Youth Group

I can't really post a lot about my job, for various reasons, including the fact that I work with minors and can't post any identifying information. Also the fact that I don't know who all reads this and anyone has access to it and if they want to could find this blog easy enough, so I don't want to post anything remotely incriminating or risky. However, I do want to say that I feel like our youth group is finally starting to go well. I don't get very many youth showing up (today was a large-ish group with a total of 7 youth; my biggest event to date had 11) but I'm slowly starting to see both a regular group of youth and some fresh faces almost every week, which I think is a good sign. I adverstise everything pretty much everywhere, so a lot of the responsibility is now in the hands of the youth, to actually come and then to reach out to others and invite them to come too. Hopefully soon they will start to realize that they need to take some responsibility too and work on getting their friends to come. It's starting to happen, but I've come to realize that buildng a youth group takes a long time.

Today we talked about the occult (a very seasonally appropriate topic given Halloween tomorrow) and the youth seemed really interested in it. They actually asked questions and wanted to know more after the leader gave his talk, so I was very pleased. I did have one youth who wanted to veer off into other stuff so that was an interesting test of my abilities, but overall I'm really happy with the way things are going. Being a youth minister is definitely a challenge but I'm happy that I'm finally starting to use theological knowledge and I hope I'm leading the teens closer to Christ. It's really hard only being part-time, but I'm working really hard to make it the best youth group I can given my time constraints.

Too Tired

Today I am just too tired to write; however, I haven't written in so long I feel like I have to get a token post out just so people have something to read. Or at least so people know I still care about my blog. I don't know, I just feel like I should post something today. Today was a crazy day. I'm not even watching Castle tonight, even though it's the best tv show in the entire world, because I'm going to bed as soon as I publish this. That's how tired I am. At least someone somewhere invented the internet so I can watch Castle online tomorrow. Whew.

Old Friends

Who is your oldest friend? How long have you been friends with this person? I actually have 2 people who tie for my oldest friend, and the friendships with them go back to middle school. 6th grade actually. I don't think I have any friends from elementary school that I am still in contact with. And even these friends I don't always see very often or even talk to a lot, but I definitely still consider them my friends. Sometimes I'm surprised that my oldest friendships don't go back farther, and othertimes I'm amazed and very happy that I am still friends with people that I met when I started middle school. I've been thinking about this because I just saw one of them this weekend for my sister-in-law's baby shower. (It's weird, because I have 2 friends who are also friends with some of my siblings because they all went to college together. It's a funny connection, and I actually think it's helped me keep in contact with them in some ways. It's not the same 2 friends, one is a middle school friend and one is a high school friend.) We've actually been able to hang out more in the past 6 months than we have in the past 6 years due to weddings and showers and her moving back to the cities for med school stuff. It's been really great seeing her more often. I often find that having a history as friends means that when you get together, the conversation is still easy and you know enough about the other person that it just feels normal and comfortable.

Movie Thoughts

I love movies. Always have, probably always will. Old movies, new movies, comedies, dramas, romances, action, almost everything except horror movies. I can't stand horror movies. I don't care how fakey they are, I almost always get nightmares from them. I think it's because I have such a good imagination that even if they are super unrealistic I automtically imagine them more realistically. But that's not what this post is about. Actually, I'm not sure what this post is about. Mayve just my general love for movies. Eric and I used to see movies in theaters fairly regularly, but since having Charlotte our movie going has dramatically decreased. We use Netflix but have only been getting one movie at a time plus Instant, and Instant hardly has anything so we don't get movies fast enough (we're switching our plan now that the prices are changing so we'll get more dvds). Plus, now that we don't see movies in theaters as much, we also don't see very many previews, and we don't know what is coming out next. Which makes it hard to know what is in theaters that actually looks good on those occasions where we have a free weekend during which we might want to see a movie. We've even had free movie passes for a couple of months now but haven't managed to get to the theater. We're just waiting for a good movie...

Those seem hard to come by these days too. I don't know if I'm pickier or if the general population is so un-picky that they will watch any old junk people make and then advertise enough, but I think the quality of most movies has gone down significantly. Supposedly with competition and everything it should really be going up, but I don't think it has. Maybe it really is culture and people demanding the same crap in new forms along with the increase in acceptance of crudeness, but I don't need or want to hear a million curse words in a movie nor do I need to see a bunch of naked people or sexed-up relationships or a ton of blood. And I'm not a prude, I promise. I don't mind blood or a little violence when appropriate, and even I occasionally find swear words funny when used cleverly. I just don't think those things make a movie good--in fact, I more often than not find that they are overused and take away from the actual plot of a movie. Or they just serve to cover-up the fact that there is no coherent plot. Which leads me back to my point that the quality of movies have gone downhill.

That being said, there are a couple of movies out right now I'd like to see. 50/50 is one of them. I've also heard good things about Moneyball but since I haven't seen any kind of preview for that I'm not so sure yet. Courageous also sounds promising for those who are into the feel-good, Christian movies. I'm disappointed I missed Captain America and I'm looking forward to the Avengers movie next summer. I think Eric and I are going to use our free movie passes (comes with free pop and popcorn too--how have we not used these yet?) to see 50/50. Until then, Eric and I are working our way through the Indiana Jones movies. Just the first 3. The newest one, well, I think that's only worth watching once. If that.

Texting

After however many years that texting has been around, I finally have it on my phone. I've been avoiding it for, well, let's see, I'd have to say just about forever. I didn't want it, for multiple reasons. One of which, it's a huge distraction, and I don't want to know what is going on with everyone all the time nor do I want to feel like I have to or should share what's going on with me all the time. And I am one of those people who if I have access to something like that, who knows what's going to happen? I love having computer, and simple, quick, easy ways of communicating with people. Like email, and facebook. But not texting. It's too immediate. Also, it's annoying. I hate the texting "language", or rather, shorthand, and the only way I would ever consider texting is with a built in alphabet keypad. Which my new phone has. I also would never want to pay for it because to me that is ridiculous. However, the plan I have now automatically has it, and since my phone has the keypad, I have unfortunately and naturally started using texting more. My biggest problem is I am a talker, and I always want to say a lot, which is why I like things like a blog, and emailing, and hey, face-to-face conversation. So most of my texts end up being sent in 2 or 3 parts. It's a little ridiculous.

Fortunately not many people outside my family know I have texting, and I'm not super popular phone-wise so I don't think too many people have my number, so the number of people who actually text me is minimal, which helps me limit my texting interactions. The best part of it so far though is I've finally made an appearance on my sister's blog under the "Texts From My Sisters" section. Yay! I've posted a link here so you can check it out and try to guess which ones are from me. So far there are only 2, and they aren't any of the gross ones.
http://mariatrueblood.wordpress.com/