Ahhh... Spring is nearly here at last. How do they say it in Narnia? Winter is nearly over? Above is a picture from one of the snow falls we saw here in the Northwest. There's our prius covered in almost a foot of snow! We've been seeing the sun almost EVERY day lately though. So we have hope that summer will be here before we know it.
... So I wanted to post SIMPLY because I love reading everyone's comments. Now I realize there's nearly nothing else to report.
OH! I know... Please Be praying for us.
AJ & I are continuing to act as Young Life leaders here in our area called "Northlake Young Life" which is Kirkland, WA and the surrounding areas. There hasn't been a Young Life group at the high school down the street from us and it has been an uphill battle getting it going again. We've had two Young Life nights (Monday night events formerly called "Club"--but it was getting confusing for kids who thought it was really "clubbing"--if you need an explanation on this, please see Janaye or someone around the age of 20.) And so far our big number of new kids is 3. They're 3 GREAT kids... and we've got some old-timers (as in, they've been brought up into Young Life after participating in WyldLife in Junior High), but we're having a hard time having more than 8 kids at a single event.
We've met some awesome kids at El-Dub (LW) as the kids call it, but AJ & I are beginning to see how difficult ministry in the Northwest can be. There's a lot of resistance from school administration, staff, and even kids. We don't even have enough leaders right now to really establish any kind of presence at the school. AJ coached Sophomore team basketball all winter and had an interesting season, but the rest of us are having a difficult time reaching out to the farthest kid. For more information on Young Life, go to www.younglife.org, or ask, and we could really use all the prayer we can get for God to develop new leaders, give us strength and innovation to reach new kids, and instill motivation and a sense of urgency to really meet our goals of getting more than 10 kids to camp this summer.
This is a picture of Malibu, the camp that our kids & we will attend in August (Lord Willing).
It's marketed as "the best week of your life, guaranteed, or your money back." And it truly is the best week of these kids lives. Ask AJ or Travis--they'll tell you. Well, I'm sure Travis & AJ could NOW say they have events in their lives that have trumped this week, but at the time...
Camp is where so many kids actually hear the Gospel and commit their lives to Christ. It was a beautiful thing to witness last summer, and I hope and pray that there will be more "Say-So's" this year with these new kids. If you'd like to pray for some of our specific kids that we pray for, their names are Marissa, Derek, Tony, Katy, Tina, Danielle, Kealey, Sienna, Yaritza, Raine, Jarrell, and many many more.
We love you guys! Thanks for checking in on us. And I'll have a much more exciting March post after Stacie & Darek visit us next week, and then Janaye & Brady B. visit us later in the month. Hoooo-Weeeee. : )
Love, LERA & AJ.
