CHBC has a youth group?

This weekend was the CHBC youth group retreat. For those who go to my church, yes, we actually do have a youth group. For those who do not go to my church, you must understand that the demography of the church is mostly young adults in their 20's and 30's who work on Capitol Hill. There are some families with younger children and our children's ministry is busting out of the seams because there are so many children. But the teens seem to be lost in all the mess. But yes, we actually do have a youth group and we meet every other friday. There are usually about 7 that come regularly. But as you can see from the picture, there were a lot more than seven! We brought 18 teens to the retreat. We stayed in the Shanadoah Mountains in Strausburg, VA. The view was absolutely beautiful and it was kind of hard to leave the relaxing atmosphere to go back to the craziness of the city.  The retreat was so much fun! I mean, we all had a blast! The kids really enjoyed it. They seem to get a lot of the talks. The theme of the retreat was "Do Hard Things" from the book by Alex and Brett Harris (twin brothers of Josh Harris). The book was about how teens need to be thinking of the adult life and how they are supposed to get there. They get there by going through hard things and these hard things build character. One thing that the book seemed to be missing, and this was the concensus of the leaders, is that is missed explaining the Gospel further. It was coming from the standpoint that the teens who read this must already be Christians. They didn't really explain WHY, the reason, we should do hard things. But we were able to explain to them why in our small group time. 

There were a lot of new kids that came on the retreat so it was super great getting to know them and joke around with them and also have meaningful conversations. The group contained completely different personalities, but worked well together as a group and got along really well. They encouraged each other in the Lord as they shared what they struggled with and how the Lord is helping them through a particular sin. I had a few good conversations with some of my girls from my small group and one in particular conversation that broke my heart. I won't tell you the rest because that was between her and I, but let's just say, I'm so thankful for my dad. :o)

My girls and I talked mostly about what it means to follow Christ. Why do we follow Christ? And we talked about the difference between the fear of man and the fear of God. We had a really good conversation after the last talk where Jeremy should a video clip of the men from the movie End of the Spear that shows the martyerdom of Jim Elliot. We talked about why we would want to die for Christ too and about going on a mission trip and leaving all to follow Christ so other's could hear the Gospel. It was a really great conversation! One thing that I learned from it all, was that even in the hard things that I need to do like giving up my time to spend with the youth so they could hear the Gospel. In all the hard things that we do for Christ, they end up meaning something and advancing the kingdom of God further. Not really sure if that made sense right now. It's 1:08 am and I'm wicked tired. 

So on that note, I'm peacing out. 

♥