Ft. Worth = Success

We have been back from Ft. Worth for a few days now and I am still catching up on sleep. Good news is Ron and I had Friday and Saturday to recover, just in time for the official summer program to begin Monday. Regardless of the lack of sleep the trip was one to remember, a definite success. So many stories, lots of fun, plenty of work and a great start to the summer as we solidified several relationships with kids and built up some good steam for the next few months.

We left Monday afternoon around noon and arrived several hours later in Ft. Worth, checked into our hotel and then headed to the home church for the week. When we arrived at the church we were greeted by a room full of teenagers from multiple youth groups throughout the Ft. Worth/Dallas area. After a short worship time we were divided into groups and given our assignments for the week. The Rock Island youth were broken into two different groups and teamed up with other youth groups that were also apart of the work project. Afterwords we enjoyed a great time and meal at Chilis. We then headed back to the hotel, got room assignments and then had some down time to discuss the plan for the week and talk about the theme for the work week, "Called".

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings and afternoons were all very similar. 7:00am wakeup, breakfast, paint and scrap, 12:00 lunch, paint and scrap some more and then clean up around 3:00 each day. For the most part the Rock Island youth did a pretty good job of staying on task. Of course we had the occasional paint fight and lack of interest but it all worked out and the kids got some great work done. After everyone had cleaned up we would make dinner plans. Tuesday night we ordered some pizza to be delivered to the hotel. Wednesday night we joined a youth group at their church and experienced their youth hangout (and ate pizza again). Thursday night was the big finale. We took the kids bowling and had a roommate bowling challenge. Each room would be a team and compete against the other rooms to determine who would choose where we were to eat that night. Well, my team got last, the girls got second and Ron's team won. They choose Razoos. Not bad.

Thursday night (more like Friday morning) was also the night of the epic "Ft. Worth Prank" that will go down in history as the most ridiculously planned, chaotic, yet very successful prank.

We then headed out early Friday morning and got back to OKC around 1:00pm. We had some great conversations with kids. Got to know alot more about some kids that we didn't know much about. The kids experienced being apart of a more traditional youth group. The kids shared the love of Christ. What more can you ask for?

Ft. Worth Work Camp

We're going to Ft. Worth. Ten of our middle-school and high school students will be leaving for Ft. Worth this Monday, June 8th. There are a total of 8 boys, 2 girls, 2 male sponsors (Ron and myself) and 2 of our best female volunteer sponsors (Jenny and Mary).

While in Ft. Worth we will be combining our efforts with other youth ministries from the Metroplex in housing projects. We will be scrapping old paint, applying new paint and doing everything else in between. We are to meet early each morning with the other groups for breakfast and assignments and will work into the early evening each day. From there Ron and I envision campfire Bible studies and the singing of Kum Ba Ya... or something like that. Actually, we will have lots of swimming, PLENTY of showering, probably our fair share of farting (at least in the boys rooms) and time in each of the rooms for the studying of the Word.

Following the completion of our work on Thursday afternoon we will head back to the hotel to clean up and then we're off to a Rangers baseball game.

Wish us luck and please pray for our safety.