Christian Internship! week two // part one

May 7, 2012 Once every month or so, our church or one of its sister churches holds a young people conference for junior high and high school-aged Christians to spend time together in activities and learning more about Jesus, God, and the Bible. After a 3-hour long drive to Pittsburgh, we spent the night at the manor where their church meetings are held – it was basically a giant sleepover with many, many younger kids. Since I was one of the older “serving ones,” I was responsible for a few middle-school girls, many for whom this was their first time spending the night away from home; I could hear whispering and laughing all night long. In the morning, we started the day off after breakfast with a short, half-hour singing session, accompanied with an acoustic guitar. Afterwards, we piled everyone into cars to an indoor carpet-skating park nearby; it was the most ridiculously fun outdoor activity I’d ever done. We had plastic rectangular “skates” attached to the bottom of our shoes, and it felt like you were sliding on a polished floor in socks, except you were doing that in an indoor skate park with ramps and other crazy things. The rest of the day consisted of activities in the park – Ultimate Frisbee was by far the most popular – and an evening meeting, where the band led the worship time and a message was shared on a portion of the Bible directed to young people. It was a crazy day, but I was so moved by the young people’s positive response to the message. You could just tell that so many of the young people were touched by the songs and the message that was shared – it was written all over their faces. Even one of the younger girls, whose parents were worried would be homesick, wanted to pray with me in our small-group time; it was one of those really sweet moments that I just can’t forget.