California August

July was a pretty busy month for me but August promises to be a bit slower. I can be at the office more consistently. I work a day or two from home but the other days I work at the National Network of Youth Ministries office, where the activity has also picked up after the crazy summer schedules. My fellow co-workers seem to enjoy popping into my office as it is decorated with spears and arrows and bamboo and a palm tree. I collected a few artifacts from the Temecula office and am privileged to display them in my new place.
We are working on putting together a new kind of short term mission trip for teens with our partner organizations. Hopefully we will get the big details settled in the next month and can begin to advertise it. The purpose is to give teens an opportunity to experience mission options in our organization other than simply translation. This trip will hopefully highlight the work of vernacular media! (meaning non-written forms of scripture). Pray for swift planning and sufficient participants! Another area that we are beginning to explore is how to get teens involved in missions through technology. I talked to a friend this last week who has some interest in the idea and we are gonna start brainstorming how this might work. A way to get teens involved in missions NOW through their abilities in IT! Please pray for the right connnections (meaning that we meet and talk to the right people in the right positions for promoting the idea within our organization).
In the local youth ministry area for me.....our church just said goodbye to our youth pastor, on good terms, and we are in the ever familiar, search "mode"! oh yea! But in the meantime we just met with our new intern for this year. We are hoping to see spiritual growth in our students and an effective ministry despite the lack of formal leadership. I love this kind of ground level ministry. It's actually what I really live for! Seems promising for this coming school year, and for some reason last nights youth ministry meeting reminded me of how MANY of these kinds of planning meetings I have attended in my 15 yrs in youth ministry! Ya know? Ministry never changes!? It seems like we're always dealing with the same issues.....how to show kids Jesus in such a way that they fall in love with Him and want to pursue Him for themselves, while at the same time having fun!!!! Ah, youth ministry! Keeps us young!!! (seriously! I was actually asked last week, if I was gonna be going back to college soon! hahaha!!! nice......."how old do you think I am?" I said) don't ya love teens?! I DO!!!!

6,347 days left in the countdown to Vision 2025!!!

Dagney