A New Semester and a Short Post

David Sicher and Committee Chair Jane Jacobsen

As winter begins its long melt towards spring there are a bundle of new beginnings on the horizon. Winter sports are wrapping up and giving way to spring sports, the random bursts of snow are beginning to subside and give way to 70 degree days and a new semester has begun! For us that means two things.

First it means a brand new semester in yearbook with a whole new batch of kids. While it has been great getting to know the group from last semester I'm even more excited to get to meet a new bunch of 'photojournalists'. As the book is only a few months away from completion its creation continues to be a blessing to me and an avenue to meet many new students. Secondly, it means a VPS student for Young Life. VPS stands for Volunteer Public Service and is a class that FCHS students can take for course credit. They can either VPS for a teacher at the school or for an organization. I got a call this week from David Sicher, a Senior who we've gotten the chance to know well and wanted to know if he could VPS for Young Life. This means that every day during 3rd block we have a high schooler that is helping us organize, plan and build Young Life in Franklin. The idea came out of nowhere but we are stoked at the opportunity.

A Group We Took Monday Night to Hidden Valley YL Club

Also with a new semester comes the resurgence of Young Life Club in Hidden Valley. While we are still building towards are own club, we are taking kids to HVYL in the meantime, this time taking four who hadn't been before. They also invited us to participate in their Dodgeball Tournament next week which should offer some hilarious pictures. Again we got to see kids be blown away by what went on in club. While it is hard to be patient in waiting for our own it is such a blessing to be able to have kids see what a full fledged club looks like and to have vision for their own in the months to come.

Lastly, Ben and I are excited to be heading up to Rockbridge to Prayer Overnight this weekend. This is an annual tradition in the Commonwealth Region that brings together leaders, staff people, committee members and even some sharp high schoolers to pray and fast together for a day at Rockbridge. One of the coolest aspects of this time is that we pray for schools that do not have Young Life yet to be reached. While we know that Young Life is not the only avenue for these places to see Jesus, we know the blessing that Young Life can bring and hope that every kid gets the opportunity to hear the Gospel in a way that reaches into their life in a real way. The names of the new schools are posted on the wall and those that want to can grab a school with the agreement that at some point during the year they will go to that school and pray for it. This week after Hidden Valley's club I got to meet a high school girl who had gone to prayer overnight the year before and had grabbed Franklin County's name off the wall and had been to the school to pray over it. It was a cool moment for both of us to see the power of prayer and how far we had come in only a year.