She Came!!

A 15 year old girl that I have been praying would come to God Squad finally came tonight! I was so excited to see her! She has a lot going on in her life and is definitely testing the waters with Christianity, and I am praying SO hard for her. I will call her Carly; PLEASE PRAY FOR HER! I don't even know all that is going on in her life, but she is searching and I know that God is pursuing her hardcore! She seemed to have fun, although it was really hard to tell what she thought of the lesson and small group time. I really pray that she felt welcomed and loved...and that she would come back next week!

The last few days have been just as busy as the ones before it, but they have been really good. I did get plenty of time to relax on Saturday, which was so nice...and needed. Sunday turned out to be a much more full day than I thought it would be. Pedro and Miguel came to church on Sunday for the first time in a long time. Miguel actually called me at 7:30 in the morning to remind me to pick him up! (Sunday School doesn't start until 9:45). Sunday School went really well, and church was good too. After church I ended up taking 6 kids out to lunch, and had them with me until basketball started at 3. Basketball went until 5, and then I finally took all the kids home. I was pretty exhausted at that point, but only had a few minutes to grab something to eat before heading back to church for membership class. I wasn't too happy about having to go to the class during the Superbowl (did I mention that I really love football?!?), but the class was actually pretty fun. I got home at halftime and enjoyed watching the rest of the game. I also started my newsletter, finally, and I'm already almost finished!

Once I start something, I'm not very good at leaving it unfinished, so I ended up staying up pretty late last night working on my newsletter. I finally went to bed around 1:30 when I was at a good stopping point. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning with a pretty bad cold and it took me a while to get up and moving. My whole "go to bed early and get up early" thing isn't going too well, but I'm still working on it. I just have to learn to not start working on things when I get home late at night, because that keeps me up later and messes me up for the next day. I'll get it eventually. :)

I finally got going around 10 this morning and got a lot of work done. I left at 3 to pick the kids up and it was another great day at after-school!! I got to spend some good one on one time with several of the kids and again didn't have any major disciplinary problems to deal with. I'm still not making any decisions about next year (I will do that this summer when I'm not in the middle of everything), but I know its going to be a hard program for me to let go...and it doesn't help that its going so well right now. I know that God will show me His plan, though, and I will follow it no matter how difficult it may be.

My night ended at God Squad, which also went really well. I really love the teens and I enjoy being there. The small group times are always a challenge for me, mostly because I don't feel comfortable teaching. I can never tell what the girls are thinking and I always feel like I am not making any sense. My goal, however, is to always walk out of those times feeling like I spoke the truth and shared the love of Christ in my words and actions. I felt that way tonight when I left, so overall I think it went well.

Obviously, I am up late again, but I am about to go to bed. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and we have Family Night tomorrow night. I really need God to teach me to make my schedule based on Him, and not myself or even what others expect. I have this mindset that if its daytime and I am up, I should be working. The problem with that is that I have a ministry every night of the week. So, if I work from the time I get up until I come home at night, I'm easily working 14 hours a day, 4 days a week. That's not good! I need to be okay with being up at 9 on a Thursday morning and taking that time to be with the Lord or go to the gym or something, knowing that After-school and Teen Club are coming...which accounts for 6 hours alone! I can start working at 2 p.m. on Thursday and still work for 8 hours. Since I now have a ministry every night, I need to learn to start my "work day" later, or take breaks in the middle of the day rather than feeling the pressure to be working all the time. Its going to take some time to change my mindset, but I know I need to. I don't want to burn out!