If I didn’t wake up, I’d still be sleeping!

We have a great bunch of teens at our church. When there are five Sundays in the month, they are responsible for the extra Sunday. They lead the first Sunday this month and we had a guest missionary speaker working in Hawaii.

Along with leading the singing, the kids did a play and a group reading about open doors which fit in with the church outreach into our neighborhood and the missionary presentation. Everything went well, except forgetting to tell the congregation to sit down at the end. One of our guys, who plays guitar, took the time to learn to play the ukulele (brought from Hawaii) and did special music on it. He said that took some time to learn because it is so different from playing guitar, but he did an outstanding job.
This past weekend got off to an early start…on Thursday. Between our two small groups that day - one morning, the other evening - we had to do some bulk buying for the teens’ Lock-In on Friday night and Friends’ Day Sunday. Dirt early Friday morning, we went buying flowers and strawberries at the farmer’s market, followed by breakfast at McDonalds - still a novelty here and great cappuccino - stopping by church afterwards to make sure everything was set for the youth activity. Then we headed home so I review my lesson and Sue could make dessert for that night. This wasn’t our first lock-in, but we should have remembered that teens don’t need sugar to stay awake all night!

Kids started arriving at eight that evening, and what a bunch of baggage they brought – most of which they didn’t even use. There were twenty-nine of us there by the time the doors were locked. The entrance fee for each person was a kilo (2 lbs) of non-perishable food for the church food cupboard to help the needy.

An ice-breaker started the night and then they were divided into two teams for competitions, followed by some singing and our Bible study.

The games began following the study, and it didn’t seem to matter how much they ran or fought for the ball or yelled, they didn’t seem to get tired out.
The game they liked the best was blowing miniature marshmallows at each other through blowguns – what a sticky mess! And no one took my offer of ten bonus points for their team for anyone who’d eat the marshmallows cleaned up off the floor.

By eleven–thirty, they started a project of doing their names with graffiti drawings on poster board and making personal pan pizzas. That took quite a bit of time, and by three o’clock one group was playing guitar and singing, and other groups playing table games or ping-pong, but no one wanted to go to sleep.

After settling down a pillow fight around five a.m., we decided it was time to show a movie, Horton Hears a Who, and most everyone settled onto their mattresses to watch. Some even managed to doze off a little during.
By seven, breakfast was served followed by a morning devotional time, awards for the teams, and finally, at eight, a groggy group headed home to sleep it off.

Reading it here, it all sounds quite easy, but believe me, it was exhausting, and around four in the morning, I just wanted to sleep in my own bed!
We got home by ten a.m., had a shower and went to bed, but not for long since there was a lot to do with Sunday being the Friends’ Day service and picnic.