YoungLives

I realized I need to share my heart.  My heart for precious girls like her...

and her...

or her...

Girls who, for various reasons, grew up a little too fast. 

Teenagers who are mamas. 

I love the ministry of Young Life, because Young Life helps people who care reach a lost generation.  The heart of Young Life is "to reach every kid, everywhere" and through their YoungLives ministry, they are pushing a little further into meaning it when they say every kid.  Even the ones who are teetering on the balance beam of learning to be an adult earlier than usual.

So all across this country, and even other places in the world, women are reaching out to young moms and walking side by side in life with them through the ministry of YoungLives.  One of the wonderful ways we serve these girls is through Young Life summer camp. 

WHAT?  Summer camp?  For teens with babies?  Babies at an adventure camp?

Absolutely.

I am convinced that the first person who decided to bring a teen mom and her baby to Young Life camp was out of her mind.  But as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:13, "If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit."  What could possibly bring more glory to God than bringing hundreds of people who love the Lord to camp for a week of loving and serving girls and babies, showering them with all that we can and expecting nothing in return?  After all, isn't that how Christ loves us?

These guys spent about three hours just emptying, cleaning and refilling foot soak tubs on Spa Day.

It's utterly insane.  In early August this year, 125 childcare volunteers, 60 mentor moms, and about 100 other various camp volunteers descended on Lake Champion in Glen Spey, NY to give 160 teen moms and 150 babies (up to 36 months) the best week of their lives.  The girls played games, soaked in the sun, inched through ropes courses, jumped off a zip line, soared through the air on a giant swing, ate incredible food (truly- Young Life camps are committed to good food!), danced, sang, laughed, cried and, most importantly, heard and, if we did our jobs right, felt that God loves them passionately and unconditionally. 

Showing off manicures at Spa Day.

There truly is nothing like it.  It's mayhem, it's craziness, and it's so utterly good and right.  The childcare camp committee and camp assigned team starts planning for this one August week in January of every year, trying to anticipate every possible need and detail.  We recruit volunteers, plan schedules, tally needed exersaucers and bouncy seats, ask for baby blankets.  At camp, childcare volunteers go through about 4,000 diapers, gillions of wipes, countless burp clothes. 

Forcey Memorial Church collected over 2,000 diapers for camp.

 At camp we rock crying babies.  We sing to them, play with them, laugh with them.  We take them outside.  Some of our babies never get to play outside.  Two years ago, we had a toddler that would scream and cry every time he was brought inside from playing outside.  He was utterly content outside, but miserable inside, and he completely baffled his caregivers.  When they asked his mom about it, she shared that he never gets to play outside.  They live in a very rough part of the inner-city, so rough that even sitting on the porch is unsafe for fear of drive-by shootings. 

For so many of these teens, this week is an escape, a chance to see that life wasn't meant to look the way it's been handed to them. 

As a part of the camp planning committee, my main responsibility is running Spa Day on the second to last day of camp.  We give the girls an afternoon of pampering filled with manicures, pedicures, massages, facials and lots of presents.  We give them goodie bags with makeup and even have a "coffee house" area where the girls answer ridiculous trivia questions for prizes- nice prizes.  Every girl walks away from that station with at least one gift.  Spa Day is a chance for these girls to be pampered the way every girl wants. 

I love watching conversations unfold.

This guy learned what aerosol manicure drying spray is on Spa Day!

I've seen a lot of people moved to tears on Spa Day.  Not the girls; they're busy soaking in the attention and relaxation.  But there is something precious about getting hundreds of people in action to do something as simple as paint nails and rub sore feet.  Last year, a beautiful, vibrant, adorable girl shared on the last day of camp that in her whole life, no one had ever told her she was beautiful.  On Spa Day, she heard it time and again.  I don't know how it is possible that a child this precious can go 17 years without hearing the one thing that the heart of every woman longs to hear. 

You are beautiful.  ("For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." Psalm 139:13-14)  

You are precious because God created you. ( So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them...God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." Genesis 1:27, 31) 

You are wanted; not for your body, but for your heart. ("The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zeph. 3:17)

There is a plan and a purpose for your life. (^"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity." Jeremiah 29:11)

You are so loved. ( “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16)

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt." Hosea 2:14-15

That's the heart of YoungLives.  That my heart; to help girls know the Truth.  When will our generation know this?  How will they know if we don't tell them?  
 
Come help next year.  I promise it will be the best week of your summer.

   

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