Christmas Gifts

Last night at youth group our students were amazing. They love service projects. (I know this is true, I say it often, I think of it often, but it doesn't always permeate everything I do.) Last night our students met at church and pooled money, then went to Target and purchased gifts for residents of the Handicapped Development Center.

There are few traditions that haven't changed since I arrived here last May, but this tradition is golden! One of our adult leaders works at West High School and every year they sponsor gifts to residents of the HDC. Our leader takes a few of those names and we spend one youth group night buying gifts. The students really responded well in numbers and in support.

Since we were traveling away from the building, we gathered in the narthex (front lobby) instead of the youth room. Our church is quite large, and fortunately has several large gathering spaces, but I thought it would be much easier for adults and for us as we added late kids, if we just began in the front gathering area. After a few minutes of mingling, I asked everyone to get into a large circle and we played Jello. It's a sweet game, lots of silliness, lots of kids acting crazy and making each other laugh with goofy actions, and we play it several times a year so most of the students are familiar with it. Actually it's the type of game that I always keep in my back pocket, just in case we need to burn 10-30 minutes and know that we'll be doing something fun. This night though, it was easy simple and we didn't play it in full, just enough to get the energy up.

After a few minutes of the game, I asked the kids to break into groups according to their age (just like house groups). We had few seniors so I recruited a few freshman to join their group, which was a great fit! I had asked them each to bring a little extra money to contribute, and once they were in groups I distributed leaders and began to give instructions: pool your money, look at the description of the person you're buying for, and then head out.

Since this was a traditional event with many of the leaders knowing the basics the simple instructions worked out great. We had an abundance of leaders, and several drivers that I recruited that ended up riding along just for fun. But you could tell that everyone was involved and interested the entire time. Each group pooled between $75-$150 and the church chipped in $20 for each group. That meant the kids could really get some great gifts and could really feel good about their ability to help. Having the extra leaders is also great because many of them helped with the cash flow!

Once we returned to church we headed downstairs where wrapping stations were set up and kids wrapped all their gifts. I had meant to have kids share what they bought with each other, but one group was slow getting back and so we didn't really have that opportunity. Instead we sang some Christmas carols and enjoyed an easy evening of hanging out. It was great!