We had a yard sale yesterday at the home of one of the other missionaries. She has a Nintendo Wii, and in order to keep Nathan occupied, we had to let him play it. He’s good at boxing.
Want to help us get our own Nintendo Wii for free? You could get a free one, too. Click here for more details.
Click here to watch the video on Vimeo. This is my first video for Videoblogging Week 2008, so check out the rest on Mexico Movies.
Just so you know, tomorrow starts Videoblogging Week for this year. Over on Mexico Movies, our videoblog, we’ll be posting one video every day for the week.
I might, if I can find the time, post a video a day over on my youth ministry site, too. I might post a video there every day talking about various issues in youth ministry. We’ll see how much time I’ve got this week.
Anyway, keep an eye out for lots of videos this week, and if you want, grab a camera and upload a video to the web everyday this week.
A recent article in USA Today tells about Mexican youth subcultures and the troubles that have been happening between them lately.
“A spate of attacks by punks and other groups on the emos has thrown a spotlight on the rapid growth of these “urban tribes” of disaffected, tech-savvy teens and young adults.”
Emos, punks, goths, and other subcultures have all emerged in the last few years, and there is tension between them at times.
“The divisions among young people turned violent in March, when Internet posts and cellphone messages began appearing urging darks, punketos (punk rockers) and other groups to chase the emos from their hangout on the main plaza in the city of Querétaro.”On March 7, hundreds of teens rushed the emos in the plaza, beating three of them. Television footage showed an emo pinned against a wall while the mob chanted, “He wants to cry! He wants to cry!” Police arrested 28 people.
A week later, riot police were called after punk rockers hurled bottles at a pro-emo protest at the Insurgentes Traffic Circle, an emo hangout in Mexico City. The tension subsided after a group of Hare Krishnas marched through the traffic circle, apparently unaware of what was going on.
I believe these subcultures will continue to grow in the future, and if the church continues doing what it is doing, we will never even think about the needs of these various groups.
Unfortunately, these different subcultures are not even being taken into consideration by the majority of the church. I am praying that God will raise up a generation of youth workers who have the passion and knowledge to be able to reach out to these young people. I hope I get to be a part of the generation of leaders who makes a difference in the lives of these young people.
Watch the news story (in Spanish) from Youtube.
Yesterday in my Professional Orientation to youth ministry class, we talked about contacting students in ministry. We talked about many different ways to contact people, and in class, I asked on twitter for some suggestions on how to contact students during the week.
Of course, the popular way to contact students in the United States right now is on Facebook. I received replies from both Tony and Sara that told me to suggest creating Facebook groups to keep in touch with students. Right now, Facebook has not really caught on in Mexico.
However, Huberto showed me a social network that is taking off in Mexico. It’s called Hi5, and it’s really pretty much like all the other social networking sites that are out there right now. Hi5 is the 3rd largest social networking site in Latin America and has more users than MySpace or Facebook.
It looks a lot like MySpace, in my opinion. Huberto says he uses it to stay in touch with the students in his ministry, and he was worried about the dangers that there are with his students using these sites and putting too much information online, etc.
I thought that this whole conversation was good because it’s interesting to see how different countries’ use of social media evolves. I started a Spanish social network on ning.com for youth workers, which led the youth pastor from our church to create one for the youth ministry at our church.
Social networking is getting more popular in Mexico, and it will definitely be a way to communicate with young people in the future. Right now, it’s cutting edge. I wonder what new thing will be out in the USA when it finally becomes mainstream here?
(image by: dsevilla on flickr)
With the addition of flickr video, there’s a new idea floating around called “long portraits. I posted about it on my twitter account yesterday, and since then I’ve been thinking about it and what we could do with it in youth ministry.
A long portrait is basically a video snapshot that lasts less than a minute (or around 30 seconds) where you capture a single moment of a person in that time and place. It’s like a photo that can talk, where the person answers a simple question (click here for some great sample questions.) Photojojo has a great post on what it is and how to do it.
Here are some suggestions I have for using long portraits in youth ministry:
What other ideas do you have for using long portraits in youth ministry?
Oh, and here’s an example of what it is:
Philip’s favorite relative from Photojojo on Vimeo.
(image by: angelinawb on flickr)
