Okay... so let me just start this out by saying that birthdays are a very big deal to me. I love my birthday so much that I usually have a whole birthday month... and then a birthday week (which is a bigger deal than the birthday month of course). Well this year I had to share my birthday month because Javier is on staff now and his birthday is June 6, so we had to make a big deal about that with the teens and the staff... so I am learning to share. But now it's my birthday week (actually right now its my actual birthday!!!) and it is time to CELEBRATE!!! So I've done some kind of fun little things this week here and there, but then I went to youth group tonight. I was feeling kind of down for some reason, and we started youth group... Then Javier got up to speak (and I was getting some chairs for teens) and Shannon interrupts him (which they had planned) and calls me up on the stage. They had flowers and a present for me!!!
And the kids all sang happy birthday to me (some of them even danced!!!) with Kyle leading on the mic. It was a really special suprise that they pulled off! The kids spent the rest of the night telling me happy birthday. Then I took Javi Jr. and Crystal (his cousin who is visiting from Texas for the summer) back to their house. We stopped and got some Jack in the box and took it back and ate it while laughing and watching silly youtube videos until a little after midnight. Javi even played me a birthday song on his guitar...



It was so simple but it really meant a lot to me to spend that time with teens that I adore. I love my kids and I am so fortunate that they love me too :) It turned out to be a really special night. So thanks to my amazing youth group for making my birthday WONDERFUL! I love you guys so much and you mean the WORLD to me!

And on my birthday night, we took a group of kids to go see The Hulk. Afterwards we were at starbucks, and Isaac sang me this little song:

Youth group on Wednesday night was sure interesting.

We've been teaching from James, and last week we were in chapter 2, talking about faith without deeds being dead. I was trying to give the teens a picture in their heads...

So I used the example of a Moose. When you see a moose out in the wild, it's moving. Its running, eating, walking, standing, whatever... but there is movement. But then, when a moose is hunted and killed and it's head is hung on the wall... no matter how alive it looks, it isn't going to move. You can sit there and watch it for 5 hours, but it still won't move.

To this, one of my teens says, "What if it falls off the wall?"

:)

Javier went up and began teaching after me and was talking about the different people in the chapter and how they had acted out their faith. He says to the kids, "Do you know what Rahab the prostitute did?" The kids thought for a minute and one said, "Well, she was a prostitute."

Then it continued...

He went on to talk about how faith without deeds is dead, and how like a dead body is useless, our faith is useless... and another girl raises her hand and says (in response to a dead body being useless) "Well if you're really poor you could eat it!"

Our teens are hilarious. And the funniest thing is that they are sooo serious!