Since I only have seminary class on Wednesdays and Fridays, today I substituted at MCCA for Joel, the math teacher, because he had to go to immigration for his visa. It is always cool to work with Janell. That is, after all, the way we met each other. It’s fun to spend the day with the kids at the school, too. Corey and Juliann spent some time with baby Estrella during one of the breaks. Overall, it was a cool day.
Today, I took my Youth Culture class to the Bazaar (basically a huge Mexican flea-market) here in Lomas Verdes.
We are studying sub-cultures, and it is amazing how many different sub-cultures you can find in a place like the bazaar. One of the manifestations of a culture is product. Each culture produces things for that culture. We saw stores selling stuff for Ravers, Goths, Hippies, Sports enthusiasts, Weight-lifters, and others.
The class is doing group research projects on subcultures and will be presenting them in class next Wednesday. Their subcultures of choice…Goths, Ravers, and Rappers. Should be fun. I can’t wait.
The weekend went well. I gave a one hour workshop about youth ministry at the Central Baptist Association’s meeting. There were over 30 in attendance, and we talked about some myths about youth ministry. I think it went well. We rushed from the conference, which was downtown, to the church for our movie night. There were also about 30 people there, with 6 new young people from the community. It was really cold out, but the fact that our church was actually doing something for the community was a great thing. Since we’re located on a main road, many people passed by and saw that we were interested in getting to know the community. I was also impressed with the young people from the church who came. They were very involved in helping. I am excited about what God is doing in the youth ministry. Another cool thing about the night was that Israel’s dad and sister showed up, and Israel had the opportunity to talk with them a lot about what we are doing at church. This is an awesome opportunity as we continue to pray for their salvation. Thanks for praying for this weekend.
Today was Janell’s birthday, so we went to Friday’s for dinner. We haven’t been to an American restaurant by ourselves in a long time (except pizza or fast-food places. I got her Shrek 2. We also went to Baskin Robins and bought some chocolate-peanut butter ice cream to eat with the cake she brought home from school today. Overall, it was a good night. Tomorrow, I am sharing at a youth conference downtown and then we have the big movie night at church.
This Saturday night at our church, we will be watching the Lord of the Rings. We are planning on viewing the movie outside on the wall of the church building. We have given out over 300 flyers to this event both in the church and in the neighborhood. We really want it to be an event to build relationships with the young people of the neighborhood and also with those who come to church but are not involved in the youth ministry program. We are still working out some of the details, so please pray for this event.
Today I stayed home sick. I really just rested because I had a sore throat and headache the last two days. I think it’s from working a lot in the last few weeks. This week is no different. It will be a busy week. Please pray for us in the next few weeks.
