30 Hour Famine Report

February 28, 2005 @ 11:12 am by Pressed

At the end of the 30 Hour Famine I had our youth fill out sheets that asked these questions:

What did you think about the Famine?
What do you think was the most important and meaningful part?

Here are some of the responses we recieved.

“It was really fun & I thought the silent worship service was awesome and powerful. The service projects were fun and I loved helping people out.” - Bradley Perry

“I thought the best part was when we interacted with the people in our community and we got to see their reactions when they found out we weren’t eating for 30 hours to save others.” - Elizabeth Martin

“I liked it because you got to see what the children go through every day from hunger.” - Stephanie Foutch

“I liked it, it was really fun. The most important part was realizing that we have so much and sometimes we need to give that up to help others.” - Morgan Tiefenbrunn

“I really enjoyed the Famine and the service projects. It was really neat focusing on others and helping them out. I am glad I was able to experience what children in other countries experience every day of their lives.” - Ellen Scheidhauer

“I thought the 30 Hour Famine was a very meaningful experience. I really liked going to the mission this time. It was so cool buying all that food, yet, it was so sad knwoing they shop like that each week.” - Abby Scantlan

“The famine was pretty hard, but I had a lot of fun! The best part was raising money and going into our community to see how we can help hunger in our own town.” - Tasha Lynn

“I liked the service projects, because they allowed us to demonstrate God’s love in our own community.” - Eric Kase

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30 Hour Famine - Community Service Projects

February 26, 2005 @ 11:16 pm by Pressed

Today was all about community service. Our students went to two different nursing homes, to the Agape House, to Meramec Mission, to rake some yards of the elderly, and to do some odd jobs for some people in our church who can’t do them. They painted, sorted clothes, bought groceries, and did several other things for the community. The group I went to help was at Meramec Community Mission. They sent us to the store to buy food for the pantry this week. Each week they spend over $1000 in food and they give that much away on a weekly basis. It’s amazing to see how many people are helped by the mission, even in our town.

So far we have raised $5,600 for World Vision and the students still have two weeks to continue getting donations. I hope to collect even more money than we did last year. This year there are enough grants to provide World Vision with $7 per $1 we raise. That means the $5,600 that we have raised already will equal $39,000 for World Vision. That will feed 108 children, 50 more than we were able to feed last year.

Our youth made 1,208 crosses out of popsicle sticks using two hot glue guns. We then took the crosses and placed them in the front yard of the church. We made a sign that says “1,208 children die every hour from hunger.” This was a good way to help them get a visual of how many children die every day. We also attempted to make 29,000 handprints. I then cut that down to 5,800 handprints with each hand equaling 5 children. We only made it to 1,600 prints. I am planning on hanging the ones we have done up in the hall way of our youth room along with several pictures from the digital camera rally. It will serve as a good reminder of what we accomplished this weekend.

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30 Hour Famine

February 25, 2005 @ 8:59 pm by Pressed

For the second year in a row I am doing the 30 Hour Famine with the teenagers at my church. Last year we had around 45 participants and raised $7,000 for world vision. I didn’t know it until a couple days ago, but according to the 30 Hour Famine website our church was listed first in the top five fundraising churches in the state of Missouri. I was very surprised by that because we are a smaller church. Our students did an awesome job last year raising money and our church really came through for us as well. Last year there were also some grants that World Vision recieved, for every $1 that we raised World Vision recieved $3 in grants. Our $7,000 with the grants gave World Vision $21,000. We were able to feed 58 chilren for a year.

If you are unaware of what the 30 Hour Famine is, it is an event designed for youth that helps them to feel and understand what it is like to go without food and it helps them to understand the needs of our community, nation, and world. It gives them an opportunity to see that they can make a difference in the world. The students make a commitment to go 30 hours without food and then they get people to pledge $1 per hour that they fast. $30 will feed one child for a month. If our students get 12 people to donate $30 dollars they can feed a child for an entire year.

The students start their fast during school at 12:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon. They go without eating until 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening. I have them come to the church at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and stay till we have a huge meal on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. We play games, have bible studies, do community projects, and do several other things that help our youth to understand what its like to be in need.

