My first visitor!

Today, a wonderful thing happened. I got my first visitor to my partially remodeled office / youth room. It was so great to sit and chat for an hour with one of the youth that I was hired to minsiter. Oh how I missed that in my old parish. Ministering to 900 teens means that you are cranking out programs but never really getting to know anybody one on one. Now that I have 84 in religious ed and another 40 who have already been confirmed I have time to hang out with them more.

This young lady came by just to hang out and chat. Yay! She is a great young lady who is really beautiful - not just physically though. She is beautiful through and through. I have spent quite a bit of time with her in various ways since I arrived here. She helped me run a retreat where the 6th graders just migrated to her. She was what we call "on fire" that day. She had them eating out of her hands (not literally ... unless you count raw spaghetti and gum drops) She is a natural in leading kids into prayer and leading games and just sitting and chatting with them too. Amazing really. She was a participant on another retreat where we had amazing small group discussions - great parish bonding time - super fun late night chats in the cabin with everyone. But today we had a great chat that really got me thinking. She spilled her heart (which I won't spill to you) but I realized that you can look at someone and think you know someone but until you stop along the journey and speak with your heart - you never know someone.

Basically I know what I am saying is don't judge a book by it's cover - but it is more than that. You can read a book and not know what it is saying - really saying.

Ponder that.

Then say a prayer for all young ladies out there who long to know who they really are - and for youth ministers everywhere that they all have time to sit and chat with the teens whom God has entrusted to their care. Amen.

Hmmm... I wasn't heading in that direction when I began my post ... must be the Holy Spirit at work.

Peace friends.