Dear friends and family,
Well, your thoughts and prayers have been felt throughout the summer, and I know this because it has truly been a great one. It has been so nice to be at home, be refreshed by coming back to First Presbyterian for a while, and through it all I've been able to keep quite busy traveling to San Jose, CA (for General Assembly), to Louisville, KY (for a meeting), and to Santa Barbara twice to see some of my very best friends in the world, not to mention one of my favorite places.
Things are beginning to wrap up here at the church, meaning I only have about a week and a half left. Somehow I missed the memo to finish your summer job/field ed on or immediately following the 8th of August. So, I will finish my time here at First Pres. on Aug. 26, but before that time we will have our final youth pool party and I will preach...in "big church," (which is what all the youth have called Sunday morning worship since probably before I started coming here 13 years ago) this Sunday, August 17. I am terrified, and thrilled, and excited and nervous and just about every emotion you can imagine you might feel when asked to speak the word of God to the congregation of your home church. And yet...I am really looking forward to it. I will be preaching on John 2, the wedding at Cana, and will be taking a different approach to it than is usually taken. Because I know many of you cannot be here, I will be sending out a link to the recording online soon after this Sunday and will hopefully have a hard copy of the recording as well.
Anyway, back to the rest of the summer: the youth group has been good, but my hopes for resurrecting the very small junior high group into some large, on fire group has gone mostly unnoticed by the kids. The ones who show up seem to genuinely appreciate me being there, I have developed some good relationships with several of the kids, but instead of continuing to focus only on the one area where I wasn't making any distinguishable progress I decided to widen my focus and spend time investing in our high school girls. We have had coffee-time with Megan, a chance for kids to just come hang out, pool parties, a girls spa night, and just lots of fun; I've taught in youth group twice, and Sunday school several times. But the coolest part has been just getting to know the girls through our Wednesday night small groups and hanging out on Sunday mornings. How rewarding it has been to watch them wrestle and grow and learn. What a cool and utterly humbling experience.
Well, these are the two big things I wanted to write about today: praises for the youth group and how God has been obviously working, and prayer requests for my time preaching this Sunday (9am and 10:30am). Next time I'll talk some about my upcoming transition and the things I'm looking forward to and sad to be leaving behind. Until then, blessings on you for your journey now, and until we meet again...
-Megan
