Friendship Lived Out

I know a high school student named David*.  David is a good student, a decent athlete, and a fun guy to be around.  Most of his teachers don’t know his name, but he has a group of guys that he hangs out with during lunch.  By all appearances, David leads a normal life for a teenager filled with academics, sports, and social gatherings.  However, David doesn’t have many people in his life that he feels close to.  In fact, there are only a handful of people on the entire planet that David trusts enough to talk about his feelings, his doubts, and his painful times.

David lives in my neighborhood and we hang out multiple times per week.  He comes to YoungLife events, we go to the movies with other guys, he visits my house for dinner.  One afternoon, David told me that he had something important that he wanted to talk about.  He came to the door, looking nervous.  We sat at my dining table and I asked him, “What’s up?”  David went on to tell me that he had met a youth pastor who had invited him to their youth group meeting.  David wanted to go, but was scared that if he went he would no longer be welcome at YoungLife.  I chuckled a bit and explained to him that we are here for him, and that I would gladly drive him to that youth group, which happened to be led by a friend of mine at a local church.  We went on to talk about faith, life, and what it means to love yourself as Jesus loves you.

As David headed for the door to leave, he turned around with another nervous look on his face.  “Josh?  What are we?  Like, what is this that we’re doing?”  I laughed a little more and told him simply, “This is called being friends.  I learn from you, and you learn from me.”  He liked that.  David told me that he doesn’t have many friends that act like this.  “Well,” I said, “we’ll just have to find you more friends.”  As David left my house, I realized that this act of understanding and caring for my friends is what ministry is.  This is what YoungLife is.  This is what love is.

*Name changed to protect identity.

-Josh

Praying for the 2013-2014 School Year

Hello Friends

Please continue to be praying for Young Life as we move into this next school year. We have specific needs to be praying for here are just some of them.....

• More Leaders- Every one of our clubs can use more leaders
• Team Leaders- We have hopes for 2 new clubs this year but need the leadership
• Location for our Dana Club
• Financial Resources- It takes money to continue to grow Young Life
• More Prayer Warriors- We meet every Monday and pray, would you consider joining us?

Thanks for looking at our prayers for this next year and being willing to serve Young Life!!!

-Dave

Andrew Fordonski

This April, our area experienced one of the harder things that comes with working with people who have special needs: our friend Andrew Fordonski went to be with the Lord. He had a long battle with cancer and malfunctioning shunts, and he is finally living pain free with our Savior. The Capernaum Beyond group has been studying the Fruit of the Spirit. The week that Andrew passed we were talking about kindness and what that looks like. As an act of kindness to Fordonski family, our friends from club wrote letters to the grieving family. It is always nice to see our friends caring for others, and wonderful to see their kind hearts shine through when they know someone is in need of comfort.

-Rachel

Camp Fundraising- Working at the Ranch

The kids have been working really hard to get to camp. They spent their Saturday working all day on a ranch to fund-raise!

-Megan

March Madness: Ice Palace

A few years ago OC Capernaum started doing a March Madness. During the month of March we do on and off-camups events. The first March Madness event was Ice Skating at Ice Palace. 

Ice Palace was nice enough to let us have 20 free chaperone spots! We've been so blessed by their generosity the last few years.

Some leaders and kids got out on the ice and skated around for an hour and a half, and others took advantage of the Snack Bar. It was a great night of hanging out with kids and helping them make laps around the ice!

 Bailey and Amanda gettin' ready to hit the ice

 Out on the ice!

 Taking a snack break

 Pretty ladies scoping out the scene

Mark and Daniel zooming by

A Special Birthday

Late February we celebrated the birthday of one of our sweet girls from club, Laura. It was her birthday on Valentines day, so the following Friday one of our amazing leaders hosted a birthday party for her. Laura has a harder home life and we wanted to make her birthday extra special this year! We invited many of her friends from school to come and celebrate our dear friend. Around 6:00 her friends started showing up at the house and when everyone was there, we headed over to the park to let out our aggression on the Hello Kitty piñata. She was able to take the final hit at the piñata before we went back to the house to enjoy pizza, pasta, and birthday cake. We ended the evening singing karaoke into our blow-up microphones! We have been blessed to get to know laura over the past few years, and had an amazing time celebrating her! A special thanks to you, our donors, who helped fund this party for our friend!

-Rachel

Dana Hills YL Getting Big Air

This month we took our kids to a new trampoline place called Big Air in Lake Forest. All the kids had a blast.It was a great bonding time for the leaders and kids. The dodge ball games did get a little too heated though...

 Our kids getting ready for a dodge ball game against another group of kids

Judene & Taylor (leader)

-Megan

Valentines Day With OC Capernaum

Last Wednesday, High Rollers and Capernaum Beyond met together to enjoy a Valentines day dinner. We started off the evening with making Valentines Day Cards and then spent the majority of the evening sharing a Valentines Day dinner together. 

We were blessed to be served in a number of different ways, which made the evening possible. Parents, leaders and friends of Young Life donated pasta dishes, caesar salad, garlic bread, dessert, sparkling cider, and water bottles. We were also blessed to be served by a small group of high school girls from Saddleback Church, who prepared each plate, served our meals and waited on them. 

This made the evening especially nice because it enabled leaders to share and enjoy the meal with our friends. A little something extra was given to us when a barbershop quartet happened to be at the church and volunteered to sing a few numbers for us! It was quite the treat. 

And what would Valentines day be without a few smooth lines? At the end of our evening, a few of our fancy friends shared their best pick-up lines with the rest of the group. We were thrilled the evening went so well and were blessed to have so many people willing to help make the night happen!

-Rachel

High Rollers Club

Last Wednesday was our first club following winter break, and I think we all agree it was good to be back!  We started the night with some hang/dance time where leaders and students were able to catch up on all the awesome things they did over break.  We played a few rounds of “Cross the river”, a classic younglife mixer, and then spiced things up with an egg toss that got really messy really fast… but that’s cool, because we love messy!   We then had Mark come up and lead us in some fast fun songs, and then slowed it down with a few worship songs.  Lastly, I gave a short club talk and then finished the night off with a time to share prayer requests.  Club was a blast, and our students are already anxiously counting down the days until next Wednesday night’s club!  

-Tayren