Are you ready for Mud?

So it's been quite awhile since I've updated and I've heard plenty of nagging about it from all sorts of ends. Nothing really new and exciting since last post, but I am pretty excited about this weekend. I'm chaperoning the Middle School weekend retreat up at Laurelville. This is my first real opportunity to connect with some of the kids and spend some good quality time getting to know them. Oh, and I get to tackle them into the mud if they get too much for me (who am I kidding? I'll probably spend more time on the ground than anyone else). My supervisor tried to tell me at one point that since there are so few kids going this year that he could see sending just me in his place. I told him that wasn't going to happen. At least not this time. He said he might let me do that with the High School retreat in a few weeks and he will be a head counselor. I guess we'll just see how this weekend goes.
The other thing that is pretty exciting is the fact that Mike is letting me do the devotions for the month of November at Youth Group. I'm pretty nervous just because I'm not sure what has been done in the past or generally how that part of Youth Group works. So far I've always been out leading the game while that is going on. Right now I'm leaning toward doing a series of Biblical Leadership by looking at some of the Old Testament stories and seeing what we can learn from people like Moses, Jonah, Nehemiah, and so on. Mike said he wants me to incorporate some kind of media just so it's not me talking for thirty minutes. I think I could find relevant movie clips to go along with each stories lesson. On top of that, he also said it would be good to get some of the older kids involved, which is something that really excites me just because I know the deepest experiences I've had were when I was leading my peers. I haven't completely worked it out in my head, but I have two weeks to get something concrete.
On a related note, next Wednesday is Halloween and in an attempt to bribe kids to actually come to Youth Group we are having a Guitar Hero III tournament, all the candy you can eat, probably pizza, and anything else to get kids to come. I'm thinking it should be a good internship next Wednesday.
Well, kids are starting to show up. Bring on the mud!