hola, isabel

As you may or may not know, I work with the youth at my congregation at church.  More specifically, I work with the girls.  And even more specifically, I work with the girls aged 12-14.

Every Sunday we meet and have a one hour lesson about Christ, etc.  And then once a week we all attend some sort of activity.  These activities are things like learning how to make jewelry, working on personal goals, doing service, learning how to decorate cakes, learning about writing your own novel, and any other type of thing like this.  Basically, the weekly activities are quite fun and all the youth look forward to attending them.  (I don’t look forward to them as much, since it means I’m not spending time with my husband.)

Every now and again the youth get to have a super special activity.  The kids looks forward to these activities and, let’s be honest, so do the adult leaders.

Last Saturday was one of these super special activities.

A family in our congregation just happens to be loaded.  Because they are loaded they have a house on the lake. And by “on the lake”, I mean you walk out of their back yard INTO THE ACTUAL LAKE.

AWESOME.

This family was nice enough to host a youth activity at their super sweet beach house.  Not only did we get to use their canoe and paddle boat, we got to jump off the dock and the diving boards, and have a BBQ.

Good times.

It took me all week, but I eventually talked The King into coming with all of us.  I told him we could try to make it more of a family-activity and less of a youth-activity for us.

The King wasn’t too thrilled about going.  He would have rather been working on the house.  He also didn’t want to be stuck in the car with teenage girls who never stop talking.

Thankfully I forewarned the girls we drove to not talk too much.  They just laughed and gave The King a hard time about that.  Which made him mellow and begin to have fun.

I know the youth had a blast.  They all took turns pushing one another off the docks.  They also took turns giving canoe rides to each other.  The kids even cooked the meat on the BBQ.  The little kids of the adult there also had fun.  I had to practically throw Babboo in the water to get him there.  But once he was in the water, he loved it.  He just sat on a floaty thing and enjoyed being lazy.

I enjoyed sitting on the lawn just watching what was going on.  I was so impressed with the youth in my congregation.   They played together so well.  The boys were nice to the girls, which made the girls confident enough to jump off the dock and do other wild things.

I (sort of) remember what it was like to be a teenager.  I don’t know that I was as amazing as these kids are.

They were even sweet enough to give Babboo, and some of the other little kids, rides on the paddle boat.

(Look how cute my little baby looks out in the boat.  He totally thought he was a pirate captain and was giving all sorts of directions.)

And while Babboo was enjoying a leisurely spin around the lake, The King was jumping off the high dive.

He’s much, much braver then I am.  But, then again, I just learned how to swim a few years ago.

The day came to a close and one of the girls told me, “this is the most fun I’ve had all summer!”  That made me feel so good, so I shared it with the owner of the lake house.

The following Sunday at church, the lake house owners surprised all the youth by telling them how enjoying it was the have them at their house, and inviting them back.  They all practically squealed for joy.

So yeah, we get to go back next month.  I hope I won’t have to beg The King to go with us this next time.

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Speaking of the youth at my church; for the month of August all of our weekly activity nights will be spent at different local parks where we’ll be learning how to knit/crochet sweaters that we will then donate to humanitarian projects around the world.  Problem is, knitting needles and crochet hooks for 20 girls is expensive.  And so is the yarn.  I’m donating all the crochet hooks I can find at my house, as well as any yarn I have.  The King’s mom gave me all of her knitting needles yesterday and some yarn that she had.  My mom is also going to mail me any extras she has.  The yard doesn’t have to be anything fancy.  Really.  The recipients will just be happy they have a warm sweater to wear.

So I’m asking, do any of you have spare knitting needles, crochet hooks or left-over yarn that you’d be willing to donate to these kids?  We’d totally appreciate anything you have!