The Glen Waverley Uniting Church PSALTER
Youth & Young Adults Report February
Although it seems days since returning from Kenya & a lovely holiday with Joel, it's been a packed and exciting time. Thank you for an amazing reflection of Ineke's role here at GWUC, it was great to celebrate her ministry together. It has also been exciting to begin planning with our new team member, and we feel encouraged by the shared ideas that we have been developing together & are looking forward to all that this year will bring.
Youth Group has began, planning went really well and we have a few new leaders this year as they have graduated from year 12! Very exciting.
Some of the older leaders have stepped down this year after an amazing commitment to youth group.....they are still offering to support or drive if needed.
We are looking forward to our youth small groups beginning again on Friday! And have already began welcoming our new year seven students.
Glen Waverley Secondary College, has seen a change of Chaplain with Mark Philpot resigning & Chris Douglas taking on the role. Chris has been apart of the ministry at Glenny, through his role with Young life & has been apart of the breakfast from (Almost) the beginning. So we are thankful for the ongoing relationship we will have with the school. Ame will be continuing in the school volunteering for two half days & last years sustainable sneaker project was a great success. We should find out this week if the Breakfast is to resume at Glen Waverley Secondary College.
Nick has finished up at Brentwood & did a great job developing a year 9 boys program. ( We suspect they will be asking him back later in the year.)
Ame has finished her internship, earning a cert 4 in youth work, she has done an outstanding job and after navigating her way around all that is GWUC, has learnt a lot about working in volunteer organisations!
Nick is still to complete his training units for his cert, but has began completing units over the summer.
Camps planned for this year....
Surrender Conference - March 25-27 with Shane Claiborne (We hope this will give opportunity to inspire & challenge as an alternative to NCYC)
State Youth Games - June Long weekend
GWUC Camp - August, dates to be confirmed aiming for the second weekend in August
Monday nights Young adults group is meeting again & continuing at Helen & Dave's home & are going to do the Lenton study Divine conspiracy.
Wednesday Nights Young adults will start back up next Wednesday at Al & Joels.
Evening service will resume on the 27th of Feb, we look forward to continuing to develop leadership & creativity in the service & hope to build up a collection of resources for others to use & encourage our music gifts! (Wouldn't it be great to record & publish Jas' worship music)
The Kenya trip was another life impacting experience for those who went, we encourage you to ask them to share their experiences. Thank you so much for the overwhelming prayer & financial support, we were able to implement many sustainable & ongoing programs, as well as meeting many immediate needs. (We will submit a expenditure report as soon as our Kenya trip treasure is back in Aus!) We have already had an inquiry about another trip.
Andrew Wheatland & Hannah Dungan (both regulars on Monday night & 7pm for Andrew) went to NCYC & stayed with the Congress mob. They enjoyed NCYC & especially appreciated the community & atmosphere that they experienced, and the cultural diversity displayed at NCYC was fantastic.
We are implementing the new working with children documentations & request permission to organise and run a first aid course. It would be great to be able to supplement the cost of two volunteers to do their first aid course.
As usual there are a lot of opportunities in the pipeline......A leadership conference with synod has been planned for April, we have a new Church contact for partnership in the much awaited soup kitchen & an approach to provide counselling at one of our local secondary colleges.
The Leadership Conference has been planned for the 2nd & 3rd of April at GWUC, we are aiming to resource the wider church with interactive leadership training and are exploring a very different training program, with lots of new ideas & training technics. So far we have only checked the dates with Wendy at the office, but an email will have gone out to property.
Decisions for discussion at church council:
Is it ok to organise and advertise a first aid course? (Have discussed with Children's & Families Support Group, who also need to update their first aid)
- Can we supplement the cost of a first aid course for two + volunteers from the wider Church Budget?
- Can we supplement the cost of the Surrender Conference ($110 per student) for those who want to go but finance is an option, from the youth budget?
Is it ok to go ahead with the leadership training at GWUC as part of our youth & young adults Ministry partnering with local congregations?
Alanee Hearnshaw