We just returned from district summer camp a couple of weeks ago... But this is the first chance I've gotten to write about it. The week was incredible and God really did some amazing things. We took up about 40 teens and every single one came back different. A couple of weeks later, we are still seeing those changes. This was not a "camp high" experience, but rather real change that has real impact back here at home...

I am not going to share a whole lot about all the little things that happened because I just don't have time right now, but I will leave you with some pictures.... and hopefully in the following weeks I'll get some stories up.


Those are our kids right in the front row... worshiping their hearts out :)
Isaac... one of our teens that is on our worship band back at home.
The camp speaker hugging one of our kids (George) after a service.
Javier and Kyle... I have no idea who is giving them bunny ears...
Some of our boys... they think they're tough... but they are such nice guys :)
Sam, me and Javier in the Rhino on security duty...
Our boys playing soccer... they won the whole tournament and then even beat the staff!
The giant slip n slide that me and Nathan were in charge of.
Our kids worshiping God.
Me, Javi, Sam and more of our teens...
Javier and Sam in the boys cabin.
Me and Crystal.
Some of the girls...
Joe in the background, Isaac, Javier sneaking into the picture, and me.
Javier, Sam and me coming back from paintballing... yes, the convinced me to play paintball.
Chrisha, me and Raquel.
Our camp picture... "Love God, Love Others" ADNYI summer camp 2008.

It seems that some of the funniest moments in my youth ministry are during Sunday School. I dont know exactly why that is... maybe its the early mornings where the teens arent quite filtering their thoughts... maybe its just the nature of Sunday School (usually we spend the time discussing and talking with the kids).

Last Sunday, Javier was talking about John 10:10. It talks about how the devil comes to Steal, Kill and Destroy. He was asking the kids what the devil steals. They were saying things like: love, peace, joy, happiness...

Then one of them says to Javier, "...Your hair...."

(Remember, Javier is bald.. see attached photo)

To which Javier calmly replies, "The devil did not STEAL my hair..."

Never a dull moment in youth group :)

I often write on this blog the funny things that my teens do and say. Like I've said before, I know other people read this, but I write it primarily for myself... for those days when I'm discouraged... and for the future when I look back on my time as a youth pastor and want to remember all of these wonderful memories...

And even though usually this is about the teens, it is also occasionally about me. I was reminded recently of something funny that happened in February when we were taking our teens to winter camp. Dan, a youth pastor from another church, came to pick up our kids with their bus. I rode with them in the bus while Javier drove Dan's truck behind us. It was SUPER foggy on the way up the mountain and the kids were freaking out because they couldn't see anything. Dan was driving and decided it would be funny to play a little trick on the kids.

Dan: "Diandra, Im gonna slam on the brakes in a minute and we're gonna scream and scare the kids."

Diandra: "Really? You're really going to do that?"

Dan: "Yes, really. So get ready. I'm gonna slam on the brakes."

Diandra: "I dont believe you... you're not going to do that... are you really gonna do that?"

Dan: "Yes Diandra, here we go, I'm gonna slam on the brakes right now."

He then slammed on the brakes.

I screamed. Very loudly.

And not because he told me to but because I was really scared.

Dan started laughing.

The kids just looked around like, "What the heck is she yelling for?"

And the joke was on me in the end.

:)

Our Sundays are very unique.

It starts with Sunday School at 9am. During this time, there are other English Sunday School classes meeting. Then we have a service that we call TNT (The Next Thing) that starts at 10:15 that is also in English and happens at the same time as our main service. From there we have Sunday School again at 12:30 at the same time that the Spanish is having Sunday School. Then we all meet back together in Spanish. Then at 7pm there is another Spanish service.

Our teens have the option of what they want to go to, Javier and I are at all of these services. But during the Sunday School classes, we only have teens. So one day in Sunday School, one of the teens was sitting quietly and suddenly burst out with this:

"What would you do if I unzipped myself and I was an alien? Would you freak out? Cuz I would freak out! Seriously, what would you do?"

As I'm sitting there trying to figure out if this conversation was ACTUALLY happening, and how on earth to respond to that, Javier jumped in quickly and said,

"I would send you back to the Sanctuary because you're not a teen."

What a perfect response :)

In Sunday school a couple of weeks ago we were just chatting with the kids. Javier asked them, "If you could ask God one question, what would it be?"

Most of the kids responded with things like, "When will I die" or "How will I die"... one of the girls looked deep in thought, so he asked her what she would ask. She promptly responded with, "I would ask God, 'What's your favorite color?'"

:)

At the time, it was hilarious. But as I told my mom the story later, she commented on the fact that most of the kids were asking questions about themselves... this girl wanted to know something about God. What a good perspective!

