Making It All Real

This month we've kicked off our official Northern Valley TFC meetings with a hurrah! It finally seems like we are settling into more of a groove, after many years of uncertainty! Our group meets at the Almena Community Building every Wednesday night. We start with the junior high at 5:30 pm, eat with the high school around 6:30, and then just meeting with the high school until 8:00 pm. We’ve got a pretty consitent group coming right now, and I feel hopeful for what God will do this year! My plan is that this year I want to encourage the teens to dig deeper and deeper into the Word and build each other up as we do. In order to do that, I've been working on some ways to make sure that we practice some of the things we are learning.

First off, we have been learning to pray more and more. A lot of teenagers don't always enjoy praying, especially out loud! In fact, a lot of adults don't like to pray out loud. So what we've been doing at TFC is asking the teens to finish small one sentence prayers with a prompt. A simple prompt like "Jesus thank you for…" will often get many kids to start praying for the first time and those who've prayed many times to quickly jump in. It's been a lot of fun watching our group grow as they bring their requests to God.

To build on that we had SYATP (See You At The Pole) on the last Wednesday of September. This is an annual event all across the country, but this year we wanted to do something a little different. Most of the time, we gather around the flag pole on Wednesday morning and pray for the school, our families, and friends. This year, I wanted to make sure the teens could see that they are part of a powerful practice of really going to bat for their community by praying for them. So instead of meeting in the morning and praying, we incorporated walking around the town of Almena and prayed for the community and country in all kinds of ways during our official TFC time. We prayed for the school and our peers at the school's flagpole. Then we prayed for the towns of Almena and Long Island when we walked towards the center of the town. After that we spent time praying for people who make our community what it is in their place of business and for many of the farmers as we walked to main street and the grocery store. Lastly, we stood around the flag pole by the community building, and lifted up our country and the things facing it during this time. It was really cool to see how God could use these physical places to kickstart our desire to pray for people. It is easy to be self-centered as a teenager, and helping them to look around and think about other people’s needs is such a good practice for them! Then helping them direct those needs to God who can actually do something about it, is so good!

Another thing we are digging into is just making this Christian thing real. I've been asking the kids to share with me their questions that they have about life, the Bible and Christianity. We talked about church a lot the other day actually. For many of them, they just don't feel that great about being at church for one reason or another. So we looked at the commands that Jesus gives us and how Jesus responded to people who are outcasts. It provided us all with a look at how we needed to attempt to be a part of church, and work to not become discouraged or upset simply because it might seem boring or the people aren't all that nice.

These kids are asking some real questions and really do want to know Jesus. For most of them, they just don't really know where to ask these questions, so we are working through them as much as we can. It is actually quite an honor to be a safe place for these student’s questions, so please pray that God would direct my response and answers to always point to Him! And it's all thanks to you that we can do this!!

This year we are working through the ministry of Jesus and each week we'll dig into things that are true about Jesus and things that some people get all wrong about Jesus so that the teens will be able to discern for themselves who Jesus really is and follow Him with everything they have.

• Baby #4 will make his appearance VERY soon. This is super exciting, but will change a few things at TFC! I am SO thankful for some pretty awesome volunteers who are willing to take over a couple weeks of lessons for me. But would you please pray for them? Pray that they will step up into leadership, that God would speak through them, and that the group would be just fine while I take a few weeks off!
• Leadership Retreat is October 19-20. Pray that this would be a refreshing time for the teens that go, and that they would be strengthened in their faith!
• There have been many challenging things about working in the community we do. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but if you could just be in prayer for the town of Almena - that God’s truth would prevail over any lies spoken about His word, and that there could be more solid, Bible teaching taught in the community that would be so appreciated!

Seems crazy that it’s baby month! We have had a CRAZY 2024 with moving into our new house and then trying to get all of the renovations done while also anticipating another baby! (There is still MUCH to do, so if you can pray that I would find time to keep making our house into the home we need, that would be great!)

Something fun this month, is that Josiah got chosen to escort out the Homecoming canidates onto the football field for Homecoming! He even got to do it with his cousin, Eliza, which made it more special.

Abbie’s pregnancy has been really quite smooth until last week when she develped extreme pain in her right leg. At first she thought it was just varicose veins, but after going to the dr, discovered it’s blood clots. She is getting daily injections of blood thinner to help, but things will probably not get completely better till after baby’s arrival!

Remember that you can help by donating here! We love how God provides so we can serve this community!!