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More than twenty adults and teens from the Redlands Church of Christ in Redlands, California are teaming up to travel for a weeklong mission trip this summer. Our mission is to travel to the City of Children in Ensenada, Mexico. City of Children is a home for abandoned children. They currently provide good housing, good food and a good education for over 100 children. By traveling to Mexico in July, we will be following the example of Christ, and caring for “the least of these.” We are trying to bring love and happiness back into the lives of hurting children. The purpose of our visit is to be a friend and an example of Jesus to a child. Our hugs and attention may be the love that helps heal a broken heart.  During our week, we may be serving the Lord by building church facilities, homes for the poor, providing medical, dental and optometry clinics, classes, Vacation Bible Schools, Gospel meetings, food relief for the poor, barbering, meals and visits.

While we are excited and blessed with this opportunity, we cannot do it on our own. We need prayer and financial support to help cover costs like dorms, transportation, food and service projects while in Mexico. Please visit our website for more information on our upcoming mission trip and to see how you can help at www.redlandscoc.org. Every dollar counts and makes a difference for “the least of these”. You can also check out the City of Children’s website at www.cityofchildren.com.

Donate $50 or more and receive a one pound bag of the official coffee of City of Children!

I want to communicate a few things to you parents about this study. I am excited and a little nervous to start this study. Nervous because I truly want it to be a powerful and important experience for your teens. I have been studying and collecting material on the topic of sex and continue to be convincted about God’s plan for sex. I think this will probably be one of THE most important studies I’ve done with the kids while I have been youth minister. It’s looking like this is going to be a 4-part study (so we’ll have 1 lesson per month). And for one lesson in particular (probably the 3rd one) I’m looking to split the boys and girls into separate groups with separate locations.

The resources I have been studying and will be drawing from for this study are:
“The Power of Sex: Helping Students Understand God’s Plan for Sex” by Doug Fields
“Sex & Dating: A Bible Study for Youth Groups” by Michael and Hayley Dimarco
“Good Sex: A Whole-Person Approach to Teenage Sexuality and God” by Jim Hancock & Kara Eckmann Powell

I wanted to share this with you because this is not a subject I am treating lightly. I hope you will strongly encourage your teen to attend and will discuss with your teen what is talked about and presented. When I was growing up I felt like I had a great relationship with my parents and remember talking very openly with my father about sex. That being said – there were still certain questions that I had that for whatever reason I felt uncomfortable about going to my own father with first. I thank God for my youth minister (Steve Smith!) and that I had a Godly mentor with whom I could ask those questions.

The activity for this weekend will be a dinner and movie night Saturday night at 5:00 at the church building. There was talk of a potential trip to Magic Mountain scheduled for this Saturday, but to be honest, I don’t think we quite have the money in the youth fund to pull it off at this time. And after being gone for so long, I think it would be good to just hang out with the teens and have fun together. I’m looking forward to it!

On Sunday, September 25th, we will have a fundraiser LUNCH. Yup, you read that correct. Carol Parks and I are organizing a spaghetti lunch for the entire church. Because of this we will NOT be starting our Bible study on ‘God’s Plan for Sex’ that Sunday. We will begin that Bible study on Sunday, October 4th. I will let you know how you parents and teens can help for our spaghetti lunch.