Happy New Year!

Aaron and I had a very active New Year's. We had a lock-in at the church for the youth group. It was my first lock-in since I was in youth group myself. I was a little worried about how I would do trying to stay up that long seeing as how I can fall asleep on the couch by 9:00. However, Aaron did a fabulous job of planning very active games to play. We got to the church at 6:30 for a small praise band practice. The actual lock-in started at 9:00. We had 15 students and 3 leaders. We had free time until 11:00. We played volleyball and board games.

At 11:30 we went into the sactuary because there was a prayer service for anyone in the church who wanted to come. We sang some songs and had a sharing time of blessings throughout the year. My number one, of course, was being led to our church and beginning our ministry together. We have been so blessed by our congregation. Thanks to all our family and friends for your support! We ended the service by praying in a circle. I have never spent my New Year's Eve that way and it was very special.

After that we went back to the gym to begin our team competition. One of our students had to go home so I played in his spot to make even teams. I guess it was a good idea to keep me active but boy was I hurting! We started off playing volleyball and then moved to an even more physical game that involved a lot of running and squatting. My legs were extremely sore after that game! We then played "4 on a couch" also known as "the couch game". We then took a break from the games to make the biggest ice cream sundae ever. We got the idea from when we were at Brookhaven. We borrowed a gutter from someone in the church and lined it with plastic wrap. The students filled it with ice cream and loaded it with syrup, sprinkles, etc. Another game we played was human battleship. We layed down four tables facing eachother and then the teams layed down on opposite sides. Each team took turns throwing a ball over, without sitting up, trying to hit someone on the other team. In the last game we played, one team threw marshmallows at the other team who was sitting on chairs with cups on their heads. The team throwing was timed to see how long it would take to knock all the cups off. The team that won then did an individual competition to win a Starbucks gift card. They read a paragraph and had to find 20 books of the Bible hidden throughout. The team competitions were fun but we realized some things we need to work on as a group before we go on the mission trip this spring. We were both really tired by 7:00 that morning. We got home around 7:30 and went straight to bed and slept until 1:00.