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!

Saturday we went to Mexico.

Man does God work in mysterious ways... it's amazing to me how He blesses us in the most unexpected ways. I have been going through a really difficult time in my personal life. I've had a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows these last couple of weeks, and Saturday I woke up really struggling. But I was committed to going to Mexico and I knew they needed my car. So I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the church as the sun was coming up (well not really, but it sure seemed early!) and tried to plaster a smile on my face.

Here's the thing... God has this way of bringing joy when you ask for it. That has been my prayer for so long... for joy even through the trials and hurts... and on Saturday, God brought me incredible joy.

When we got to Mexico, we got out of the cars and started talking to the kids and families that were there. It turns out that this is a place the Spanish ministry has been going for quite some time, and they have known the kids since some of them were tiny! We spent most of the day there with the kids, playing and talking...

Well everyone else was talking... I was trying... and the kids were so good about speaking slowly so I could figure out what they were saying... they were even trying to teach me more Spanish... and some of them wanted to learn some English words too!

We took some of the kids with us to the next place we went and they helped us hand things out to other families. It was so cool to see people we'd helped helping other people! Then we took them to eat tacos! The kids were so much fun!

I want to share some pictures... more than I usually post on a blog entry, but I just think that this is such a cool opportunity. Plus, two of the older girls that went with us are the ones that took most of the pictures. They were so excited to get to play with my camera and I love that the pictures are taken through their eyes!

So here are quite a few pictures from our latest trip to Mexico :)

Carla, Me and Jasmin... these are the two girls that took almost all of the pictures.
Me and some of the girls... and Moses (one of our teens)
Pastor Gabriel and two of the little boys
Me and Javier (for those of you who have asked who he is)
Some of the boys goofing around
Javier playing around with one of the boys (who then tried to do the same thing to Javi...) Dont worry, no one was hurt in the making of this photo :)
Carla and "Mango" with their POP! :)
Praying over the food... yummie tacos!
Me and "Mango"... such a great kid! I wanted to bring him home with us!
Me, Javier and Jasmin... the kids all wanted to take pictures with us
Me and Pastor Gabriel giving out toys
Javier and Pastor Gabriel with some of the kids that they've known since they were tiny!
Me and a couple of the girls who asked to take a picture with me :)
Writing on soccer balls (they all wanted us to write our names)
Me and a guy that spoke a tiny bit of English and wanted me in the picture with him.
Me and a few of the boys... they're so cool!

...I never thought I'd hear those words from one of my kids...

but before you get too sad... listen to the back story.

In Sunday School on Sunday, we were talking about Jesus coming back. This is how the conversation went:

Javier: "Think about if you're just sitting there with your friend one minute and the next minute your friend is gone and there's just a pile of clothes sitting next to you."

Teen 1: "A pile of clothes? You mean your clothes don't go with you? You go to Heaven naked? I don't want to fly into Heaven naked! I don't think I want to go to Heaven."

Diandra: "Remember that when Adam and Eve were created they were naked, but there was no shame in that until sin entered the world, and there's no sin in Heaven, so it won't be a problem."

Teen 2: "But what about on the way up? Don't you think it will be kind of cold if you have no clothes while you're flying up to Heaven? And what about people still on earth who see you as you float away naked?"

....PAUSE....

Teen 2: "I'm gonna start wearing 5 layers of clothes..."

Probably the most random conversation EVER about Heaven... and who ever thought about going without your clothes??? :)

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You
With all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You

Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead
I draw closer through these times

So I pray....

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am yours regardless of
The clouds that may loom above
Because you are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
Suffering your destiny
So tell me whats a little rain

So I pray....

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
Is the Lord God Almighty
I'm forever singing
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
Is the Lord God Almighty

I am now officially a district licensed pastor for the Anaheim District Church of the Nazarene!

We had our annual ordination service on Tuesday night and it was so exciting! I was presented with my district license, and Pastor Orlando was ordained in the church of the Nazarene.

In addition to that, we were asked to help speak at District Convention which is a HUGE deal! My dad (who is the senior pastor) did the majority of the hour long talk about multiplying churches, but then he asked Javier and I to speak about what we've done with the youth group. It was exciting and very cool to get to share what has been going on and what God's been doing. We got a lot of positive feedback. The thing that stood out the most was the fact that the GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT (which means nothing to most of you, but there are only 6 of them and they are the top of the WHOLE denomination!!!) took notice. He liked what we had to say, he was excited about what is happening at our church and he even asked both Javier and I to help in the ordination service later that night! It was an incredible blessing and really a great compliment!

