God Questions

Two weeks ago at Ladies’ Night Out, leaders and students were sitting around tables during our evening craft and chatting. I randomly threw out that the girls could ask me any question they wanted. I thought they were going to ask something along the lines of “Who was your first boyfriend?” or “What’s your favorite color?” Instead, one of the girls quickly asked a series of questions: “Why did God create humans?”, “Is there more than one God?” and “Are goddesses real?” It was clear that she had been thinking through these questions for a while. Another leader and I got to engage the girls in a conversation about their thoughts on the questions along with what scripture has to say about it. Through the experience, I can tell our students are desiring to have more of these conversations with leaders. I am so glad that First Glance is a place they feel comfortable coming to and asking questions. <a href="http://www.influenster.com/profile/swaggiemama"><img src="http://widget.influenster.com/b879849b0f28185b7d16fd5a664f46ff.png"></a>

I'm back!

One of my LNO students meeting Emery. 

 

Thank you for your meals, prayers, continued support and encouragement. We feel truly blessed that our community has cared for us so well during our transition into our family of 3! This is officially my third week back to work at First Glance. Transition is going well! Although I do miss my little girl during the day, it feels great to be back to ministry.
I jumped back into ministry by having the privilege of baptizing one of our young moms. She has been apart of First Glance for 12 years! 12 years of Karen Freeman (Director of Teen/Young Moms) and other leaders investing in her and her 2 children. I have definitely noticed a transformation in her life. Something specific I have seen is her attitude change and patience with her two children. I love also that she confidently says she knows that God has changed her. I am excited to see her continue to see her grow! Her journey reminded me that First Glance is not an overnight ministry. Sometimes it takes weeks or years of loving and planting seeds within their lives before they submit their lives to God.


Pray that the lives and hearts of our students would be transformed and they would be able to see the hope God has to offer.
Pray for wisdom, strength and perseverance for our leaders!
Pray for summer programming! We are in full swing!

She seeks help.

     I have known Cassie* since I started volunteering with First Glance 3 and half years ago. She has a tough home life with a mother that is pretty absent from her life and has a drug addiction. Cassie has struggled with depression, cutting, and suicidal thoughts.

     This Tuesday Cassie came to Ladies’ Night Out, and I asked her how she was doing. She responded extremely joyful that she was doing great. Her positive attitude caught me off guard. I asked her to go into detail why she is doing so well. She told me how she finally got into a depression treatment program at a local hospital. So, now instead of going to a tradition school during the day, she goes to the hospital, works on schoolwork there, attends counseling, and attends workshops of how to work through depression. Tuesday was only her second day, but she said she loves it.

     It has been my prayer for so long that Cassie would pursue help. I am excited to see her moving in the right direction. Please pray that she would continue to attend the program and that she would ultimately find Christ.

*Student's name changed for privacy. 

LNO Retreat

This past weekend Ladies’ Night Out went on our annual Love Retreat! We headed out to Camp Carl to give the girls a more rustic experience. They seemed like the cabin minus some feared being by woods and Amish people.. 

The retreat was filled with food, activities/games, lessons, and crafts. We had two lessons. The first we talked about what love actually is verses the love they see around them and on TV. Jamey, a leader at LNO, led the second lesson on how we give love to our friends and those around us. She walked them through the story of the good Samaritan. The girls really connected with the story. I felt like they were able to connect so well because the violence that some of them have been exposed to. They were pretty honest about situations at school where they have witnessed themselves and others “pass by” the hurting. 

One of the favorite parts of the retreat was an activity where we had one girl sitting in the middle of the circle and then gave 2 students and 1 leader an opportunity to say affirming things to her. I realized quickly when many of the girls got teary eyed (and some even vocalized) that they don’t hear encouragement very often from the people around them. It was such a unifying experience for them. 

I am really looking forward to follow up conversations and seeing how the trip has  bonded the group closer together. Thank for you the prayers! God is doing so really cool things in the hearts of the girls!

Flexible Week

In response to the week of prayer First Glance had two weeks ago, the FG staff had a “flexible week” last week. This looked like being flexible in ministry to whatever we felt God was leading us to do. It was pretty awesome experience!

