Hello!

So it’s been 8 months since my last update. Things have been busy to say the least.

What brings on this sudden jump back into blogging?? Four letters…

NYWC!

Yes, the blog is back and conveniently in time for The National Youth Workers Convention. This year, we, The Bridge Youth Ministries, are driving all the way to Cincinnati, Ohio (Crazy to make a 10-12 hour drive? Yes, I know). Instead of flying this year, we are saving money by taking a bonding adventure from NJ to OH. Sad to say that many of the veterans from last year will not be accompanying us this time, such as: Samantha, Sully, Jefferson, Armando, Jenn, Sarah, Kevin, Elliott, and possibly Romulo. For those of you who met us last year, here are a few reasons why some of them are not returning: Samantha is finally a school teacher and just got engaged a few days ago, Sarah and Kevin had their first baby girl, Sydney; Elliott is also a school teacher this year, and Jenn is now the principal of a K-8 gifted and talented school. Veterans returning this year are: me (of course), Carlos (our youth pastor), Billy, Jesu, Manny, and hopefully Ali. We also have some newbies attending this year: Michael, Jenifer, Raul, Alex, and hopefully Sonia. So as of now, 9 definites with 2 possibilities will be making the long trek 1/4 across the country. Pray that we grow together, laugh together, catch some shut-eye, and not make each other crazy on the journey. :)

As for other updates, I’m still a preschool teacher in the same school, still happily single, still going through the rollercoaster ups and downs of life, mentored Jenn - a young youth pastor, through Tim Schmoyer’s free YM Mentorship program, started piano lessons, enrolled into Light University for biblical counseling, went to the WorshipGod conference in MD, and led worship for a week at T.I.M.S. thanks to Brian Ford for the invite (had a blast, met new people and learned a new game called Swat!), and just recently joined our young adult church’s (The Connection) worship team.

My roles in youth ministry have expanded. Last time I blogged, I was currently the worship director for our youth band, emerging worship station coordinator, small group leader for an all-girls group, and minute taker for leadership meetings. Last year (August08 - July09), I also took time off from being deeply involved in our youth groups unless they needed me for ratio purposes.
This year, while I am still working as a “full-time” unpaid volunteer, I was hired by my youth pastor as “part-time” to be his administrative assistant. As for my “full-time” volunteer responsibilities? I’m still the worship director for the youth band, but now have an assistant worship director to help lighten the load. I am still the emerging worship station coordinator but no longer doing “worship stations” every single month, but every 3-4 months, for our youth church, The Sanctuary. I am no longer a small group leader for the all-girls group because after 3 and a half years of being together, my girls have graduated from HS and moved off to dorm at college for a year. They intend on moving back for the remainder of their education so they can also be leaders-in-training for the youth ministry. Our last adventure was a trip for piercings (ears, nose, and eyebrow) followed by a rainy trip to the beach. So much crazy fun lol. New roles include being the stage manager for our youth church and young adult church services and being the head admin for the YouthTracker system (I’ll blog about that another time since my Twitter friend, Todd Porter, asked me about it via Facebook). So it’s been pretty busy since September.

As for youth group, I went from being “on-call” like last year to “I’ll come twice a month” to “I’ll be here every week”. We have 10 youth groups now: 5 Bridge Jr groups and 5 Bridge Sr groups. I’ll blog about that another time as well since my Twitter friend, Chris Day, was asking me why we do this instead of focusing on one youth group. We finally have an official I.D. system up and running within our youth ministry. The youth love the ID’s because it gives them a sense of belonging within their youth group, it gives us the opportunity to keep learning their names when they show us their ID card at the door, it gives the youth fun discounts on our events or at the “Bridge&Noble” store, and we’re working with the community to give us store discounts on pizzarias, coffee shops, etc. around the neighborhoods.

Eventually, I will have to discuss the accomplishments and failments of my New Years Resolutions I posted earlier this year.

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed my blog comeback of amazing updates (lol). Time to continue tackling my pyogenic bacterial conjunctivitis (pinkeye).

PS: thank you, Patti Gibbons, for your “like” on my “Janelle is blogging” Facebook status. ;)

Good day, good day.

Seriously.

