What My Brother Is Doing This Summer
Editors Note: This is a post I asked my brother, Brian, to write. Since neither of us are home for the summer, I figured it might be nice to let everyone know what he’s been up to.
This summer I am working in the tiny mountain town of Salida, Colorado. I am the Summer youth Intern at First Presbyterian Church. Me and Hilary Downs, the associate pastor, are responsible for running the entire youth department, including but not limited to high school, middle school, and elementary school. Our ministry is almost completely relational and event based. We don’t have enough kids who would come to a weekly kids service to do one. So we basically just plan a lot of events and hang out with the kids. We have also had one 10-day high school mission trip and Hilary is gone on the middle school mission trip right now.
In addition to working with youth, I also have been helping out with the regular services. Almost a month ago, I was the “Lay leader” meaning I was the one who had to know when to go up between each thing and say things like “Please stand as we sing the first song of the morning” or “You may now be seated” and “Please pray with me”. Needless to say, I don’t think I will pursue a career being a lay leader.
And then two weeks ago, I got to sing with the worship team, and this week I gave the sermon at all three services. It was a great experience. Now I am focusing on Day Camp for the K-4th graders. This will be next week and A LOT has to get done before hand. One thing that is sometimes frustrating about small towns is that you will call people and leave them messages and some times several messages and you almost NEVER get called back. Apparently, it’s just the way things are here, which is fine but makes planning events a nightmare. If I want people to show up, I have to send a flier or postcard like two weeks in advance and then call to remind them. So all this to say I have come to greatly appreciate the youth groups I have worked with before where you could call up a bunch of kids a few hours before an event and still get a better turn out than I do here.
My favorite part of the job has been just doing stuff with high school boys. There is SOOOO much good mountain biking here and so I have been soaking up every ride. And we will get some of the guys together and play paintball at one of the kids ranch. Or I built a sick a jump and we went down to Fronzer lake and jumped mini bikes and scooters into it. It was Awesome.
Note: if you can’t see the video, you may need to click through to the post.
So thats a little bit about my summer.
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