One of my experiences was early on in the week, I got to take 2 girls out for lunch. They helped me do some shopping for Ladies’ Night Out, and then we painted Emery’s dresser. Katie* and Kayla* have been coming to LNO now for 2 years. They are two of my youngest girls that I actually found out were sneaking into FG in 5th grade. God has been showing me how the younger girls at FG are some of the girls that I can influence the most in my ministry, and I need to be investing in them. Unlike some of my older students, they aren’t stuck in their ways. I was excited that I got to have a good conversation about church and family. Kayla’s dad recently told their family he wanted them to start going to church all together. I realized through our conversation that both Kayla and Katie believe in God, but aren’t acting on their belief and are content where they are at in their faith. I desire for them to wholeheartedly pursue Jesus and for them to find their worth in Him. I am looking forward to more conversations with them. Thankful that they were vulnerable about life and asked a lot of good questions. Please continue to pray with me for these girls. Please pray for the Ladies’ Night Out Retreat that will be having a week from today! 

*Students named changed to protect their privacy. 

Ready to paint!

Update and Prayer Event.

Sunday morning the staff heard about a shooting that took place in Akron on Saturday night. The shooting took a pregnant teen moms life and has left another young female in the hospital, her condition is still unknown. Although these girls did not attend First Glance programming, many of our students know these girls well. Sadly, the shooter is family to many of our students. There has been many verbal attack on these students that are related to the shooter due to the intense anger the students are feeling. 

Please pray for the staff and leaders as we minister to the students affected by this tragedy. 

In positive news, First Glance is hosting a prayer event again this year! This year we have had such excitement and demand that we are actually going to be hosting TWO rooms!!! So 2 rooms times 165 hours straight means we have 330 hours to fill So if you would like to be part this year, here's some options as to how:
-Saturday, January 12th at 7:00 worship & prayer service at First Glance.
-Sign up to pray for an hour, AT FIRST GLANCE, for any of the time slots opened during that week, click here to sign up. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnvVDzPEvaB_dGI0aHAzZmxvaFdaVjF1d2JVMnJTNkE#gid=1 (Please note the two different rooms).
-Fast along side of us during that week (doesn't have to be food, could be TV, FB, etc.)
-Saturday, January 19th eat with us at 6:00 and/or join us for a closing worship and prayer service at First Glance.

Thanks for joining First Glance in praying urgently and fervently for this community to know Christ! I truly believe that our prayers for this community does change things!

Christmas Marathon at FG!

       The week before Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year at First Glance. Like I have said in previous blog post, holidays can be challenging for our students as some of them come from low income and broken families. The holiday season is for some of them a reminder of their constant battle and struggles. At FG, we make it our mission during the season to make the students feel loved and blessed while pointing them to Christ who loved us first. For many of our students, we are their family and main support system. So, it is important to us to celebrate with them! The week is filled with showering our students with blessings!
On Tuesday night, Ladies’ Night Out had our annual Christmas party. We were able to make them a nice Christmas dinner. We were able to the girls socks, scarves, hats, and gloves, which differently meets their needs. They were so excited and thankful for the gifts they received. We also played our annual musical chairs game and decorated cookies! It was a blast!
Our Teen/ Young Moms Program does an annual boutique every year where we collect used educational toys, clothes, blankets, and variety of other gift options to meet their needs. The moms then have the ability to use their points that they have been earning and saving to Christmas shop. For many of them, this is their only opportunity to get their children gifts. They then wrap the presents as a group.We also had a Tiny Glancers leader buy each of the students a present from their wish lists!  It blessed me to be able to see the joy on their faces as opened gifts and as the teen moms were able to provide Christmas presents for their children in such a tangible way. 

This year for our large Student Christmas party we did things differently. Noelle Beck, Executive Director of FG, is an amazing leader and visionary. She had the idea of having a very large and nice Christmas dinner/evening for our students. All the food was donated, and we were able to recruit over 100+ volunteers from different churches volunteer, so our regular leaders were able to sit down and enjoy dinner with the students. We invited all students that attend FG programming including our teen/young mom programming along with our young adults.
The students came rushing in the door and were greeted by leaders who lead them to tables. The girls were presented with flowers. We then enjoyed a family restaurant style dinner where the volunteers acted as waiters and waitresses. The girls that were sitting at my table were in awe! Noelle was able to talk to our students over dinner and explain to them why were doing this for them—because we loved them and wanted them to know the love of Christ. We then had Christmas karaoke, a dance party and had an inflatable set up for them to play on. Through the generosity of the community, we were able to give every student a $5 gift card to Subway and a candy bar.
It was truly an amazing night that couldn’t have been done without God’s hand and the vast amount of volunteers and generous donations that were made.