This year our schedule is a lot tighter. I gave the youth lots of free time last year to do their own thing, but this year I decided to keep the group actively involved with one another for a larger majority of the time. Some of the things on our agenda for tonight include drive by prayers, a digital camera rally, two devotional/praise & worship sessions, and the beginning of our tribal games.

It is a lot of work, a lot of organization, and you have to be with your teenagers for 24 hours but it is a fun and powerful way to get the message across to them. This year I want our youth to recognize how much they really have and how much they can give to those who have nothing.

UPDATE*** The youth did their digital camera rally tonight. Each van had a list of items that they needed to take pictures of and each item was designated with a certain amount of points. The team with the most points won. They came back with some really creative pictures. One group went to the local fire station to get several pictures. To get 4,000 points one of the team members had to ride in a fire truck with its lights on while singing Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash and they did it. I was impressed. As always I try to get the teams to go to the Pastor’s house and to the church secretary’s house to get pictures of them as well. It’s good fun.

UPDATE 2*** The tribal games have begun. This year I took the game TRIBE given to us by World Vision and I changed it a little bit to fit our group. Each student received a card with a child’s name and home life on it. Each child also had a disability of some sort. The students had to take on the disabilities of the children they were supposed to be. So if they got a card that said they were blind, then during all of the tribal games they had to wear a blindfold. We had students who had to care heavy backpacks, students who had to wear blindfolds and eye patches, students who had to wear nose plugs, and students who had to put splints on their legs or tape their fingers together. We divided them up into 5 tribes, selected tribal leaders, dressed them up, had tribal music, tribal chants, dances, and the whole works. It was a blast!!!

UPDATE 3*** Late night worship went well. We turned all the lights out in the sanctuary and had the students enter silently. They were given a candle as they came in and asked to sit up front. We started with one candle lit and as each student prayed they lit the next person’s candle and then that student prayed. I thought it was a powerful time of reflection and worship as we just sat in silence and then in prayer.

UPDATE 4*** We have about 38 participants this year in the 30 Hour Famine event. Many of our students couldn’t come because of basketball, band, work, and all the other things that keep teenagers from coming to church. It’s time for bed and I forgot my sleeping bag. It’s going to be a cold night for me…

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Books Can Only Hold So Much Water

February 24, 2005 @ 2:42 pm by Pressed

It’s funny how one thing leads to another. I wanted some new truck mats ever since I bought the truck. After a little over a year I decide to go ahead and get these expensive mats that hold in the dirt water, and mud, keeping dirt from destroying your carpet. It was also good timing since I was leaving on a hunting trip. For the trip Kendall gets us guys a bunch of cookies, chips, crackers, and soda. She places the soda and a couple frozen bags of water in this little travel cooler from Subway. From this point on I will refer to it as the TCFH (travel cooler from hades). I throw all my stuff in the truck, set my bookbag in the floor in front of the back seat and stick the TCFH in the back as well and we venture off on our 8 hour journey to south Arkansas. On the way the baggies melt, both of them spring a leak and seep out of the TCFH. The only place that the water has to go is on my new truck mats, you know the ones that “hold everything in.” Since the mats are rubber the water forms a pool looking for a place to go. Lucky enough this pool of water found shelter in my bookbag. 8 Hours and 24 oz of water later my book bag has soaked up its maximum capacity which included all of my seminary books, my HCS Bible, my hebrew cards, my Primos turky hunting DVD, some youth permission slips, and my iPod. We tried to dry up what we could. I was impressed with the iPods ability to sit in a puddle of soaking water for 8 hours and still work perfectly. I had one book that took the blunt of the attack with every page soaking up a large amount of water. When I picked it up and squeezed water poured out of it like I was squeezing a wet sponge. That happened 10 days ago and the book is still damp on the inside.

Moral of the story: Don’t get your TCFH from Subway and fill it with zip lock bags full of ice. We must remember folks: water/ice/water + TCFH from Subway = leakage x new mats = pool + bookbag = 2 hours of blow drying each individual page of your new thinline Bible. Please inform Subway that they can keep their free cooler.

