekend went really, really well. I am pleased.  On friday we left with 15 middle schoolers and drove roughly 5 hours to Liberic.  I was driving a van of 8 girls. And they were never quiet. Ever. Not for a minute.  It was actually quite fun though.  You learn a lot about people on road trips and it is a great opportunity for good conversation. 

The service project was not what you would normally think of for a service project. We were not building or fixing anything, or any physical labor at all. Instead we were providing our english speaking. In Czech learning English is a pretty big deal that most people want to do. They will pay a lot of money for english workshops and opportunities to practice. We were with about fifteen Czech teens and we played different games, did activities, hung out and spoke with them, all in English so they could practice.  Some were very good at it already, others spoke hardly any at all.  It was really cool to see Czechs and Americans interacting, trying to understand each other, playing games, and just enjoying being together.  There was one teen, Michael (not really his name but I can't say or spell how it is in Czech so this is what we called him) he spoke no English, but he and I hit it off.  It is amazing how much you can communicate without actually talking.  I really enjoyed it.

We also went to a mother-child center.  We had collected donations for them from Graf and brought those out. We also built some yard games for them. We built a bags set, or cornhole as non Michiganders call it, and also a bean bag toss game.  We got to play w/ the kids, most of whom were in the 2 - 3 year old range.  Very fun.  A smile is understood in all languages, and playing and throwing things around is great. 

The ride back was slightly quieter as a number of people were exhausted from the busy weekend, but they still made quite a bit of noise.  Generally I try to take a day to recover after a trip like that, but sadly this week did not afford me that opportunity. We had HS club the next day and MS club today, so we had to get right back at it.  Tonight I am headed to Heidelberg to spend the night, then go to the European basketball tournament for the military high schools in Europe.  I will also be visiting some Club Beyond staff over in that area, so it should be fun.    

Well, time to get back to work I suppose. 

Off to Czech

Ahoy. Not real sure if that is how it is spelled, but that means hello in Czech. I am headed off today to the Czech Republic to do a service project there with our middle schoolers.  We are going to a mother child center and working there, playing games with people, doing some English speaking activities, etc. It should be a lot of fun. Prayers for safe travels (not too far away, about a 4 hour van ride) and a good weekend all around are much appreciated. I will make sure to let you know how it goes.

The highlight of the last few weeks for me has been high school club.  We are doing a series dealing w/ many aspects of sexuality.  This last tuesday we spliy up guys and girls, and the leaders swapped, with the male leaders going with female students and female leaders going with male students.  The students then got the chance to ask questions (that they had come up w/ and cleared through their own leaders) that they were curious about with the oppsite gender.  I am extremely pleased with how well it went.  The questions that were asked were great. Opened up a lot of good discussion time.  They listened attentitively, and the leaders gave some really good answers.  It was my favorite club of the year so far.  I really enjoyed it and think it was very beneficial. I think it is so important to be able to go to adults of the opposite gender and ask questions like this, and to have people who love God and are strong in their faith to give open and honest answers.

Sorry, this is all I have time for.  Off to pick up the vans and start loading stuff up.

A week in the life

Some people have asked what I do all week, how I fill my time, so I figured I would tell you. This is this past week in a nut shell.

Monday: This was a volunteer training day.  We try to meet every two weeks with our volunteer leaders and do some trainings so they feel more equipped to do ministry. We met with out middle school leaders and did lunch and then about an hour of trainings. We focused on the need to reach middle schoolers and how it is such a transitional time in one's life.  Then I spent the afternoon preparing for the high school leaders meeting. We met for dinner and then did about an hour and a half worth of meeting.  We spent this time going over our talk series that we are starting, which is a sexuality series.  We are looking at how God created us and what that should look like. It is not a sex talk series, although that comes into play. It is a broader look at everything that sexuality/gender/God's creation entails.  In the morning on Monday I also worked on my club talk for Tuesday.

