...actually, yesterday was far from typical.

One of the things that we do at our church is something called a brunch service. Actually two of them. About 4 times a year, we forgo our regular church services and instead we set up tables in the gym and serve brunch. While people are finishing their food, we actually have a service! We do this once at 9 and again at 10:30. Since we merged with the Spanish church about a year ago, we've been doing a combined service at 10:30. Basically we do everything in both English and Spanish so we can all worship together. For instance, the Spanish worship team played songs in Spanish, but we put the words on the screen in English so everyone could sing along. Then we had a short drama that was done in English, but the words were on the screen in Spanish. Then Pastor Rollie preached in English and Pastor Orlando translated it into Spanish. Yesterday was one of these services. Here are a couple of clips so you can see what it's like:





As usual, they were cracking me up. Chrisha (one of the girls) is absolutely hilarious! ALL THE TIME! We were sitting at a table and the kids were rowdy and I said to them, "You guys are out of control!" And she looked at me so very seriously and said, "We're not out of control, you're just in control!" After the service, I headed out to hang out with some of the teens. We hung out for a while at the mall. They are so random and do things completely unprovoked. Like passing out mall maps to random people:



We did a little shopping at the mall...

Chrisha made a new friend:
after hugging her new friend and posing for a picture, she looked at me and said, "She doesn't have a head!"

Even the boys got in on the shopping:

We ran into a couple of the other teens while at the mall and decided to head over and get some pizookies at BJ's. When I discovered that a couple of them had NEVER had a pizookie, I taped their first bites (I am my mother's daughter! :)



At one point during our BJ's trip... I walked outside to meet a couple of the teens, and Daniel decided it would be funny to pour salt in my water. So he did. And when I came back in they were saying everything they could think of to get me to drink the water... and I just wouldn't drink it! Finally Chrisha said, "My water tastes funny", so I took a nice big long drink of mine. SURPRISE!

Just a typical day's work :)
I'll be sharing some more funny stories and videos from the past that I've had on my computer over the next couple of days... I'll probably have some new ones for you too!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd taken some teens to the beach this week.

Ministry (especially youth ministry) is about so much more than teaching the teens twice a week. We run a relational ministry. Javier and I both spend a lot of time one on one and in small group settings with the teens. We do things purposely to go where they are. We take them lunch at their schools, we take them to eat and do fun things. The whole point is to build relationships with the teens. And I honestly enjoy it so much! I really truly love these kids! And I enjoy spending time with them.

So I had kids on spring break this last week... so I took a few kids to the beach one day. I thought I'd share a couple videos... cuz they're always fun!!!






If you remember from my earlier blog... I talked about how they tried to throw me into the ocean... You can see a little bit of them doing that to each other in these clips.

This is my job.

I am the luckiest person in the WORLD!!!

:)

...or not.

Here are a couple of pictures I'd like to share with you. I don't think they need any explanation...

...or maybe that's exactly what they need :)

(these are my sunglasses and sweatshirt... I am much smaller than Ivan... need I say more?)

Okay, so I have another one quicker than I'd thought!

I was taking some teens home tonight after Bible study...

From the backseat, Ivan says, "Diandra, do you have gas?"

?????

After a long hesitation from me (I was trying to decide if I should laugh, or how I should answer)... I realized he meant my car.

I've obviously been hanging around with too many junior high boys!

...To Chrisha!

Last week Chrisha's birthday fell on Friday night (which is when we have girl's and boy's Bible study), but she came anyway. She hung around for a while afterwards, and after most of the teens were gone, Javier got creative and make her a "birthday cupcake". Check it out:

...come the funniest things!

Really I am just cracking up right now at an email I got from one of my girls!

We're doing a lot of fundraising right now, and one of the upcoming fund raisers is "Rent-A-Teen". People in the church bid on the teens for a day and they make money helping out the people in our church. I ask the kids for a list of things they're good at and things they absolutely CANNOT do.

So one of my girls sent me an email telling me several things she's good at, and then at the end she says, "i can't run though... if they want me to run a mile with them.. hahaha. i can't do that."

So funny.

I've had many other funny things said to me at one point or another. Sometimes they're random, sometimes they make perfect sense...

At one point we were talking about not settling for good enough in your life but striving for God's best for you. We were going to follow that up by getting rid of things that held the teens back (clothes, movies, music, etc.). We were talking about different ways we could do that. Most of the teens were saying things like "burn them" and "break them" and "crush them"... and one of my sweet girls raises her hand very excitedly... she bursts out, "we could hang the CD's from the trees to scare the birds away!!!"

Again, so funny.

One of my boys (who also happens to be Javier's son) is constantly saying random funny things. I was laying on the gym floor after a long basketball tournament... everyone was gone but we were locking up. He came over and laid on the floor (remember this is the GYM) and looked up at the ceiling and said, "let's look at stars".

???

I'm sure there have been more and will be more, so this may become a regular posting...

This happened quite a while ago, but it is possibly one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me with the teens, and I want to remember it. I also thought you'd enjoy hearing about it.

I'd been talking to the teens about sharing Jesus with their friends, and about taking every opportunity you can. I asked if anyone had done that this week.

