Sledding, Mayonnaise, and Beauty!

Hey, it’s Shayla from Team Five. So, once again, we have had a crazy week. From our Team Day last Thursday, to our messy Lifenight, and to an amazing lunch program, it has been an exciting week.

For our Team Day, we decided it was the perfect time to go sledding. Man, was it ever fun! We went to this hill by the High School in Perth. I had never seen the hill before, but from what we heard it was pretty decent. When we got there I could see why people liked to go to this hill. It didn’t look that tall, pretty average, but once you got to the top and saw down the hill, you could see how steep it was. We only had 4 sleds so we took turns going down the hill, but that got kind of boring after a while, so like most young people, we tried all going down together several times. Some successful, others not so much. We have a short video of us going down the hill and wiping out at the bottom. It’s at the bottom of the blog and quite entertaining. After doing that for a while, James and I found a part of the hill that lead to a jump. So, James and I decided to try out that side of the hill before trying the jump. We made it down and thought it was safe to take the jump it we so wished to do it. Just as were were about to get up the hill though, Tom went down on his sled. He had no idea what was coming because his sled turned around, and he was heading down backwards. Yup, you probably already guessed it, but Tom (only realizing it in the last second) went off the jump. I must say it was the funniest thing I have seen for a long time. Just the look on his face...utter surprise!

Sunday was loads of fun. Our Lifenight was called 'What a Mess'. Was it ever a mess. It was basically like fear factor. The teens got really into it. I believe we had 20 teens. We had many different activities that the teens had to do. There was a scrabble type of game that involved Alphaghetti, an ice cream eating contest that involved mayonnaise, eating a banana through nylon, throwing soaked Shredded Wheat (the big ones), shaving water balloons, putting jam on toast with your face, drinking Coke through your sock, and eating M&M’s with ketchup. It was really gross, but luckily no one got sick. Normally I have a strong stomach, but after the mayonnaise, I felt pretty disgusted. This Lifenight was loads of fun, and was such a great time to just hang out and get to know the teens even more. OH! Another great thing about this lifenight is that we had two of our potential core participate! It was a great night for them to join and I really think the teens had fun with them.

Merge (lunch program) went really well too. We started in prayer, as always, and then got right into a game of 'Identity Crisis'. With this game you were given a name of a famous person or character, and you had to go around asking people yes or no questions about your name, so that you could try to figure out who you were. Then I read the teens a story called 'The Cracked Jar'. This story has to do with your identity, and how God loves you as a whole with the imperfections that you see in yourself. There was also a meditation at the end of it. While reading the story, I was able to look around at the faces of the teens, and I really saw that they were taking this activity seriously, and they were actually thinking about what I was saying. In ministry you really cherish those moments because you can really see God working in the moment. It's beautiful.

Well, we will leave you this week with those fun stories, and next week there will certainly be more.

God Bless
Shayla