Today was the Pure In Heart conference for mothers and daughters in Lutz and 4 of the ZG girls were able to attend. There were dramas about peer pressure, great praise and worship time, and sweet fellowship between moms/grandmas and their daughters/granddaughters (even those of us who "played" mom or grandma to the girls we took).

There were sessions for all of us as a group and then sessions for just the moms and just the girls. The girls were broken into groups according to their age and learned about beauty on the inside, saving their first kiss for the man God chooses for them someday, and remaining pure in their hearts....even in our worldly culture saturated with music, movies, T.V. and other media that encourages them otherwise. They shredded popular lies girls their age are told by friends, peers, and even the enemy. They made crafts and participated in ceremonies that crowned them princesses for their Most High King of Kings.

Overall, it was a very sweet time of fellowship, fun, and learning truth for all of us who attended.

A Night of Thanks

Tonight we celebrated all we have to be thankful for with a dinner together and the reading of our thankful wall. The kids write on the thankful wall first thing each week at least one thing they are thankful for from the previous week. We've been doing this since ZG started in July. Tonight, as we fellowshipped and ate together, we reflected on what we have been thankful for. It was a good way to remember all of the blessings God has bestowed on us and all we have to be thankful for every single day, from the smallest of things to the bigger things. Here are just a few examples of what the kids have been thankful for. As you can see, they're not just material blessings, but blessings of family and friends and memories they have.

• My mom feeling better.
• My brother's birthday.
• Getting an A on my quiz.
• My brother getting out of the hospital.
• My friends.
• My sister coming home from college.
• Doing good in the science fair.
• Sleep.
• My eyelids (after Louie Giglio video).
• ZG pool party.
  
  

The Remnant

Mr. Ken preached this Sunday about the remnant who not only followed Christ, but followed him to the highest mountains and through the greatest of difficulties....persecution, rejection, living day by day and not having a permanent dwelling place.

The multitudes followed Jesus in the plains, where it was easy to follow him and there were not many obstacles. In fact, it is where Jesus taught them, healed them, and fed them...so why not follow Him?! Matthew 4:23-25

Then in Matthew 5-7, during the sermon on the mount, the crowds dwindled. There the disciples were among the few who followed Jesus. The mountains represent difficulties that arise during our walk with the Lord....tests, trials, tribulations. No one ever said life would be easy if we followed Jesus. In fact, just the opposite! Mountains can be treacherous. Footholds are not always secure and sure. There are falling rocks, the air is thinner the higher you go making it harder to breathe, the fog can be denser making it difficult to always see where you're going. Though the end result is a deeper relationship with their Savior, many choose not to climb out of fear and uncertainty of the path that leads to the mountain top.

Finally, in Matthew 17, we see that Jesus took only three of his disciples with Him to the high mountain atop where he would allow them to witness His great transfiguration...only Peter, James, and John. It's not that the others were not necessarily worthy, but for some reason these three men were the remnant that were CHOSEN to follow Jesus to the very top, where they were exposed to their Master in all his wondrous glory. Oh to be one of those few! Still, if the climb to the mountain where Jesus taught about the Beattitudes was/is a difficult one, imagine how much harder the climb to the high mountain atop was/is. The self-sacrifice must be a great one in order to achieve the kind of relationship with Jesus that Peter, James, and John must have had with Him to make it to that mountain top.

To teach this to the kids, we played a game of follow the leader. First, we paraded them around inside the warm and well-lit church, going around chairs, under tables, sometimes hopping on one leg. Then we went outside the building and did the same thing. Outside, however, it was dark and cold. There were shadows to be wary of, trees and railroad ties to avoid or go around, and ant hills to be on guard for. Lastly, we took the kids to the parking garage at the Hard Rock Hotel. If you've never seen it at night, it's quite a spectacle...daunting to say the least! There are 5 levels to the garage and 77 stairs leading to the highest one. And yes, we climbed up each and every one of them (Ok, confession - John and the kids did....four-month-pregnant Tara watched from down below.)! There were also two kids who couldn't make the climb because they were too fearful. One attempted, but only made it about 1/4 of the way.

