This past Sunday, the high school students were supposed to participate in the second week of “Heart of a Champion.” Things changed, however, when on Saturday morning I met with the other volunteers to discuss coming events, the spring schedule, etc. One of the volunteers reminded me that last year we made care packages for college students and sent them out around Thanksgiving. We failed to put that on the calendar for this fall, so we decided to postpone Bible study and work on care packages.

Part way through Sunday evening we realized that there were twelve church members in college, not the ten we had planned and shopped for earlier in the day. So, the high school students (three girls), another leader and I hopped in my car and went to visit Wal-Mart (after a quick stop at Dairy Queen to treat the girls to Blizzards) to pick up items for the two additional boxes. We made it back to church shortly before our closing (8:00 p.m.), so the scramble was on to assemble, fill, tape and address the boxes.

After we had just about all of them taped, we realized we hadn’t put a letter in the boxes like last year, so the high school girls ran upstairs to type a letter to include with each package. The boxes were carefully slit open, letters slid (sometimes shoved) inside, and then re-taped. We closed the night about 15 minutes late with our usual circle, prayers, and saying Numbers 6:24-26 aloud as a group (sometimes referred to as “The Lord’s Prayer of the Old Testament”).

As a whole, I found the evening frustrating because (a) I like sticking to what we have planned, and (b) I was really looking forward to the second week of the Bible study. Things I learned/was reminded of:

  • Things don’t always go as planned, especially in youth ministry. I need to remember to adjust on the fly and go with the flow.
  • My actions and lifestyle have a huge impact (both positive and negative) on youth. I should have saved my frustration for when the youth weren’t around instead of making it very obvious how I was feeling inside.