The Middles (formerly Club 56) youth group hits Sunnyside

They once again had a great service!!  Lydia and Emily are part of the Middlers Youth Group at Church.  This is the same youth group that Ryan was part of and that Lydia and Emily have been part of.  The name just changed because we now have 5th, 6th and 7th graders instead of just 5th and 6th.  Annually, they do a service at our local Presbyterian assisted living facility.  Many of their residents, who are able, attend our church.  There are several residents who are not able to attend our church and they attend the service that is held at the home.  Our youth group does a service there each year the Sunday after Easter.  Last year I was so impressed by the way Lydia was able to do the Children's Sermon in front of all of those people.  She did a great job!  This year, no less at all!!  We did remove the Children's Sermon from our service.  Lydia wanted to do the sermon, but we often save that for the oldest kids.  Her time will come soon!!  She headed a skit/prayer that we did.  It was great!!  While I can't remember what was said, here are some pictures.

Emily and Dylan handing out Bulletins

Emily and Dylan

Bella, Anissa and Carson along with Lydia and John (our youth pastor)

Lydia heading the skit.  She's in the back.

We always greet the residents at the end of the service.  They are always so complimentary.

In addition to this great activity, our Middlers class painted this past winter as well.  Since I have become addicted to this painting class stuff, I suggested this one.  We have a family of artists at our church who were so great in volunteering to head up the class.  They let me bring Ryan too even though he was part of the confirmation class youth.  The kids really enjoyed this one!!

Emily's horse

Lydia's Loki

Ryan's Loki

They all enjoyed and did such a great job with them!  All the kids did!!

Club 56--Making their mark

I don't believe I have ever been as proud of my girls as I was today.  Lydia and Emily are part of a youth group--at our church--called Club 56.  It is a group of 5th and 6th graders, and another mother and I are the youth leaders.  Ryan was part of this group last year and the year before and now it is the girls turn.  Each year, our youth group preforms a church service for our local Presbyterian retirement community.  Many of the service attendees live in the assisted living portion of the community, but some come from the apartments within the community.  In addition, the residents who are not able to make it to the service because they are feeling sick, etc., the church services are piped into their rooms.  Well, today was the day for our service.

The last two years, Ryan has participated in being one of the ushers.  He has never been comfortable with speaking in front of people so he left the speaking parts to his group members.  Emily felt the same way this year.  She was not interested in speaking in front of anyone.  She felt comfortable with handing out bulletins and collecting the offering.

Because our group is a little smaller this year than it was the last two years, we needed to make sure we had enough kids who were comfortable speaking.  Lydia volunteered to do the Children's Sermon.  Emily agreed to hand out the crackers that were to go with the story Lydia told.  We do a children's sermon and the younger siblings of our group members are the children that come forward.  Lydia read the entire story (found at the bottom of this blog) and Emily handed out the crackers.  Lydia was amazing!  She even wanted to add to her prayer . . . "and all God's Children say . . . " and everyone in the congregation says Amen.  Our Pastor will often say that and she asked if she could add that to the prayer that we picked.  I was so proud of her.  In addition to the Children's Sermon, she also did the greeting.  In the greeting she welcomed everyone and explained who we were and what Club 56 was about.  She also introduced the ushers.  And then, towards the end of the service, she did the Prayer of Thanksgiving and lead the congregation in saying the Lord's Prayer.  She was wonderful!  All the Club 56 kids were wonderful!!  I was just so proud of the way she took this and ran with it.  We had talked about making eye contact, but didn't talk about it much.  I don't know if she forgot to do it or was nervous.  Most likely forgot.  Either way, thought it was good.  She never looked back and never hesitated or seemed nervous.  For 5th and 6th graders--they were all amazing!!

 Emily passing out bulletins with her club mates . . . Ashley, Connor and Megan (Megan used to be on the Crush softball team with Emily)

 Emily giving a bulletin to one of our dads.

 Lydia, delivering the service greeting.

 Lydia reading the Children's Sermon story to the kids.

I was not able to get a very good picture, but this is a picture of Emily passing out the crackers to the kids.  It was part of the story.

Emily passing the offering plates.

The four ushers dropping the offering plates at the front of the church and Lydia giving the prayer of thanksgiving and the lords prayer.

 The hymns and prayers are projected in the front of the church for the congregation  This was during her leading the Lord's Prayer.  I really was saying the prayer while taking this picture.  Can you see her at the pulpit at the bottom?

After the service, we took the kids to Golden Corral for Breakfast/Brunch.  This is tradition.  They had such a great time and enjoyed celebrating what they accomplished.

Here is the bulletin that everyone received in the service and the story that Lydia told during the Children's Sermon.

Here is the link to the service.  If you would like to watch it you can.  It is about 30 minutes, but of course you can skip over parts with kids you don't know.  So very proud of Lydia!!
https://youtu.be/s8Nlb-hFhx4

Club 56

Our church has so many wonderful programs for our youth.  For the 5th and 6th graders, they have a club called Club 56.  This group of kids does various activities together throughout the year and at Christmas time they take stuffed stockings to the shut ins at the Assisted Living Facility that is affiliated with our church.  They really do a lot of fun things and it enables the kids to get to know their church family a bit better.  Ryan participated in this group and I am a volunteer.  Ryan participated in this group last year as well.  This past weekend we did a really neat ropes course experiential team building program for this age kid.  They were really neat!  They did a low ropes that they had to use their "suitcases" to get themselves across the "swamp" and not get eaten by the "water snakes."  They had to figure out the best way to get across the swamp and had to guide two kids who were blindfolded.  Ryan was one the kids to help the blindfolded swamp crosser.  He and Ellie did such a great job!  Someone had to be standing on a "suitcase" at all times.  This made the crossing more difficult.  They had to also pass their suitcases to the kids that were in the front of the suitcase crossing bridge.

 

Another low ropes they did was having to get from one tree to another without falling off the rope.  They had to help each other to the different "posts" where they could be more stable.  This required strength and balancing and trusting a person that you might not know very well.  It was really neat to see these kids do this.

After he helped Nicholas balance, Nicholas is now pulling him while Anyssa is helping him balance at the first post.