After returning to church, we discussed which of the times it was easiest to "follow the leader". We talked about how, not knowing what was next, it became a little more difficult and scary to follow us, even though the kids love and trust us. We compared each of our three journeys to the plains, mountain, and high mountain atop that Ken spoke of and the daily disciplines (Bible reading, prayer, etc...) required to press onward, forward, and upward for that goal and prize of a deeper and more personal relationship with our Lord and Savior.

Judgment Day

Wow, how to teach ten and eleven-year-olds about judgment day! That was the question this week. We decided to take them to court, literally!

Our classroom has a lava lamp that we put out each week while we're meeting. It's actually our second lava lamp because the first one was accidentally broken by a young man in the older youth group who just wanted to check it out one Sunday morning. We decided to re-create this case a little more creatively without the ZG kids knowing what was happening.

Earlier in the week, we stopped by the church and removed the lava lamp from the cabinet we keep it in. In it's place, we left the top cap piece to the lamp and two large pieces of broken glass. Now Kirsten gets to ZG early every week, before anyone else. She arranges the chairs for us and gets the lamp set up and plugged in. We knew that when she saw the broken glass and top piece to the lamp, she would freak. And freak she did! With nine girls in our group, we were sure there would be no shortage of drama for our trial!

When we arrived and Kirsten told of us her find, we acted shocked and even a little angry at what could have happened to our lamp. Hearing the commotion, Ms. Jennifer, our church's audio person who's there for practice every Wednesday night, came out from the sound booth and asked what had happened. We told her our lamp was missing and appeared broken. She then told us that she'd seen Josh, the older youth and culprit the first time around, in the kitchen earlier and even looking in our cabinet (which is also where we keep our snacks and drinks).

John went to get Josh from the youth room for "questioning". On the way over, Josh put several Band-Aids on his fingers and wet his shirt (evidence, you see). In our class, we asked Josh what happened and why he was in our cabinet. He defensively claimed he was there because one of the Pioneer Club teachers, Mrs. Lacie, asked him to come over and look for some glass bowls in the kitchen. He said that he dropped one and it broke and he swept it up. He said he never saw the lava lamp under the counter and didn't even know it was kept there. We asked him about his wet shirt and bandaged hands and he claimed the water was from the bathroom being out of paper towels and his hands were from the glass he cleaned up.

John walked Josh back to class and got Mrs. Lacie next. Mrs. Lacie told our class that she asked Josh to look in the food pantry, not the kitchen and that she had no idea why Josh would have gone to the kitchen and looked in the cabinets for glass bowls when it was water she asked him to look for.

After Mrs. Lacie left us, the debating began. It was great to just sit back and hear the kids brainstorm why or why not Josh could have broken our lamp and what he would have done with it afterwards. The kids even looked in the garbage cans in the kitchen to see if maybe he hid it there. Some kids were defenders of Josh, especially his Aunt Rachel, some were prosecutors, all were his jury and judge it seemed. Being the one who broke our first lamp, made Josh a very easy target. We made a list of the facts and evidence on the white board in the room and then came to the conclusion that someone else needed to be involved in our debate, be it Josh's parents or Pastor Billy. Things were getting serious now!

About this time, we tried to reel the kids back in a bit. We told them that we couldn't believe we'd wasted nearly our entire class on the mystery of the lava lamp and that we needed to get to our lesson for the night. We told them that our mock trial of Josh reminded us of the past week's sermon on judgment day. We discussed the day when each of us will stand before the ultimate Judge who will determine our eternal destiny....heaven or hell. God alone will be our Prosecutor, Defender, Jury, and Judge. And only if we have the assurance of Jesus Christ standing up to testify for us and on our behalf, can we be assured of heaven as our final destination.

We looked at Hebrews 9:27, Acts 17:30-31, Matthew 25:31-34 & 41, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 1 Corinthians 4:5, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, Colossians 3:25, Romans 12:19-21. We discussed how these Scriptures pertained to us personally and even to how we had just sat in judgment of our brother Josh.

At that, we brought the hidden lava lamp into the classroom and the kids then realized that the whole drama had been a part of their class and learning after all. We then invited any kids who were not so sure of their salvation and eternal destination to see us to pray with them after club.