hope and change

For our most recent meeting, we talked about our special interest areas for the Youth Gathering. Many of us will be working with environmental issues and some of us will be working with issues of wealth and poverty. Overall, we talked about what we knew about these topics and what has changed in the past few years. Since Katrina, one of the biggest changes has been that the problems are no longer hidden. This made people all around rethink how they connected with God's creation and with God's people.



We took some time to make a collage that reflected hope, change, the environment, and wealth/poverty. As we came to the end of our time, we talked about how we were each able to make a difference ourselves.



(click on the photo to see it larger.)

Listening to One Another

At our last meeting, we talked about listening. We watched a short movie and talked about what we do and do not hear.

We talked briefly about the role of listening in playing jazz music. Listening is incredibly important to this style of music. Jazz musicians must listen to know when to change a rhythm and change keys. They must listen to know when to follow and when to lead.

For us to think about some of these things as a group, we played some acting improv games. Besides being a really great time, it reminded us that we had to listen to help us to know what to say and how to act in each game.

Listen, God is Calling

We started our most recent meeting by watching a short movie from the 2008 Minneapolis Area Synod Gathering:

We then took some time to talk about the things we listened to, the things hear, but ignore and discuss some quotes from the movie:

"There are people in this world who are mute, but not because they cannot talk. But because we have closed are ears to their voices." — Pastor Luisa Cabello Hansel

"We need to lose our life in order to find it. Listening has to do with an initial process of losing yourself in the words, the ideas, the excitement, and the passion of another person. So when we give ourselves to that other person in those kinds of settings we can do great things together." — Bishop Craig Johnson

"Listen and then see if God leads you to act." — Bishop Craig Johnson

"Listening is how we show love." — Pastor Nancy Bence


See the video (in better quality) by clicking this link.

Tell us what you think — leave us a comment below!

First Team Meeting

Today we all got together for the first time! It was a chance for many of the youth to meet each other and other adult leaders for the first time and start to get to know each other.

We spent our time in prayer, learning more about New Orleans and the particular culture in New Orleans and even having some King Cake -- a traditional food of this time of year. Pastor Dabee found the baby in his slice and was the king for the day!

We also talked about our purpose for going to New Orleans. We discussed what it meant to be baptized members in the body of Christ and how we were being called to do justice among others.

All of the NOLA team -- Youth and Adults -- will be adding themselves as authors on this blog. Soon we will all be posting something about what we feel our purpose in New Orleans will be and what we are taking there (more than just what we'll pack in our suitcases).

Keep checking back for more pictures, posts and information about our trip -- We are getting excited and hope you are too!

Thanks for joining us!