Hey, wanted to let you guys know about some of the things coming up and a few plans for the summer. RISE continues to grow in numbers, depth of faith, and discovering purpose. While most youth groups seem to have the most students when they do big events we have the most students at our regular meetings on Wednesday nights. So we could always use help on Wednesday nights. If you can’t be there consistently… don’t worry about it. Just get the Jesus in you around the students so they can become more familiar with Him and you.
March 26 is Ignition at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion. It is a fantastic event to turn kids on to Christian music so they know they can have alternatives to the pop music that is around them. Switchfoot is the big name that is going to be there. You can go to www.indwes.edu/studentministries to get more info it you would like. The group will leave about 6pm and return about 11:30. Tickets are $10 but if you volunteer RISE can help out with that for you. This outing is limited to 12 students with two adult chaperones at least.
April 10th to 11th will be our annual Lockin at Courtland Friends Church. This year the WYM Youth Cabinet Road Show will be at Courtland for the Sunday morning worship service. This is one of those events in which volunteers just coming for a short amount of time can help me get a bit of a nap. Generally if you don’t mind getting up a little early on Sunday morning this helps with a nap for me! But if you have anytime to give that would be great. The students will be locked in for the evening. It will begin with dinner and organized games. As the night goes on games become less organized and eventually deteriorate into playing around on your own, movies, or falling asleep.
May 7 and 8 will be Never Too Young again this year. This is an overnight trip to Indiana Wesleyan University. Everything is planned out by IWU we just need to keep the kids from getting lost and make sure they go to bed… eventually or whenever you want them to. Beds are available… just tell the kids you are old and need a mattress and when they are as old as you they can boss kids around and get the mattresses too. Works for me. J
This summer we have paintball on the agenda and so far I have a wonderful person that has made one boat available for tubing or skiing this summer. We will probably do so fishing as well. We also have three of our own canoes that we will try and get out a little earlier this summer. We will be looking to attend World Pulse Fest this summer as well so if you like concerts you might Google that. At this point it looks like we will be able to have some kind of paid high school intern for a year beginning with the next school year but finances are tight all over so we will see. There is a good chance we will scale back the regular meetings of RISE this summer but I do not know to what extent. We have never taken the summer off but the number of students that we are serving has never been higher and it may be a good time to plan and prepare for the next school year.
Our calendar can be found by clicking RISE at the www.iminister.us page and calendar is on the right.
If you are interested in any of these opportunities let me know and please, please, please keep RISE and the students whose lives need to be changed by Jesus in your prayers. God’s doin’ somethin’ that’s for sure.
