Friday Night Lights

Starting an area isn't easy. There are a lot of things that need to happen before things can really get rolling. In my time at Virginia Tech I took for granted all the things that happen behind the scenes, committee work, fundraising, establishing a leadership at a college, etc. These are hard things to do from scratch. It has been incredible to be able to watch them get started. However, my passion is for high school kids knowing Christ. So while many things were starting to get rolling, I had yet to meet a single high school kid. That changed Friday.

Friday night Ben Brodin and I were excited to go to the home football game. Ben is a guy who knows Young Life, his dad was on staff back in the day, and he spent some time with YL in Montana. He is great with high-schoolers and loves the Lord. He is an asset to our two person team. He knows some high schoolers from his church, Trinity Ecumentical, so we had a few ins. We headed up a bit early excited for our first real oppurtunity to meet kids. He texted a few of his guys from Trinity that he though might be there, and figured we would meet up with them at some point. We left early so that we could get there in plenty of time and before we even made it to the gates we met one of the guys that Ben knew, Matt, and his friend Josh. As we talked with them for a bit we found out that it was neon night at the game, and that some in the student section would be wearing neon.

As we headed into the game Ben and I were talking about how we wished we would have known about neon night before so that we could have gotten shirts or something neon. Ben turned and asked me "Why don't we go to Wal-mart and grab a bunch of glowsticks and throw them out to the student section." Brilliant! We ran to Wal-Mart, found a neon shirt and bought out there entire section of glowsticks. We put them in a bag and headed back to the game.

At first we weren't sure how to get the student section. It was packed, and there wasn't much room to squeeze in. In addition to that, we didn't know any kids so we didn't just want to creep in behind them. So we decided to take a lap around to see what we could do. At that point I got a text from our very own Cheryle Aldridge, committee member extraordinaire, asking if I was at the game so that I could come meet some high schoolers that she knew. On the way over to meet her I ran into our favorite administrator Deb Decker. I got to introduce her to Ben and chat with her for ten or fifteen minutes about the goings on at the school (no word from School Board yet). She mentioned two kids to meet, one by the name of Ryan Peavy who was leading the student section and would be wearing a cowboy hat.

So we met with Cheryl and headed back to the student section, on a mission to find Ryan Peavy. It wasn't hard. He's was a big boy with a cowboy hat screaming his head off in the middle of the student section. For those of you familiar with Young Life he was the definition of a key kid. Not knowing quite what to say I told him Deb Decker had sent me to find him so I could give him the glow sticks to throw out to the student section. Upon showing him the giant bag full he, and the rest of the student section went nuts. They were so excited that they insisted that I sit with them and literally pulled me up by my arms into the student section. For the rest of the game I got to sit (stand really) the whole time in the student section meeting every kid around me that I could. I lost Ben in the shuffle only to look down and see him with a  completely different group of kids. It was crazy.

They I asked what I was doing there and I told them about Young Life, some of them knew it from family or friends. Ann Taylor Walker knew about it from her brothers, and we even started talking about Rockbridge. It was truly crazy. One kid, Max Harper (pictured left in his ketchup costume), was so stoked about me being there he told me HE was going to pick ME up the next morning and take me to the volleyball tournament and that we would hang out all day. In all we met about 30 kids, and countless more saw us in the crowd and must have wondered who the heck we were. Talk about going to where kids are at right?

Now I want to stop here and emphasize some things. This is our first 'contact work'. We knew a few kids in a school of 2,300 going into this football game. We had no prior set up, no former leaders to name drop, no game plan. What we did have was prayer and a humbled heart. It took me two and a half weeks to meet a kid, but with the Lord when it rains, it pours. I don't know what it was that made Ben think of glowsticks. There are two many coincidences involved from to to say it was all chance. The Lord is doing big, big things and responding to prayers in real ways. My time walking that very football field praying wasn't in vain. Don't worry about how long the Lord is taking. Don't be impatient or try and do things yourself. Be patient, be prayerful and listen. Follow where He leads.

In conclusion I hope this has been another encouraging update. There will be more soon, I'm having  a hard time keeping up with writing all that the Lord is doing. But trust me, I'm not complaining.