Chapter IV: Pace Yourself

Ever get to the beginning of a week and wonder what happened to the second half of the week before? Yeah...that's about where I'm at...

I had a pretty rad week that was spent hanging out with students and getting into the swing of things. I preformed at Founders again, bought a new TV, and spent the majority of my weekend with Alex. We got to spend Friday night roaming the streets of downtown Grand Rapids enjoying the sites and not enjoying the spiders. I also ate more pizza in the last three days than I have in the last three weeks...(not literally of course!)...and while I do enjoy JB's Pizza, there is something to be said for Jet's Sausage and Bacon Pizza.....

Our first official youth event went really well, and it was a great opportunity to hang out with the students, talk about the upcoming semester, and eat some amazing Jello cake. The youth ministry also met together to plan the fall semester, and come up with our ministry's vision statement:

Living the real life Together in Christ.

It's not all fun and games though...as this week as brought it's trials. Three of my friends are really struggling this week, I've had to make the first tough decision regarding my ministry, and I started to recognize the signs of burnout this weekend.

I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with youth, planning and sitting through meetings, and looking through calenders....It's all great stuff, but just like a giant cake cookie, too much of a good thing can be bad. So I started working towards having some down time and celebrated that at the beach yesterday. I walked away with a better understanding of myself and God's calling for this ministry, but I am also sporting a sweet one-sided sunburn. More importantly, I realized that while youth ministry is awesome work, I need to pace myself by setting personal boundaries to make sure I don't get burnt out.

Check out my other blog Reading Revelation for a more in depth look at burnout:
Reading Revelation: Love Affair

The LORD blessed us with good weather and turnout for our Sr. High Pool party and is continuing to provide for me here in Wyoming (I love living in Wyoming and Michigan at the same time!). For this week, I would ask that you continue to pray for our youth group, but also pray for my first Sunday leading the praise band at Olivet as well as a prayer retreat that Pastor Josh and I are taking on Tuesday....

Still learning,
-B

PS: Look into playing the game called Munchkin...I'm pretty much obsessed.