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So I know it's been an incredibly long time since I have updated this blog. Hopefully I'll get more time (and more inspiration) to post. But I just had to post this. I just have to brag on God a little bit.
About two or three months ago, my friend Vanessa and I were sitting next to each other during a church luncheon. At this particular luncheon, we were discussing as a church the different areas of ministry we would like to see grow or begin. Youth ministry came up simply in passing. I turned to Vanessa and whispered, "What if you and I did the youth?" She replied, "I was thinking the same thing!" Right then, we knew it was a God-given idea. We started planning and deciding when we wanted to start.
After much discussion and consideration, we figured that we would start our new youth ministry on July 30th, at 7 pm. And since it would be our very first Wednesday, we thought it fitting to have a "Kick off Party". We planned play games, have free pizza, make free frappuccinos, and even have fun giveaways and prizes. We got an awesome team of people who wanted to help work with young teenagers. Then we realized that to buy supplies and prepare adequately, we needed an estimate of how many kids we expected to show up. We decided, "Expect 20-30, prep for 40." We planned to buy 10 pizzas--enough to serve 40 people--and tons of drinks and cookies to go with it.
After thinking it over and discussing it with some people around us, we realized 40 was a pretty big number for our very first night, so we dropped it to just prepping for 20 or so at the last minute. We bought enough pizzas and desserts to serve 25 people. Our team showed up ready and excited. Finally, 7 o'clock rolled around...and 4 kids from our church showed up (2 of them were my sibling, and the other 2 were Vanessa's kids). Vanessa's kids brought 3 of their friends. I was happy that we had some kids of our own show up and that they brought guests. I told everyone, "Well, 40 was a huge number. 7 is good to start off with! This is really great." But inside, I was a little disappointed. I had hoped for at least 10 or 15 kids. But we carried on the night, when suddenly, in the middle of a game, my dad stopped everything and said, "The lady who runs the driving school next door just called. She's bringing her entire class of almost 30 kids over in 15 minutes."
We made a run for it. Some guys from the team rushed over more pizzas, I reset all the games, and others made frappuccinos. All of the sudden, we were flooded with teens. They ate up the pizza, talked with the leaders, got prizes, and participated in the games. When told them who we were and what we were about, and invited them to come back next week, tons of them said they would be happy to come. The teacher of the driving school even said, "They had so much fun, I offered to let them come next week. But I told them they'll have to start class earlier and not get a break." And almost all of them agreed.
At the end of the night, we did a final count. We had forty-ONE kids. Forty-one! Not only did we meet our goal of 20-30, but we beat our prep number of 40! Honestly, when we said, "Prep for 40," we meant that 40 was our "just in case" number. We didn't really think 40 kids would show up on our first night. In fact, deep down, we only really thought that 20 or so kids would come. We even said we'd be happy if just 10 or 15 showed up. But we said "prep for 40" because we figured, "Hey, better to have left overs than not enough." But we did hit 40! We had forty-ONE!
Beating "the number" was really God's way of telling me, "Don't worry about this. I've got it." Throughout this whole process of starting a youth ministry from scratch, I've had doubtful thoughts come to my mind. Should we really be doing this? Will this really work? We don't even have youth in our church right now! Am I too young to be doing this? But I've pushed them away and replaced them with faith. I started to see us having a successful youth group. I started seeing teenagers experiencing change. I started picturing myself standing in front of a large group of young people ministering. I began to tell myself I can do it, that I'm not too young, and that it will work! When 7 kids showed up, those doubtful thoughts came rushing back. See. It was never going to work. What were you thinking when you said 40 kids? Getting that many kids will take you a long time at the rate you're starting at. But when those 34 kids came rushing in at once, God reminded me that He is ALWAYS faithful and ALWAYS willing to provide the desires of our heart.
We had a great night, and I was honored to be able to put on such a fun "Kick-off Party" with the incredible team of volunteers we had. But most of all, I'm thankful that God came through and showed to us all that He can do anything and that He will always provide. He was the one who brought those kids in. Not me. Not Vanessa. Not anyone on the youth team. Not even the driving school teacher. God brought them. We weren't the ones who beat our number. He did. He beat it by one.