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I’ll Jump On The Bandwagon

February 23, 2005 @ 10:18 am by Pressed

1. WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME?
Leroy

2. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING?
Blue Jeans

3. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Mayberry by Rascal Flatts

4. DEAD OR ALIVE, NAME THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD LOVE TO MEET.
I would like to meet The Apostle Paul, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and John Calvin… weird huh?

5. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
Cheddar Bites from Sonic

6. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Plain ole blue created with the first box of 8 crayon colors in 1903

7. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW?
Cold, dark, and the ground is covered with snow.

8. LAST PERSON YOU TALKED WITH ON THE PHONE?
My Girlfriend

9. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX?
Well, being the shallow, male, pig that I am I would have to go ahead and say that looks or attractivness is the very first thing I notice. The most important thing to me however is more about their attitude, faith, heart, and the way they live their life.

10. SHOES YOU LOVE TO WEAR.
I wear my Doc Martins more than any other shoe I own.

11. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
Stressed. To much to do and not enough time to do it.

12. FAVORITE DRINK?
Unsweet Iced Tea with or without lemon

13. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK?
I don’t drink, never have, so I haven’t the slightest clue.

14. FAVORITE SPORTS?
Honestly, I am not a big sports fan. If I am going to a game it has to be baseball or hockey. If I am playing the game it has to be golf (with a golf cart of course). If I am watching sports on TV I fall right to sleep from utter boredom

15. HAIR COLOR?
Brownish looking mess

16. EYE COLOR?
Ghostly Green

17. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
Nope. Don’t wear glasses either.

18. TYPE OF VEHICLE YOU DRIVE.
2004 GMC Sonoma Crew Cab. Blue.

19. TOP FIVE FAVORITE FOOD?
* Ribeye Steak
* Fried Chicken
* Ice Cream
* BBQ Pork Steaks
* General Tso’s Chicken

20. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Cold Mountain… No one told me it had a large nudy section in it. *sigh* Icky, icky, icky.

21. TOP THREE PET PEEVES.
* Chewing or mouth noise.
* People who do not answer the quetsion that was asked (esspecially those who answer a question with a quetsion. I HATE THAT!)
* People who answer their cell phone in theaters

22. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT?
Always have been.

23. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS BETTER?
I personally like to see some happy endings. I need conflict to be resolved, I need closure. I don’t like walking away from a movie feeling terrible.

24. WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL?
I will have to go with Spring. The most important things that happen in the spring are fishing and turkey seasons open up.

25. HUGS OR KISSES?
Dark chocolate kisses are my fav.

26. RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS?
At this point in life, relationships are the way to go.

27. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
Vanilla with chocolate on it. Mmmmmmm.

28. THREE ANIMALS YOU WANT TO OWN.
* A Beagle
* An aquarium full of talking fish.
* A Horse (preferably a talking one named Ed)

29. NAME FOUR PLACES YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT.
* New York (don’t ask me why, cause I don’t know.)
* Scotland/Ireland/England
* New Zealand
* Isreal

30. FIRST CONCERT YOU EVER WENT TO?
Pearl Jam

31. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS?
I live in a fully finished basement. I have my own room, kitchen, bathroom, livingroom, and laundry room. My parents live upstairs. My rent is free, satallite is free, internet is free, food is free…

32. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING?
*Providence & Prayer by Terrance Tiessen
*Understanding Church Growth by Donald A. McGavran
*Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem
*Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey
*A Biblical Theology of Missions by George Peters
*Missiology edited by John Terry, Ebbie Smith, and Justice Anderson

33. WHAT IS ON YOUR SCREEN SAVER AT HOME?
The standard Forest screensaver on the iMac.

34. FAVORITE CARTOON?
Beast Wars was awesome.

35. FAVORITE SMELLS.
Fresh baked cookies, coffee (even though I hate the taste) or any meat being grilled.

36. SMELLS YOU HATE.
(stealing all the answers from Christopher) Body odor, vomit, and poop.

37. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
Uhhhhgggggggggggg.

38. FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT THE SINGLE LIFE.
It is cheaper.

39. HOW DO YOU EAT AN OREO?
With milk of course.

40. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG?
Now that I have not posted for ten years, I don’t know. *sigh*

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