Impact Story: WyldLife Winter Weekend With Shannon and Raven
Impact Story: WyldLife Winter Weekend With Shannon and Raven
When sharing stories of what God is doing, it doesn’t usually center around one person; sometimes it focuses on many. God’s story works in many ways, one of them is ministry. Recently, our Wyldlife youth ministry went to a winter weekend, and they are here to share how God moved with kids and with each other. Here’s what Raven and Shannon have to say about it.
They had the opportunity to serve middle schoolers. We will talk a little bit about what that looks like. Such as where they went and what they did. As we are talking through this life story, I want you to see what it's like to pull into the lives of other people that are in your life and being a disciple. We hear about discipleship or being a follower of Jesus, but we often are quick to maybe discount our calls on our lives to make disciples, too. God places people in all of our lives, whether it’s students in your classroom, work, and communities, so that we can pour them in love and draw them closer to Jesus.
Shannon, tell us what happened at Winter weekend and how it impacted the lives of the students.
So, you hear Wyldlife in McDowell all the time and you might not know what it is. To give it more context, Wyldlife is a branch of Young Life, a youth ministry directed towards high schoolers, but on the Wyldlife side of things, it is for middle schoolers, and a lot of people don’t love middle schoolers. Those are the people who needs poured into the most. Paul told me something that I will never forget, and I actually use it in lots of different ways, not just in young life and Wyldlife but in my everyday life with the youth. He said this, “What middle schoolers wanna know is do you like me, whereas with high schoolers they wanna know do I like you.” Middle schoolers don’t know who they are; they’re still trying to figure themselves out. The hormones are taking over every piece of their body from their brain to their toes, and they are asking themselves who am I. Maybe some of them don’t even know Jesus; they may never have gone to church, they weren’t raised in a Christian home, or they don’t know the relationship of Jesus. So with Wyldlife, we get the opportunity to really introduce it. I’ve been doing Wyldlife for at least 5-6 years. I’ve gone on young life trips, leader trips, Wyldlife trips, and something shifted this weekend. I saw something that I haven’t seen in a long time. I believe God also gave me this because I needed it, but most importantly, I saw kids introduced to Jesus for the first time. It’s the coolest thing to be a part of but also the most humbling. Even though I was a leader on this trip, it wasn’t I who introduced them to Jesus, but it was God using me as a servant to make himself known. They got to see who Jesus was for the very first time and hear it in a way that we all are so comfortable with. With all this being said, I definitely think there’s more to talk about involving Jesus. It makes me reflect that our team, not even young life, is able to do this. The only one that can do this is God. All we got was the opportunity, the joy to do God‘s work, and to witness God working, but it all happened because of Him.
How was leading? Did anything funny/important happen, Raven?
Piggybacking off of what Shannon said, I told everybody I usually write in my journal to think about the camp experience. I think middle school girls, especially when you’re in middle school, where your hormones are running, your emotions are opening up, and you’re becoming an open book, where you feel everything so deeply. So as a leader, you have to be really careful about how you talk to them, and you have to make sure that you are able to get down on their level. It helps a lot, like the girls being with the girls, boys with the boys. It’s really cool seeing their middle school face when they realize, like, this is a really cruel world, and it’s gotten a lot worse, and it’s only gonna get worse, but they realize like they don’t have to go through the world alone. They can have us here, and then spiritually they have God, so that was really cool. Most of all of our girls were new but one of my favorite things was if you know Rylee Cecil, which everybody does Rylee there’s like a swing thing at camp and I have never done it before and that was my 10th time at Rockbridge and I wouldn’t do it cause I was too scared, but Rylee and Briana wanted to. So I obliged, and we got to the very top of the swing, and they wanted me to pull the string to send us flying 50 feet in the air. Then I screamed cause I wouldn’t pull it, and then Rylee was like whatever Raven and she pulled it…and I held it against her for her for a little while, but that was funny, though. That was my favorite part, and then cabin time is always good because, like you, our girls felt safe. You need to make that environment a really safe environment so they feel safe enough to open up and talk about some of the middle school struggles, cause there’s a lot of that around.
How was Cabin time for you, Shannon?
Our girls, it was their first time, they’re learning who we are and learning how to open up in discussion. Kiffer, Colby, and Dylan really had a group of boys that they’ve had for a year. Their cabin time was really good. The boys really went deep in some things. That’s all great stuff, and I’m so glad. I feel both the girls and boys and they were recognizing what sin was and how sin affects their lives. And when you realize that sin is a problem, it’s like an epiphany that these two things, sin and the symptom of sin, if they would just stop, then I wouldn’t have this problem of anxiety, worrying, then I wouldn’t have the anxious thoughts and the panic attacks. To go along with that, Psalms 32 five says, “finally I confess all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt, I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord, and you forgave me and all my guilt with bond” that is literally the sin talk at camp.
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