Tuesday: Went into Vilseck and started working on Club for the evening. Worked on the talk and planning games.  I went to HS lunch, which there are two of. It is very annoying to me that they don't have lunch back to back. The first lunch period ends at 12:05, and the second doesn't begin until 12:50. I usually go and eat lunch or work on the evening club during this time. On this Tuesday, I picked Aretta up from the auto shop where she had brought her car for some work. Then went back to the second lunch. During lunches, I do contact work. I try to go to both HS and MS once a week.  I just make my way around the tables and to different groups of students talking, saying hi, reminding them of Club, etc. It's a good way to connect with students, and to get seen by other students.  After lunch I went back to work on my club talk.  This weeks I did a power point talk, which I had not done all year. It was fun. I showed a bunch of little clips from shows or youtube to illustrate different points.  We had 60 students attend, which is the second highest we have had all year. 

Wednesday: I spent the morning and early afternoon working on staff training for Club Beyond. For the first two years I am on staff I have different assignments to do and turn in. It is sometimes hard to fit this nto the schedule, but the stuff we work on is valuable.  I went to the MS for lunch.  Going to MS lunch is fun, because the middle schoolers act a lot more excited to see you than high schoolers do.  They run up to you, give hugs, it's fun.  Then we had middle school club in the afternoon. We had...roughly 35 kids there. That is about average. I led some games and did some announcements and Aretta gave the club talk. That evening I went to the contemporary service just down the hall from my office. It is basically a church service with a small group feel to it. There were only about 10 of us there. I go to this service when I can, which lately has not been very often.  It is really nice though to go to something like this where I am not working, I can just learn about scripture and not be the one teaching it.

Thursday: Thursdays are my day off, which I always need.  After a busy last 3 days (each day was between 10 and 12 hours of work a day, which is pretty normal) I am exhausted.  I did not plan to, but I slept until after 11. I spent the day doing random things, a little cleaning, playing some video games, watched a movie, read a book, went to the px to buy some kitchen stuff (I just bought silverware. After using the same two utensils for a few months, I figured it was time). I spoke approximately 10 words to someone at the px, and that was it. That, to me, is the ideal day off.

Friday: Today is different than normal. Usually this is an ofice day, planning for next week. Today however I am taking a donor care day. Which means I am writing a newsletter, writing this blog, and coming up with a plan to stay in touch with people back home. This is something I have done a porr job with and it needs to change. So that's the plan. Tonight I will go to the hs basketball games and do some contact work and try to enjoy a little basketball (the teams are struggling). 

Saturday: We are doing a work day for a service project coming up. We are going to the Czech Republic to work at a mother-child center, and tomorrow is a day to build games that we are bringing.  There will be abour a dozen ms students there, so it should be fun. At night I will try to do something social, maybe a movie.

Sunday: I am planning on going to both a catholic and protestant service as of right now.  Then we have a prayer time with some students in the fternoon. After that Aretta and i will plan some things for next week (since I am not in the office today to do it). Then it will be dinner at a chaplains house, then tto the hospitality house to watch the Super Bowl. It'll mean a late night, but I have no problem staying up past 4 to watch a game like this. I'm cheering for the Packers, predicting a 24-10 victory.

And that is what this week was/will be. It is a pretty average week.  And this was a very long post. If you made it all the way through, pat yourself on the back.  And you get a prize. If you read this send me a message and you are entitled to a Club Beyond calendar, complete with a note from a student.

Ok, that's it.             

Post #2 - Scotland

My second overdue post: The weekend after Winter Blitz, I went to England and Scotland.  As staff we had 2 days of comp time, days we didn't get off from having the trip that we normally would have, and a few of us decided to use them to travel.  I went with Storey from Hohenfels, Germany, Dale from Lakenheath, England, Elizabeth from Menwith Hill, England and laura from Vicenza, Italy. They are all Club Beyond staff at these different communities.  I flew into Stanstead in England and then we drove up to menwith Hill and we all met up and drove to Scotland.  The trip was from Wednesday night to Sunday night. I spent around 28 hours in the car traveling to these different places and some hours at the airport and flying, but it was all time well worth it.

We stayed in Edinburgh, one of the biggest cities in Scotland.  We did some sight seeing, and a lot of time relaxing and enjoying not working after a very busy while of planning for and then running Winter Blitz.  In my travels I have decided that when traveling, it is, in my opinion, much better to relax and have fun seeing the things you really want to see instead of racing around madly trying to see everything. If you do that, you don't enjoy the things you want to see and you wear yourself out trying to see everything.  Thankfully, all those on this trip have the same viewpoint as I do. It was a great weekend.  Enjoyed seeing the things we saw, and definitely enjoyed the company.  I love working with the high school and middle school students with all my heart, but every no and then it is nice to get away for a few days and just relax. 