One of my teens, Thomas, raised his hand and proceeded to tell me that he'd tried to share Jesus with a boy but the boy had run away from him.

I paused for a second and tried not to laugh at the image in my head, and said "well did you chase him?"

To this, Thomas said "No."

One of my other teens, Kris, looked at him and said "Thomas?" In that voice that every mom uses when she catches her kid in a lie...

Thomas lowered his head and said, "Yes... I chased him."

I don't know how Kris knew that... or even if he did... he might have just been messing around... but that is hands down one of the funniest moments of my ministry!

I walked around the gym last Wednesday night after youth group and something caught my eye.

It was a pair of pants.

Jeans actually.

Complete with a belt.

And they were laying there on the gym floor with no one in them....

So I picked them up and loudly announced into the gym, "who's running around without their pants?" To this most of the teens giggled and started looking around for a pants-less teenager... in the meantime, a red-faced boy ran up and grabbed them out of my hand. He explained to me that "I had shorts on underneath!" but he said it with the tone of "sheesh, do you come from Mars?" I burst out laughing at the whole idea.

So then on Friday night as we're reminiscing about this whole experience with some of the leaders, three of the boys standing by start taking their pants off. Luckily they too were wearing gym shorts.

Apparently we've started a trend.

Today I have 4 bruises on my left leg in a variety of places.

That's because my teens have discovered the "dead leg". For those of you who do not work with teenagers, that is when you punch someone between the muscles on your leg and it puts your leg to sleep. Its quite funny when it happens to someone else... especially because you are now immobilized and unable to fight back.

I love my teens. They are so much fun. But one problem that I have discovered is my size. I am a pretty small girl, and most of my teens are as big or bigger than me. Especially the boys. You wouldn't think this would be a big issue... you would be wrong. At any given time they can pick me up and put me where ever they want to. I have yet to attend a summer camp as a counselor without getting thrown in the pool. Last year I was also tossed into the mud pit and an empty garbage can we were using for games.

Yesterday I took some of the teens to the beach. It was not all that warm... especially in the water. I made it in to about my waist and then I had to get out... but they weren't satisfied with that. I was picked up on several occasions and attempts were made to throw me into the freezing cold water. But I was able to wiggle my way out. What they don't realize is the more they pick on me the more they teach me to fight back :) I made it out alive and dry...

...but I still have 4 big bruises on my left leg.

Here is proof of my injuries... this is not a bruise...

its a welt.

On my leg.

Because Lucas hit me with a towel!

So welcome to my new blog!

I've had several people tell me that I should start writing a blog about my life as a youth pastor. My teens are always doing hilarious things and I have so many stories that I would love to share. I've been told I should write a book, but I am going to do this for now. So I hope you enjoy my stories!

Here's a little bit of background on me:

I grew up as the only child of a Nazarene Pastor. My grandpa was also a Nazarene pastor. I was born in Washington, and my dad pastored there until I was 4 years old. At that point, we moved to Southern Oregon to take a small church in a town called Ashland. That's where I spent most of my life. During the middle of my freshman year of high school, we moved to a new town about 3 hours away. It was a tiny little town called Brookings. Our church was the largest in town and we had a very active youth group. We were only there about a year and a half when some things happened and we were suddenly church-less. From there we moved to Southern California and we've been here ever since!
I've been at this church since I was 16 years old. At one point during high school, I really felt God calling me to missions. I pushed it aside and ignored it as long as I possibly could... I'd watched my dad in ministry and I knew how hard it could be... that wasn't the life I wanted. But then at 18 years old, I really felt it again. But this time, there was an opportunity for me to work with the teens at my dad's church. Being only a teen myself, and still a bit apprehensive about ministry, I started as a junior high intern. The next summer we lost our youth pastor, and I stepped in. I really felt like God had called me to this place at this time, but the call to missions was still in the back of my mind and I didn't really know how it all went together. About a year after starting as a volunteer, I was hired part time. Two years later, I was brought on full time. I have now been full time for more than a year.
The group is drastically different than when I started almost 4 years ago. We lost a lot of our teens, and many graduated. When I started on my own, I had less than 10 teens. 3.5 years later, we have close to 80! We have also merged with a Spanish speaking church, and completely merged our two youth groups. I now have a co-youth pastor named Javier who has brought a wonderful balance.
Not only that, but God is fulfilling my heart for missions. I've been fortunate enough to go on several short-term missions to Mexico with our Spanish ministry, and I'm looking at a longer one to several different countries here in the next year. Not only that, but in so many ways, God has brought the mission field to me. It's not always about traveling to far away places... so often we forget about the people that are right in front of us!
This is the most amazing church I have ever been a part of. I am so blessed to be a part of something that is so much bigger than me! There are very exciting things happening and I feel grateful that God trusts me with his children. My teens are incredible. That is why I am writing this blog... because their stories deserve to be told. The hilarious things they say.... the heartbreaking life stories they are, and the wonderful people they're becoming.

I hope that by reading my blog you will get to see the wonderful side of ministry. I hope that you will get a kick out of the everyday things that happen in my life. Because they are so far from ordinary, but they are what makes my heart. These kids, this life... this is my passion.