Youth

I had a busy but great day for a monday. This afternoon I went out for lunch with Marissa, one of the girls in our youth. It's so awesome just to feel like I am beginning to build a relationship with them as they are starting to trust us and we are learning to love them more. I can really see the Lord working in my life to even be able to reach out to them. I am just so thankful that He has called us to this ministry at this time. This weekend we had an activity planned, but we needed other people from our church to pull it off. Sadly, we had no volunteers and I was quite sad. So we came up with another activity and about an hour and a half before the activity we had a parent think it wasn't such a great idea. (We were going to play hide and go seek in an empty newly painted house and they thought we may damage something) So we cancelled that, and I was just plain annoyed. Josh was trying to think up something else and I was just like "No, I'm done! No youth this week" So we called all the kids and told them the sad news. Well within a half an hour they had all called each other and then called us back basically demanding that we have youth. So, Josh was just going to go so I could stay with Ella - but they pretty much begged me to come. Now if that wouldn't make you feel good I don't know what would. It was so encouraging to see that they really want to be there. It was the most encouraging youth activity we've had yet. In church on Sunday we were singing Indescribable by Chris Tomlin and one line says "you see the depths of my heart and you love me the same" and that just became so real to me. On Saturday night the depth of my heart was annoyance, complaining and self pity - but God still gave us an awesome night that I could never have planned to matter how hard I try.
Just a little family phot from our trip to the hot springs.