I'm too old for All-Nighters but not for Lockins

This Sunday the youth ministry at church had a lock-in that Harmony and I helped out with. This is similar to events that I organized while a youth pastor in Evanston but there I called them "All-Nighters". The main difference being that there's no expectation of staying up all night at a lock-in. We put on a movie at about 2am and pretty much everyone was out by the end of it (us included). It was a fun event and we had some kids there who don't normally attend the youth group. Please pray that we would continue to have wisdom about how to serve the church kids and reach out to kids from the community.

On Thursday evening I got a call from the basketball coach asking if I wanted to coach the JV team on Friday. The JV coach had a prior committment and this game opportunity came up last minute. So I did...and we won! We had to leave right after school got out to make it up to Max (30 minutes) for a 4pm game. We made it with eight minutes to spare! However, by the time the kids got dressed they only had a couple minutes to shoot around before tip-off. As a result we came out a bit sluggish. We trailed in each of the first three quarters before making a run in the fourth to win by double-digits. I was proud of how the kids battled...and it was nice to get my first JV win!

Our district tournament starts this weekend. The top four teams (out of six) advance to the regional tournament. We play a team in the first round who we lost to by five during the season, so if we play well we'll have a chance. Our girls won their first regional game but lost last night (only the top finisher in regionals moves on to the state tournament).

Harmony and I are going up to the Northern Plains District Conference in Minot this weekend. I think we're both looking forward to getting a chance to meet some other pastors in the district and just to get away for a couple days.

This week's sermon was on Ezra 7:11-28 enititled "God's Providence and Persian Politics." If you'd like to listen to it click here.

By God's Grace, Jeff