i'm a youth pastor now???

ok, i know that this is an exhorbitant number of posts while you all are asleep, and that i really have no call to be blabbing quite so much, but the past few hours have been an adventure.

i get a phone call from sheri early this afternoon (church starts at four). 'hey babe, has louise talked to you about doing the youth group?' yes, she had. what she had said was 'could you plan a few games and drag together some snacks, because our handful of teenagers are sick of 'helping out' with the sunday school, and we'd really love for them to have their own little group.' 'ok,' says sheri, 'so karen says to just do it at ALH (the orphanage), and i think you're on your own. it should only be the five boys and four farang.'

sweet.

then dave phones. 'yeah, you'll have one of the thai interns to help you.'

double sweet.

so i drag some games together, rush off to get some snacks, sketch out a rough outline of what i'm going to talk to our four farang about, and book it to the church. 'i think ricky's involved in this too, somehow.' 'hey ricky, you a part of this whole crapshoot?' 'yeah, i think i'm doing the teaching.'

this is shaping up to be awesome.

twenty-nine kids, two rowdy games, three big bags of chips and a box of cookies later, we have ourselves a youth group. we played games in ALH's tiny downstairs (it has an even tinier upstairs, and no yard, so it was the best of options), ricky took the farang upstairs for a Bible study in english, and the thai intern (i still don't know his name...i'm sorry, thai intern) held the twenty-three 10-12 year old thai in rapt attention. i wish i knew what he was saying, because they all sat and listened, and laughed in the right parts and answered his questions in unison, for a good half hour...ON THE FLOOR!!!! north american kids don't sit that long in comfortable chairs!

i don't know how many of these thai kids are Christians, but you can bet that even the ones that are live in buddhist homes. they need something fun, something age appropriate, something that will speak to them. please, oh please, thai intern, i know that youth pastoring is absolutely beneath you, NO one in thailand wants to be a youth pastor, not even as a stepping stone towards pastorship, but these kids need someone to speak into their lives.

there are three mosquitos circling the office right now. they can smell farang blood a mile away, but they can't come near me because of my superfantastic thai mosquito repellant, the details of which are to be discussed in a later blog. stay tuned...