Giving Back

On Saturday, our church's junior youth group volunteered at 9Cares Colorado Shares, a huge, state-wide food drive.

9Cares Colorado Shares started as a simple food drive in the old 9News parking lot. A lot has changed but the goal is still the same - to feed, clothe, and provide a happier holiday season for Colorado's less fortunate families. The holiday drive is the largest one-day food, clothing and toy drive in our region, with nearly 30 sites along the Front Range and into the mountains. Combined, the 30 sites, collected 383,025 pounds (191.5 tons) of food. Our youth group worked at the Firestone King Soopers and collected 4,441 pounds of food and $563.

It was so incredible to be a part of this food drive. To watch people head into the grocery store, as I am sure they do every week, but to come out with bags upon bags of food that they bought just to give away, it was amazing! And, the youth group kids really got into it, helping unload van loads full of goods, passing out fliers of the top-10 most wanted items, sorting the items once they were donating, weighing the boxes and loading them in the truck.

Brooklyn even got so very involved in helping the little kids with their donations. She would run up to them, grab their item hand it off to be sorted and say "thank you." So precious!

We really had the best time volunteering, and our family plans to participate next year. Like I said, there's no words to describe how amazing it is to watch people just be so giving and selfless.

Junior Youth Group

Some of you may know that I'm a junior high youth group leader at my church. I started on this adventure last year, and really enjoyed myself and the kids, so I am jumping in head first again this year. At my church, the junior youth consists of kids grades six through eight, so we're talking about preteens to early teens.
All the leaders, our youth pastor and the youth board chair are meeting next week to discuss and set a calendar for this year's activities. We try to keep a good balance of fun activities and volunteering or service activities. And, this year, we want to try some different things to keep it interesting. Our goal is to have these kids involved and interested so when they get into high school, they will participate as well. The high school youth group is much more involved and more time is required as they do larger projects and a bunch of fundraising for a trip to the youth conference in the summer. One of our main concerns is we don't want everything to have to be about money, especially for those families that the parents participate as well or those families with multiple children. We want the kids to participate as much as they can, and have fun doing it.

So, now comes the part when I ask for help. As I am forming my list of activities, fun and service, I want to throw it out there to all my blog readers to ask for suggestions on activities. Can you help me out?