I have been with urban promise for a complete year now and I am still being faced daily with things that are completely new to me. After a year I'd kind if hope to get the hang of everything and just have some smooth sailing here on in but no such luck cuz God still has a lot to teach me and so He keeps putting me and giving me new things and situations to tackle which are out of my comfort zone. Taking me past my previous experience and sometimes knowledge to have to figure things out as I go. It really I amazing and so good for me in order to keep me humble and brought low in myself and to find my confidence alone in the fact that Christ is working in, through and for me.
Going into this summer I was excited to be able to experience the same thing I did last summer, yet knowing the mistakes I made last year and being able to learn from them. As well as having an advantage of having a relationship with a lot of the kids I am working with.
Not all the youth are the same, some of them are youth that I have been with all year while others I haven't seen since last summer and here is also a hand full of new youth coming out.
A lot of the girls I have been working with this past year have all graduated from grade 8 and are moving on to new things and so new for me this summer is the fact that I am no longer leading girls who are 13-14 but instead girls who are 10-12.
Now this may not seem like much of difference in age and in my life growing up it wasn't that big of a deal having such a small age gab but with the cultural differences this little difference in age means a lot. It is completely new to me! I am used to leading girls who have tons of attitude, talk back, diss, and are quickly becoming involved in sexual conversations, words and actions. Last week I started my small group with an entirely new group for me of young girls who are defiantly younger, quieter, shy, sweet, full of questions and are actually quite girly which is also new to me. The change in dynamics could not be more different.
Something else that is new and exciting is what I am in charge of preparing for community night at the end of the summer. Previous years preparation for community night consisted of planning skits and dances and other typical talents. This year my Intern Director is planning for this evening and he has a very special gift of being able to see the bigger things outside of the box. Just over a week ago he spoke to me about his idea of having a group of kids from camp creating, writing, editing and putting together a couple page newspaper for
our local community. He later emailed me his ideas and notes and pretty well said go. I was super excited and yes kind of scared, it was his vision, idea and passion and it was my job to implement these accurately. The more I thought of the idea the more excited and passionate I was about it. Wednesday was my first day in determining a group of youth to commit to working with me on this project. It was a lot of fun brainstorming, discussing and planning to be able to make our very own newspaper! I have never done anything like this and defiantly have never had to lead others in it but it's all about trial and error and learning as you go. I am excited to see what will come out of this as we learn more about newspapers, reporters
and writing. I am also really excited for this opportunity for these youth to be able to learn and actually complete something so cool together.
"I am a friend of challenges", I first heard this quite last September from one of my fellow interns. The more I think about it the more I realize what a good quote it is. To be a friend of challenges means taking them on even when you don't have it all figured out ahead of time. To not be scared or hesitant about them but just excepting them. Challenges stretch us and make us depend on God when we cannot depend on ourselves and our own strength and abilities. Something God is teaching me the last couple weeks is that I am not a pro, I don't have this all figured out and I need to depend on Him as He continues to place challenges and new difficult things in front of me!
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