First up, the rest of the CCC: Leading from the Pages of Your Life by Dan Webster.  Oh wait, maybe I should mention that I slept in as long as possible before having to get up and get to this class which = no breakfast. ha. anyways, the rest of this class was… how can i put it… phenomenal?  Honestly, if i leave this convention with only what i learned from this class, it is enough.  I absolutely recommend anyone and everyone to take this Critical Concerns Course whenever you hit up NYWC. I dont want to spoil it for anyone but i just have to write about what i learned from it for everyone else who is unable to attend NYWC. 

Yesterday we went over one of the two key points: 1. Take time to listen to (someone you are conversing with) their life.  And we did the timeline that i mentioned in the previous post.  Today’s key point was 2.Understand the two life-long works of leader development. 

A. Get clear on the work that has your name written on it.    
B. Grow your heart, soul, and character.

With that said,
                           Truly successful people…

 * develop a set of competencies/skills.  This is simple: Master your craft! Take classes, go back to school, learn! It’s never too late to continue learning. Don’t be lazy thinking you know it all. You don’t. Young or old, I look up to every person that pursues knowledge and growth.

* build relationship alliances that take their life (and friend’s life’s) impact to a multiple.  This is quite simple as well: cultivate relationships with people who are positive and encouraging. Allowing yourself to be surrounded by consistent negativity is damaging to your soul, your spirit, and your life. It’s important to envelop your self with support, accountability, and friendship.  And it’s amazingly two-fold. It’s not about what you can get out of it, but how you can pour into them and in return they will pour into you.

     *  develop enough character not to blow it all up. This is the toughest part of becoming a successful person. Responsibility brings out the monster within us and when we encounter obstacles, whether its rejection, failure, defiance from others, fear, stuff just doesn’t work out like you planned, etc, it’s up to us to develop enough character not to explode in anger or crumble into a huge mess. Everything that we’ve built up about ourselves can shatter in an instant in a lapse of controlling your emotions. So strive to allow yourself to feel the hurt, the anger, the fear, whatever it may be and at the same time, not let it control you.

Here’s where it gets more personal: Ask yourself these three alignment questions.

1. Where is the life/joy? What are the things that light up your world when you talk about them, what are the things you love to do, what makes you come alive? *Go deeper and keep a journal for 30 days and track all of your alive moments.
2. Where’s the fruit/impact? Where did God take your efforts and make it more than you ever could?
3. Where’s the affirmation? What are things that people notice about you? What can you do with relative ease that most people struggle doing?  What is it that makes people ask you, “how do you do it?” and all you can do is shrug your shoulders and say, “I don’t know, it just comes to me.”

Mind-blowing stuff if you ask me. I challenge you, if you are reading this and you don’t know what you are supposed to do for the rest of your life, answer those questions. And if you already know what you want to do, answer them anyway, because the worst thing in the world is pursuing something that your heart is not into. By doing so, you’re only hurting yourself, others who could be touched by your gifts, and your capacity to be used to your fullest potential. Talk to a mentor or leader.  Take classes, cultivate relationships, develop character.  I assure that your life will become an amazing adventure. I’m so confident in this, that I’ll give you a 30-day money back guarentee if you are not satisfied. lol 

So! After that course, I checked out about half of the exhibit hall with Samantha (@milagrosfarias for those of you who Twitter).  Met up with Todd (@thesnuffy) at the YMX booth before heading over to Subway where we ran into Nadim (@simplyinsider) and realized that we met earlier in the hotel the day before. Very good. My best friend Ali would appreciate that I ate a 6inch Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich. Lol That seems to be our Sunday find dining choice in between our youth service and the young adult service.

General Session Uno… Worship: Starfield – amazing. Glad to have this for multiple sessions this year. Artist: Newworldson – loved it. Talent: Amena Brown – I love her, but we missed hearing her speak because we were stuck at Subway. And Joe Castillo whom I call the sand story guy.  Wow.  His sand story on the Prodigal Son nearly brought me to tears.  That was the best sand story of his that I have ever seen. Speaker: Mike Pilavachi – Engaging and animated. I saw him do the same teaching two years ago at NYWC Austin, but it was still cool.

