Trinity Youth goes on a Bible Boot Camp!

These past holidays Trinity Youth beat the winter blues with our holiday program! The mornings saw us warming up over a cup of coffee at the Bible Boot Camp, where we learned tools to help read the bible better. Getting teenagers out of bed in the mornings on their school holidays is not an easy feat! Together we learned lots of awesome things about God’s word, such as how the bible fits together as one story, how to read various genres in the bible and what kind of questions to ask ourselves when approaching a passage. The discussions were very engaging; we had lots of great questions. Our prayer is that our teens can have the confidence to read the bible for themselves, as God wants to be known by everyone!

In the afternoons we had our Winter Program, where each afternoon we did various fun activities together. Monday was definitely our craziest afternoon, where we had our own Mini Winter Olympics! The teams represented were Sweden, Canada, Iceland and Japan, where we had challenges based on real winter Olympic sports – slalom, curling, skiing and of course the luge. On Tuesday we rolled up our sleeves and got to work painting the fence at church, now a permanent reminder of our time together. On the other afternoons we visited Westridge Fire Station, got dressed up in firefighting gear and had drills led by Firefighter Carolissen. Thursday and Friday were thankfully a lot more chilled with an Xbox afternoon and eating our weight in popcorn whilst watching a movie together.

On the morning of the last day, one of my youth girls Ashley asked me, “can we do this next holidays?” Though I am still getting paint out of my clothes I took her question as a sign that this was a week not to be easily forgotten, and a week where our youth grew closer as a family and closer to their awesome God.

Cape Flats Gang Wars

Recently Manenberg and closer to home Mitchell’s Plain have been affected by ongoing violent conflict between opposing gangs. Here in Beacon Valley, there have been numerous shootings and stabbings, and what is most upsetting is that where they often choose to stage their shoot-outs are on a field here right by two primary schools and a high school.

In the past week we had to cancel almost all of our ministry programs, including kid’s club, youth and what was going to be our first sunday evening church service. In the last few weeks I have experienced a range of emotions, anger, frustration, fear as well as just feeling really low and powerless. I am upset that these people are so selfish to put other people’s lives, especially young lives, in danger because of their own fights and conflicts. I am frustrated that I have had to cancel Kid’s Club and Youth because I don’t want any young people walking home in the dark at night. I am frustrated that I was not able to meet with the kids and youth and spend time with them because of a situation that I had nothing to do I with.

On the saturday I was able to meet up with my youth during the day, and address this issue from a God perspective. We broke off into our small groups and gave them the opportunity to share in their experiences of gang warfare. What surprised me was that just about all except for one or two had either witnessed a shooting directly or seen the aftermath of a shooting, and all of them knew of someone personally that had been shot. The girls in my group spoke of bullets flying through their living room windows or having to lie on the floor of their classroom to avoid being hit by a stray bullet.

As best as I could, and with God’s help, I tried to speak to them on their level, and answer this one big question… How do we deal with what is happening here in our community?

Here is a shortened, paraphrased version of what I spoke about on saturday:

I’m sure many of you have experienced the pain and suffering that comes with living in a dangerous and broken world. I don’t know how you feel about the situation that is happening at the moment, with all of the shootings and stabbings in Beacon Valley, Morgenster and even as far as Manenberg and everywhere else. Even without seeing or hearing the shootings yourself, I’m sure that you feel how everyone is on edge and people are living in a constant state of not knowing when the fighting is going to flare up again.

I don’t know how that makes you feel. Maybe you are angry, maybe it makes you upset or frustrated. Maybe you don’t care and you ignore it and keep living your life the way you always have. Maybe it makes you scared to leave the house, and that you feel like you have been living in a constant state of fear, looking over your shoulder and always feeling that little bit unsafe. All of these feelings that we feel are totally normal, and they are things that are happening as a result of the brokenness of a world that has rejected God.

Anger is a justified feeling in a situation like this. But I know that God is taking action against evil. So God’s judgment is a warning to those who are doing evil things in this world, but it is also good news, comforting to those who are experiencing pain at the hands of others. For we know that God will one day make things right. He will call these people accountable for their actions. Because we know that God will one day do this, that means that the job of putting things right is God’s, and not ours. We can see the effects of people trying to put justice into their own hands. If one person in the Mongrels gets shot, then they will go and shoot the person who did the shooting, or someone in his gang. Then they will retaliate and shoot someone else. We see how destructive it is to try and take revenge on someone else. God has reserved the right to judge and punish others of their actions, and we should never seek to take that right away from God.

