Bluebirds in Bright Orange Shirts

I had the joy and privilege of working a little with our church's youth group this past week. Perhaps "working" is the wrong term. They actually did a lot of work, but I did very little.

Our youth conducted a 4 day missions effort right here in Sierra Vista this week. Approximately 21 of them took free bread and batteries (9 volt for the smoke detectors) to homes right around our church and offered to pray with the residents. They also washed cars for free, made repairs and did yard work at the homes of about 14 senior adults, took cookies to the local fire departments and prayed with them, and prepared and served a nice lunch for our senior adults. They were really busy!

I simply led the kids in a daily Bible study - something I hadn't done with youth in about 16 years, other than my weekly teenaged girls small group. I was a little intimidated by the prospects of trying to relate to these kids each morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. My worries were for naught! The kids soaked up the Bible lessons each day and made me feel like they were actually enjoying it. What a relief and a blessing. I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to spend such great time with them. These are 21 of the finest kids I've ever met. I wasn't with them 24 hours a day like our youth minister Dennis and his lovely assistant Erika were, but I saw enough of them to know that they got along beautifully, worked hard, and loved every minute of their challenging week. I must confess, each morning I headed to the church expecting them to be dragging and complaining and even bickering with each other. But they weren't doing any of those things! Every morning and even when the week ended Thursday afternoon, these kids were acting like they were really enjoying one another. God bless their sweet hearts. We adults could learn a thing or two!

These are simply a few pictures I snapped at the Senior Adult luncheon they prepared and served at our church. As you can see, they were serving with all they had and the seniors were loving it. The theme of the week was "What's 'N Your Serve?" I'll tell you what's in these kids' serve - good attitudes, servant hearts, sacrifice, love, and team work! Talk about some lovely bluebirds. This week I saw some of the loveliest bluebirds I've ever seen and they were all wearing bright orange shirts!