We are now back in the swing of things with club.  We have also picked up a couple more volunteers to help lead.  This is very needed, and we still need more.  Both clubs continue to grow steadily. We are getting over 50 high schoolers for each club, and right around 40 middle schoolers.  My goal, just for fun, is to get 100 high scoolers at a club this coming semester. If everyone who has come to club at some point comes the same week, we would have more than 100 students.  We'll see what we can do. 

Overdue - Winter Blitz

Hello all. I am very overdue for some posts, so I will be making a couple of them today. This one is about Winter Blitz.  WB was an amazing trip.  We went to Axams, Austria, and stayed in a hotel up in the mountains. The ski lifts left from right behind the hotel, and the runs all ended at the back of it.  Very nice set up.  As I said in the last post, went snowboarding for the first time ever. It was a lot of fun, but I did break a rib doing it.  It's ok, a little painful, but it's fine. 

The highlight for me for the week, besides the amazing location, was getting to spend good quality time w/ the teens who were on the trip. Some of them a knew pretty well going into it, others I knew very little.  It was a great week of relationship building.  I also had the opportunity to spend good one on one time, asking personal questions, talking about how things are going in their lives.  I got a lot of very honest, and sometimes very painful, answers and we had some great conversations.  I have been able to continue certain talks in the weeks following winter blitz.  That is something I love about trips. Spending a week straight together develops relationships at a very accelerated rate, which is useful when many of the students I am working with are moving in the summer. 

Let's see, other highlights....This place had the best sled run I have ever seen. It was 6 km long. Not sure how fast you could get going, but it was really fast.  Towards the end of the week it became pretty dangerous and had to be shut down.  I would guess you could get going 40-50 km hr or so. That is just a guess.  Really cool.  One days we went into Innsbruck and went to a water park. The best thing about that was the slide that had two loops. Only double looped slide in the world, apparently.  You stepped into this tube, and the doors closed around you. The floor then opened up and you shot down into the slide. 

I have tested my snowboarding skills once since winter blitz. We went on a day there was no school with 13 high schoolers.  It was raining, which wasn't a lot of fun, but the snowboarding was.  Thankfully, I have improved a lot since the first few days of Winter Blitz. I am now able to make it down the run w/ out falling on my face or backside. 

I suggest looking at pics on facebook, i am tagged in different ones from winter blitz to give you an idea of what it looked like. My camera was broken, so I didn't take any myself. Sad, but there are a lot from other people. 

Back..and tired

Hello all. We are back from Winter Blitz, and it was at the same time awesome/exhausting/fun/painful/and almost any other adjective you wan't to throw in there.  The location of the week was amazing. It is easily in my top 10 most amazing places I have ever been, and I have seen quite a few things for my 25 years.  The resort was up in the mountains, with a number of ski lifts that were immediately behind the hotel. It's nice and convenient when you end a run down the mountain at your hotel.  I tried snowboarding for the first time in my life, and it was.....interesting. I showed a lot of improvement from the first to the last day, but then went on a run much above my skill level and took some pretty good falls.  I am fairly certain I broke my rib on one of them.  Not a lot of fun, but it's not a huge inconvenience.

We had a speaker come from Oakland, John Smith, and the music and work crew were all from Oakland as well.  They did a really good job of presenting the gospel and making themselves available to talk to the teens. 

This has to be a short post, I have little time.  I will post more on Winter Blitz soon, and will put some pics up on facebook that you guys can take a look at.  I am heading out today to the other side of Germany to spend the night at a fellow club beyond persons house in Spangdahlem, then tomorrow flying to England, meeting up with 3 more staff people (2 from england and one from Italy) and then we are all heading to Scotland for a few days.  Spending a week in Austria snowboarding may sound like a relaxing time, but it was absolutely everything but. Great time, but exhaisting and stressful.  So a long weekend in Scotland is much needed, and not trying to toot my own horn but I feel it is much deserved. I am spent in every way, physically, emotionally, spiritually, from last week, just gave everything I had, so I need some time away.

So in the next post, look for stories from Winter Blitz and also from Scotland.  Man, I love living in Europe.