For those who have put their faith and trust in Christ, we know that we have something amazing to look forward to, no matter what the situation is at the moment. When we speak about hope, we are not talking about wishful thinking. Like, “I hope I will pass this test” when you know that you haven’t studied. No, I am talking about a sure hope that you know will definitely happen one day.

There is this guy called C.S. Lewis who wrote lots of awesome Christian books. In one of them he says, “Most people, if they had really learned to look in their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world… creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger; well there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

For those who have put their faith and trust in Christ, death is never the end. We know that no matter how bad things get, we have a hope that one day Jesus will wipe away ever tear and bring about a brand new heavens and a new earth, one that will not fade or pass away. Where people who have killed or hurt others will be brought to justice and all this pain will just be barely more than a distant memory. There will be complete peace and harmony, of which we have never before experienced.

 

Winter is definitely not hibernation time!

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I last posted! It’s been partly due to my laziness, but also partly to do with all of the fun and excitement that’s been going on lately! 

Most notably, the school holidays meant that we had a crazy-busy-learning-about-God-and-keeping-warm Winter holiday program! I think it’s partly to do with my over zealousness of being a first time youth worker, but I decided to do both a morning AND an afternoon program with my youth for five days. It was like going on camp, but every evening I got to go home and cuddle with my cat! 

Ryan and I were also able to have a bit of a chill time after the camp by going away to gorgeous slice of paradise, aka camping in Citrusdal!

I will do another post soon with more about the holiday program, but just thought that I’d share a few pics from the week!

Tribute to Mandela

This morning, the Expresso show filmed some of our Trinity kids painting canvasses in tribute to Nelson Mandela. Two canvasses were set up in the community park and it was a great way for the kids to show their appreciation for someone who has done so much for South Africa. Here are some pics from the shoot:

Photo booth fun!

I just had to share this! Though being a youth worker can often be quite stressful and just plain crazy, some days it is just absolutely hilarious and a whole lot of fun. At Trinity Youth’s end-of-term social last week, we had a photo booth with a difference – in that they had to pose according to various random scenarios we gave them. Here were some of my favourites:

“watching a scary movie”

“animals breaking out of the zoo”

“kung fu movie”

“Olympics 100m finals”

“food fight”

“CD cover”

“in an opera”

The work that God is doing in us

When I started Bible College I thought that I knew everything. Then I graduated from Bible College and I realised that I knew nothing. That was basically reinforced in my first few months of full-time ministry doing youth work in Mitchell’s Plain on the Cape Flats. After a few very emotionally draining weeks, one day I got home and burst out in tears, that with all of this brokenness and messiness and how…well… real everything was, it dawned on me how incredibly inadequate I felt in this role.

…but am I?

I had to learn a lesson. An incredibly big lesson. I could easy waffle on about my own thoughts, but more often than not someone else has already explained it better. And so I present to you what I learned, short and sweet, as explained by Tim Hawkins:

“..the work that God is doing in us is more important than the work he is doing through us.” – Fruit that Will Last.

I don’t give youtube-worthy youth talks, and I’m definitely not the “cool” youth worker. I get stressed easily and my incredibly loving youth leaders often have to deal with that. I know I often don’t get it right. I shared the following fear with my best friend one day (paraphrased, as I don’t remember the exact words): “Sometimes I feel like if I say the wrong words or if I don’t do things just the right way, my entire youth group will fall off the wagon, get knocked up, join a gang or get hooked on drugs.”

Errr…. riiiight.

I thought that my inadequacies were bigger than the Holy Spirit. I forgot that if God was able to work in me, despite how incredibly stubborn and untrusting I was, then he is definitely able to work in my youth.

Moses couldn’t look past the incredibly significant role that God had called him to, of standing up to the Pharaoh and leading his people out of slavery, and instead focussed on his failings. God reminded Moses of this fact:

“Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” – Exodus 4:11 (NIV)

Slowly but surely, God is working in a bewildered twenty-something Australian. Therefore, through a bewildered twenty-something Australian, God is working here in the Cape Flats. That’s all I need to remember.

This year, I got married.

Probably one of the biggest and most important things that will ever happen to me, in January this year I married the most incredible, lovely, random and crazy man – Ryan Carolissen. Now I have a new name, a new home and the rest of our lives to look forward to together!