Whew, what a weekend! I almost had to cancel my youth group’s 30-Hour Famine event this weekend due to Dana and I both feeling pretty sick. We’ve had this headache/congestion/tiredness thing going on for the past couple days, but we continued with it as scheduled because I really wanted the kids to go through this experience right before Thanksgiving. Plus, the students were all excited and looking forward to it.

Thank God the event itself went very smoothly despite my sickness. Here are the highlights:

• We spent Friday night in a rough part of downtown Dallas feeding the homeless, which is always an eye-opening experience for the first-timers. Three of the jr. high girls talked extensively with one homeless man who ended up receiving Christ with them!
• Friday night back at the church we had a time of worship, writing letters to God, singing, talking about our downtown experience, and prayer.
• Saturday morning we helped a local organization sort used clothes, toys, and other jobs in preparing to sell the items. All proceeds went to benefit needy people in our community.
• All Saturday afternoon was spent playing the game Tribe that comes included with the 30-Hour Famine leaders kit. I hadn’t played it other years because it looked too complicated, but I gave it a try this year and had a blast! We learned a lot about the struggles in Uganda along with scriptural implications for our own lives.

If you haven’t tried the 30-Hour Famine event with your own youth group, I highly recommend it. It’s always a noggin’-scratcher why students look forward and invite their friends to an event where they can’t eat anything for 30-hours. It seems so contradictory to all the other events we do throughout the year. I think it’s because students feel that they’re finally given a chance to make a difference in the world, the potential to literally save the lives of an entire African village. For more information about it, check out www.30hourfamine.org.

If you’ve done the famine before, what’s been your experience with it?

Breaking the fast with veggies, fruit, bread, Jello and tortilla soup!

[tags]30-Hour Famine, World Vision, youth group[/tags]

Posted on November 19, 2006