Here are a few pictures from the evening:

Before the service... Javier, Pastor Orlando and David (they did NOT want to smile!):
Me and Pastor Orlando (see how I smiled!!!):
Javier and David imitating my picture... David, Me, Pastor Orlando and Javier... see they really do love me :)My dad, Pastor Orlando and David during the Ordination service:
The General Superintendent and me during the service!Javier reading during the service:
Me reading during the service:

After a spanish board meeting the other night, one of the mom's came up to me and was telling me in spanish how thankful she was for what we're doing and what is going on. At one point she said something "from the bottom of her heart".

One of my teens was standing next to me and when the mom left, he had a look of deep thought on his face. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said,

"How deep IS your heart? Like what if I'm only kind of thankful... do I say from the TOP of my heart?"

I love my job :)

The Chronicals of Narnia Part 2 is about to come out in theatres. We've decided to take our teens to see it (anytime a good family movie comes out, I really encourage the teens to check it out... so for a Christian movie we all jump on board!). So to kind of get them excited, we've been watching the first Narnia movie.

We were in the middle of the movie on Friday night and it's the part where Lucy first steps into Narnia from the wardrobe. The teens are all silent in awe, and then a voice from the corner of the room (obviously TRYING to whisper), says, "Man I wish my closet would do that!!!"

And this from one of my "cool" boys.

AND... I think he was serious!

Sometimes it takes all I have not to laugh right out loud at them!

I work with teenagers.

If you havent figured that out yet than you REALLY need to re-read my blogs :)

But the one thing that is most exciting for the teens and most difficult for the adults is when they discover... each other. By that I mean the boys discover the girls... and the girls discover the boys... and they realize that they actually aren't "icky" but rather "cute".

I hate that moment.

It would sure be nice if they all thought they were "icky" until they were 30.

But we've had some issues with teens and dating, so we have really been talking a lot about it.

Last weekend we decided to have an overnighter... well two actually. One for the boys and one for the girls. We split them up and really challenged the teens. We talked about purity and different aspects that apply to the different groups.

Both overnighters were powerful and effective (at least we think so!).

We followed those up on Wednesday night with a Purity ceremony. We bought purity rings for the teens and gave them the choice to participate. We had 31 teens that decided to commit to pure lives. The thing that ended up almost overshadowing that amazing fact was the unity.

See, a little over a year ago we merged with a Spanish speaking church. Then in January we FULLY merged our two youth groups into one. We are not two different churches meeting in one building... we are ONE church. We are still a bit bound by the language barrier among the adults, but we knew we could do one service.... AND IT WAS AMAZING!

We had everyone worshiping together in English and Spanish, and then we had both pastors, as well as Javier and I. We translated everything into both languages and it was spectacular. I think it's something we'll all remember for a long time to come. It's amazing what God can do, despite the barriers Satan tries to use! Its so cool to see such a united church body of believers that is truly diverse and yet able to worship together!


All the girls:
Pastor Orlando, Me, Javier, and Pastor Rollie (my dad)
all the boys:
Praying
Showing off their rings...

We are raising money to go to camp. It is a long process because we plan to take 50 or more teens and it costs about $300 a teen! Most of our kids cant afford it so we are doing major fundraising! Well last Sunday we had a big fundraiser spaghetti lunch. While everyone was eating we had our associate pastor, Doug, auction off our teens. It was HILARIOUS! The kids were getting into it... showing off their talents (one of them even did a choreographed dance!!!) and trying to get people to bid for them.

I just want to take this minute to say how AMAZING our congregation is! We had about 25 teens that were auctioned off and EVERY one of them was purchased!!! And none of them went for less than $50. Some went for as much as $175 or $250!!! Between that and donations and the lunch, we raised $3210.00!!!

We're well on our way towards summer camp, but we've still got a lot to raise!

Just by the name we should have known what we were getting ourselves into with this event :)

Basically we described it as paintball only without the paintballs! We filled baggies with flour and then split the teens into teams. One team guarded buckets while the other two tried to get sticks into their buckets without getting hit.

After quite a bit of playing, the teens decided it was much more fun to rip open the bags and pour the flour on each other... and on me :) I am usually the target.

So I thought I'd share just a couple of pictures from powder bomb ditch 'em:

Here are several of the teens (as well as our intern from Biola on the Right and one of our other leaders in the back)
Javier and I are usually targets... it must be because we're the youth pastors :) But this is us in the middle of the game plotting our revenge... if you can believe it, we were actually more covered than this by the end!Here is most of our group... not all of them. But as many as we could manage to get into one picture... it was a smaller group than most events we do, and several had run away to get more powder bombs by this point :)