Praying in the New Year

Well, 2009 is over and the youth finished it in style. We did things a little different this year. We invited Grace Baptist Church of Henderson to join us in praying in the New Year. Youth and adults started arriving at 6 pm and we enjoyed a meal of hamburgers, hotdogs and chips. After the meal the youth enjoyed free time and several of the adults headed to the TV for the TN vs. Florida game. It was so wonderful seeing our gym used on New Years. On one end of the court there was a volleyball game going on with members of every generation and both churches playing. On the other end there was a game of cone ball for the more daring to play. In the youth room there was a Wii set up for playing interactive sports games. A basketball duel and air hockey game reigned in the old office. Everywhere you went there were young and old having fun!

At 9 pm Scott Laster from Grace introduced a game called Underground Church. He started by talking about persecution of the church in countries like China.  Then he told them that we had hidden 24 hymnals in the church. They had to go and try to find them without being caught by the police. If they were caught they were sent to jail to be tortured (or the nursery to do push-ups and math problems-ha ha!). After this game everyone went back to free time until 11pm when we met in the fellowship hall for a game of Apples to Apples. At 11:30 pm our new youth director Bob Wadley led us in a devotional about getting rid of the junk we carry around and how Jesus is the glue that holds everything together. We discovered Laminin.  (Google laminin pictures and figure that one out! Simply amazing!) At midnight he led us in a prayer and offered for anyone who wanted to come up to the altar and pray.

I counted early in the night and we had 35 youth and 15 adults but we had several adults come and go throughout the night. This was a great way of bringing in the New Year, fellowshipping with other Christians from another church and at midnight thinking about Jesus and praying. I thank everyone who made this year’s New Year event a success.

MSW