Seminar Series 1… I went to Jeanne Stevens “Soul School” class, stayed for about a half hour before I got up and left. Not because I hated the class because in fact, Jeanne is a wonderful speaker despite the evil curse of the word “um” that seems to be upon her. But in my opinion (and its only my opinion peoples), there was too much talk and not enough soul nurturing application unless you call “hey, now turn to the person next to you and choose which one of these three points applies to you and why, you’ve got 5 minutes”. And sitting next to someone who was clearly more uncomfortable and closed up than I was made even attempting to engage in conversation like pulling out nails with my bare hands. And I’m not very open myself. After leaving, finally met up with Sara (@saraeden) and met her friends Colleen and Tyler. Also met Brian (@exposed2Jesus) and John (@studentministry).

It’s Sarah’s 28^th birthday today and we went out to dinner at Little E’s Lounge which is above Mahoney’s in Pittsburgh.  Very nice, quaint little spot with an instrumentalist or small band, kinda like a coffeehouse but restaurant. Sarah got a birthday serenade. I had a $7 cheeseburger which…how do I put this… was completely worth the $7. If anyone here is looking for a great place to eat with great food worth the money and side entertainment in the background, this is the place for you.

General Session Dos… Worship: Starfield – don’t know. Lol we got stuck at the restaurant because they messed up some of our separate checks. And with a party of 14 (three married couples) that’s 11 checks lol so we were nice about it because most restaurants try to refuse that.  Speakers: Andrew Marin, Margaret Feinburg, and Soong-Chan Rah – so because of the restaurant mix up, we also came in on the tail end of Margaret’s question and answer portion. But Andrew Marin and Soong-Chan Rah did an awesome job with their talks. I especially enjoyed sprawling out on the YS Store floor with some of my team and chatted with Jesus (@Jesu7) (and like Marko said, I mean Jesus the youth worker, not Jesus Christ). We discussed much of what Marin and Rah were talking about so it was great.

Afterwards, myself, Sami, and Sara walked over to Sara’s hotel (William Penn) and enjoyed comfy couches and chairs and had hot chocolate and laughed and sat in silence. Good times. (:

Back at the hotel, Jenn and Sarah and I debated Marin’s talk about homosexuality and the church. Now I just want to say that its this kind of stuff that I long for: debating discussion, wrestling with statements, notions, ideas and conversing amongst each other without opinion pressure. So we talked and then I began my blogging. I was instructed by her to blog about what I brought into the discussion that she responded to with “that’s deep, I love that.” Lol  so here it goes.

In discussing listening to Marin’s question and answer portion, I was fascinated by one of the questions which pretty much asked how do we minister to gay and lesbians in the youth group? And Marin’s answer was pretty much “the same way you minister to the heterosexual youth in your group.” (completely paraphrasing obviously). And really, how crazy… how crazy and messed up are some churches that seek out people with ‘simple sin’ (that’s what Jenn loved the most). Seriously though, it’s like these churches open the doors to the public but screen their congregation. It’s like they say: Oh, you are bitter? Come on in, we’ll talk about forgiveness. Oh, you’re hurt? Come on in, we’ll talk about healing.  Oh, you are a normal unsaved person? Come on in, we’ll talk about Jesus. But if a homosexual comes to their “open door” then they say: Oh… you’re gay/lesbian? Um… I don’t know, I don’t think you should be here. God says homosexuality is an abomination and we follow God’s word here. Oh… you’re a prostitute? Uh… yeah, I don’t think this is the right place for you.  Oh… you’re what we want to call “abnormal, too hard to save, too much to deal with” sinner? Yeah… we can’t help you.  In discussing this with Jesu, he said, “Church is like a hospital and its like someone with leukemia comes up and wants help, but the hospital says no, we can’t help you.” That’s crazy. That’s…church? That’s messed up.

Well this is my second attempt of blogging this very post since last night after working on it for 2 hours, it vanished and I was panic-stricken until I realized… yeah I wasn’t getting it back.  So here it is again. (: Hope you enjoyed it if you even made it this far. If you did, mad props to you! Do you use “props” here?  No? Okay, it’s like “kudos” or like “getting a pat on the back”. (that’s for all you General Session Oners!) :P

keep smiing.be love