Saturday, November 29, 2008

Senior Youth Group

(Thanks to you, my readers, for your thoughtful prayers and heartfelt comments for Chummy.)

I'm having a lot of fun being a counselor for my senior youth group at my church. It has been a long time since I worked with youth older than 13-years-old (specifically Grade 9-12), so when an opportunity came up to serve Jesus as a youth group counselor, I jumped at the chance.

Often we do Bible studies, but once a month, we hold an event night. I don't remember a lot of what I did as a high-schooler in youth fellowship myself, but there are a couple of things we've done at Cedar Valley so far that I haven't done as a teen.

The first event occurred in October when we all went to the corn maze/maize. We split up into several smaller groups and then tried to find our way through two parts of the maze. The main challenge was finding our way in the dark, but I had a lot of fun. My group sang songs all the way through, which may have annoyed other people hearing us sing "The ants go marching ten-by-ten, hurrah, hurrah..." or "Once an Austrian went yodeling on a mountain so high..."

The second event was in November and that one was called the Menno Run. The story is: Christian Mennonites (which is what we are) meet to worship in various places, but they always have to be on the move because the Russian police try to chase them down and capture them. How we played it is: the teens run around town at night time, getting clues to their next destinations at various check points. The counselors drive around town looking for them and if we spot them, we scream out of our cars "Reach for the sky!" and the teens have to stop and allow us to brand them with Bingo markers. The rules are that the teens have to wear white bands around their arms to identify themselves as Cedar Valley teens, they have to travel in groups, and they can't run once the counselors have spotted them and shouted out the code phrase. There were a couple of times when my partner and I approached a group of teens that didn't belong to us, but that was all in fun. Sometimes, we had to jump out of our cars to chase down the teens. The funniest is when our headlights catch the teens jumping into bushes or behind other objects to avoid getting caught. To make things easier for the game, our pastor informed the RCMP that we were playing this game,so if other townsfolk called us in for mischief, the RCMP would know what we were doing. One of our groups ran into a little trouble when they went to hide behind a car and a bunch of drunk college guys came running out of a house to yell at the teens. When we found our teens, a couple of the girls were crying because they were so frightened; apparently, the college guys threated to beat them up. So, my partner and I went to talk to the guys at the house and calmly explained to them that we were playing a game. The guys, although inebriated, also calmly told us that they thought the teens were trying to steal their cars because one of the guys had that happened to him recently. We apologized to each other and they thanked us for coming around to tell them what our teens were doing. After that, we drove around looking for the remaining groups to warn them of that particular house and to re-instruct them to be careful of other people's property. Despite that one incident, I think the teens had fun and I did, too.

The most recent event was the Elf Hunt. The story is: Santa's elves have been kidnapped since last Christmas and the teens must help find the elves and return them to the North Pole so that Christmas wouldn't be ruined for this year. The teens are given photos of the "elves," which are really the counselors and other church volunteers, and they are to find them in the mall and get their signatures. The challenge: the "elves" have changed appearances over time; we (the counselors) disguised ourselves so we wouldn't be so recognizable, but we would still blend in with the shoppers. When the teens suspect that they have spotted an elf, they approach the elf and sing "We wish you a Merry Christmas" to which we reply with "Joy to the World." If the kids approached the wrong people, at least they would have blessed a stranger during this holiday season. I tried to find a wig for myself, but I wasn't able to. So, I did the best I could. I thought that being Chinese would make it very easy for me to be spotted in an Abbotsford mall; after all, it's not like in Richmond where we "all look alike." But, surprisingly, I was spotted only once and that was before I could purchase dollar store glasses to help with my disguise. The teens think that it's because I drove them to the mall and didn't think I'd be in on it. So, it all worked out well. I also made myself look extra snobby so even if the teens thought they recognized me, they would be too intimidated to approach me, which has happened more than a few times. I spotted the teens, but they would look at me uncertainly and then not approach me.




2 comments:

snerk said...

Youth group sounds like fun at your church :)

We've done a Mall Hunt before for sponsors, except there's no singing. But the sponsors are super good at it now, so the teens can never guess our secret hiding spots!

The event nights sound pretty awesome!

Anonymous said...

my word for the day: inebriated :p

Wish I could be in your youth fellowship. Sounds like a lot of fun. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying it. :)