Venture 2016

This past weekend was our youth ministry's Discipleship Now that we call Venture. It is always held Martin Luther King, Jr Day weekend and we were looking forward to it again this year! Our friends, Justin and Melody, offered to be the host home and Brian and I co-hosted with them. This year, we hosted my Sunday School group - Ten 10th grade girls. We were just in charge of driving them everywhere they needed to go and making sure everyone was where they needed to be. I was looking froward to seeing God move in the lives of these young people!

Sidebar: Last week, one of our friends from church brought Brian this picture of he and I before we were married. We are with our friend, Jarrid, who is now the Youth Assistant at our church. This picture was from about 10 years ago - when I was leader at Venture and now Brian and I are co-hosts and Jarrid is putting Venture together. It's so neat how things come full circle.

Back to this year's Venture: After work on Friday, Mallory and I went to pick up the leader of our group for the weekend, Marley. She just graduated from Texas A&M and it was so great to get to know her before she lead our girls last weekend. Mallory decided to become her best friend as soon as we met her and took this photo of her at dinner.

After dinner, we headed to Melody's to wait for all the girls to come. We had a get-to-know you time before we headed up to the church.

One of the best parts of Venture: all the snack food the girls bring :)

We got to the church for the first session. Our worship was lead by The Gladsome Light. They did an awesome job!

And it would only be my child who fell asleep during the worship time. I think the week had finally caught up with her.

Our speaker was Yusuph Emmanuel, he is the husband of our former Youth Assistant, Katie, and he is from Tanzania. He has an amazing testimony and is a great teacher!

After the Friday night session, we headed back to Justin and Melody's. We loved this pillow with an arm that one of the girls brought so we had to take a picture.

Such a fun group

Saturday morning, we headed back to the church for breakfast. Chiloso tacos for the win!

After the morning session, the girls helped pack some bags for a Dallas Homeless Shelter. Once that was completed and we ate lunch, it was time for our scavenger hunt. We had a list of 77 items to choose from to complete - this is just some of the items we could do

We had an hour to complete the items we could and post the photos to Facebook in the event that the youth leaders created for our groups. Once they said go: we were on the run.

A couple of the pics: we had to get just .10 cents at the gas pump

We had to help a stranger pump gas

Others included holding a snake, posing in handcuffs with a policeman, etc... we got a lot done and had the best time doing it! We ended up at one of the girl's houses to complete some final tasks and took this group pic when it was over. 

After the scavenger hunt, we had free time so we just rested before it was time to go to the church for the Saturday evening session. One of the Venture traditions is each group will dress up for the Saturday session. Our girls decided to dress up like one of the boys in their grade. His mom gave them a bag full of his shirts and they had tennis rackets since he loves to play tennis.

And this was Will's reaction when he saw them - ha! I don't think he knew what to think!

But we did get him to pose with his admirers! I told him imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

The Saturday evening session was great and Mallory was awake during this one!

Sunday morning, we put on our Venture shirts and headed to get the girls to go to church one last time.

This girl loves Venture!

 One last group photo!

It was great serving with one of my closest friends!

And it was great serving with these two!

We are thankful that we got to be a small part of Venture again this year! Mallory and I both enjoyed 3 hours naps on Sunday after the busy weekend but it was so worth it!