TBC Youth Group

Success! We managed to get enough drivers, and get to Laser Quest. (Eventually.)

We welcomed a new leader, named Annesha. We also had another member of the church who volunteered to drive, which was a huge help.

But to start the night, we had our devotion. David found a story (in a book of devotional topics for youth groups) about a man who’d found a cocoon for an emperor moth. He brought it home, and it eventually began to “hatch” (or whatever the proper term is for when a moth starts to come out of its cocoon). However, when the moth got partway out, it seemed stuck, and unable to get the rest of the way out. Thinking he was helping, the man got a pair of scissors and cut the moth the rest of the way out. Unfortunately, the moth ended up deformed, with a swollen body and shrunken, useless wings—it was never able to fly. The lesson was this: The moth’s cocoon was purposely built in a certain way, to be difficult for the moth to get out of; in struggling to get out of the cocoon, the moth builds up strength, and forces fluids to go out of its body and into the wings. By attempting to help the moth, the man actually hurt it—the moth needed to struggle to get out of that cocoon, and because it didn’t, it was not able to form properly. Similarly, although we may not enjoy our struggles here on Earth, we should remember that God is in control, and that if we are going through difficult times, it is because He has deemed it necessary for us to do so. He will use many (most? all?) of our struggles to bring is closer to Him, to make us stronger Christians, or for other uses.

Before, during, and after the devotion, David was constantly counting, over and over, the number of kids present. He kept arriving at a number of twenty-four, which was good because we had twenty-six seats. However, when it was time to go, and everyone went to get into the three vans and one car we had ready, there turned out to be twenty-eight people. Did David miscount? Did four people mysteriously appear out of the ether? We may never know. Luckily, there was another driver on standby, who had agreed to come if necessary. So we called her, and she showed up to take the overflow.

Another good thing happened when we got to the place: Because we had so many people in our group, the two games that we played were peopled almost entirely by members of our Youth Group. (There were three or four other, non-Youth-Group people in each game, but it was mostly us.) It’s always nice to have a game that’s almost entirely your own group.

Unfortunately, on the way home, we got a call. There had been a shooting on Mount Olive, where a number of our kids live, and there were a lot of cops around. A number of the kids in our Youth Group have been in trouble with the police in the past, and we were asked if we can drop the kids off at their doors, where possible, to avoid them getting unnecessarily questioned by the police. (This wasn’t a problem, because we usually do so anyway.) Luckily, none of the kids in the group (that we know of) have bail conditions that set curfews, so there isn’t currently a danger of anyone breaking their bail conditions to come to Youth Group. We got everyone home without incident.