Category Archives: Youth Group

Old Salvation Army Building Wall Phase #2 Beta

Mediacom. That is all I’m going to say for now.

So these pictures actually started out with me just wanting to document a little bit of the Mural Project progress, but then a bunch of kids wanted to take pictures. Which made me nervous, but I let Jaxson, Wyatt, and Kyle take the majority of these picture while I stood as close to them as possible.

This week, I’m going to bring the camera that wasn’t a thousand dollars with the $700 dollar lens attached to it and let them go as wild as they want.


Youth Group!

Youth Group!

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The first mural has been finished and will be going up this Wednesday. Hopefully. At least that is the plan, Stan.

Old Salvation Army Building Wall Phase #2 Alpha

Here are a few more photos of the progress we’ve made with the Old Salvation Army Building Wall. Where the windows are boarded up, we are going to put up murals. The work on those began on Wednesday night in Fellowship Hall.



This one is going to be a cross with paint drippings behind it.


Some of the ideas.


Working on tracing hands for a heart-hand thing.


More of the same.


Bonus picture of Sarah G. leading Devotions/Worship.

Hoping to make significantly more progress on a couple of them this Wednesday night!

I Stood in the Disenchanted Field

Last night was the annual Hayrack Ride for the Youth Group. Unfortunately, I brought the wrong lens and the wrong flash, but here are a few pictures from the evening.


Although, I probably wouldn’t have taken many pictures any way. A flash in the dark isn’t the most popular thing in the world.

But there was a good turn out. 30-35 kids. Most importantly, a good time was had by all AND there were no clown sightings!

Milwaukee Mission Trip Vol. 2

The remainder of my Mission Trip photos. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of much of the remaining week.



Jay painting the floor corner.


Elizabeth and Megan painting the floor.


On Tuesday, The Family House seemed to peter out of jobs for us to do. Late in the afternoon they brought us into the common room for an activity called Debates. This is an activity where they ask the residents questions and they have to give their opinion and then defend their position. The kids really enjoyed this game. They were particularly engaged in questions like: “How old should a kid be before they get their first cell phone?”, “Should all states have the death penalty?”, “Would a Trump presidency help our economy?”, and “Should a step-parent be allowed to whoop a step-child?” One of the residents became a crowd favorite when she stated that if “some man ever laid a finger on her child, I’d kick his ass”. At the conclusion of Debates, Megan and Jay played the piano and entertained the residents. The ones that were into Dr. Dre, any ways.

While we were sitting around, Cordelia came in and took us on a tour of The Family House to show us jobs we could do. Earlier in the day, Cornelius told us that we couldn’t come back on Wednesday because they wouldn’t be there. Cordelia told us we could come back and that they would have a list of jobs for us to do.

On this tour Cordelia told me that she didn’t know what she paid a maintenance man for, he didn’t do anything. Then she added that she couldn’t get any could help. If her kids acted like this (her employees), her “husband would’ve killed them.” I told you Cordelia was a house of fire!

We left on Tuesday expecting a list of jobs to greet us on Wednesday.

Our Tuesday night activity was listening to a group called Life Changers. 4 people told us their story. 1 woman spoke about an abusive relationship that left her suicidal. Another woman spoke about depression that lead to a suicide attempt. A guy told us a story about dealing drugs and spending time in prison. All of them had been redeemed by God.

The fourth woman told a story about how she had a pretty good life. Yeah. The point of her story was that they wanted us to know that not everybody is having struggles in Milwaukee. Although this came off like an advertisement for a college prep program that the emcee ran. The part where he asked her if she got married so she wasn’t living in sin, was particularly awkward.

Glen, the ex-drug dealer, had become a musician and sold his rap CD. Several of the kids purchased it. I think I listened to Track 3 of his CD about 50 times on the rest of the trip. I’m not even mad. It made the Peterson van bump. (I drive a borrowed van on these trips.)



So it turns out, on Wednesday they didn’t have a list. We mostly sat in the court yard. Waiting for a job. This was disheartening for the kids. They showed up with a ton of motivation and enthusiasm. Then when there was nothing to do, the enthusiasm left the balloon.


Finally, with about 30 minutes left to go, they told us, “It would be nice if you planted our garden.”


Megan took over this job. She is a agricultural expert.


David weeding.


After the showers Andy, Summer, and I went to this Catholic surplus store. The life sized Jesus crucified statue: $5900. I decided I didn’t need it.


Wonder what you look like when you are posing for Snapchat filters? Alisa, Sarah, and MacKenzie demonstrate.

Wednesday night’s activity was serving a soup kitchen in the church where we were staying. This was kind of a disorganized mess and there were some moments that were awkward where some of us ate before the community members that needed this meal. In the end though, even out of this mess, good things happened.

Andy had met a homeless man outside of the church on Tuesday night and invited him to come to the soup kitchen. The very short version of this story is that he came and he and Andy made a connection. There is so much more to that story. Ask me directly, but be warned, you may have opened up a bottle that you can’t put the cap back on. I love talking about the Mission Trip. Even though people don’t get it.

Following the church supper, the kids on the mission trip put on a worship service for the community. One of the highlights of this service was our Anna giving the sermon. Even if I wasn’t impartial, I would think she did an amazing job!

Obviously there is more to that story, but once again, ask directly.



Cornelius’ Prom picture. Yes, Cornelius has his prom picture at work. Yes his date looks pissed. The story is that shortly before Prom, his date got into a car accident. She was in pain and didn’t want to go. Cornelius made her go. Why? “I had already paid for the tickets!” Then when his boy got dissed by his date and he spent the night hanging out with him. I don’t want you to think poorly of Cornelius. He was a good dude. He was however a terrible Prom date.


On Thursday, they found a job the kids loved! Crawling around in a dumpster and destroying things.


Cordelia telling her story. Cordelia has been on Oprah and whatever show Al Roker is on.


This tree stands where a drug house used to stand. When they tore the garage down, they found a dead body in the basement. The body was never identified, so they planted this tree in that person’s memory.


They love their dumpster!


Posing with Cordelia before we left.


I’m not sure what happened to Autumn at her work site.


A famous (and cheaper) Milwaukee frozen custard stand.


Old Timey Ice Cream! Okay, frozen custard.


The Thursday night activity was a community dinner at Adullam.


Ray and Scott manning the grill.


Alisa. Not really sure what she is doing.


Serving the Community


One of the most violent games of tackle football I’ve ever seen/dominated. Nate (making the tackle) laid a kid from another church out.


Dante running with the ball.


Note the kid in the brown sweat shirt.

This is a story I didn’t tell when our group gave the sermon on the Sunday after we returned to normal life.

I was talking to Dante and the kid in the brown shirt (and I hate the fact that I can’t remember his name) while we were eating. Our conversation ranged from our mutual hatred of the Packers to NBA free agency to their school. They attend Barack Obama School.

I asked them what they thought of Barack Obama. They thought for a second and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never met the man.”

“Well what do you think of the current presidential candidates?”

The kid in the brown shirt immediately said, “Donald Trump can suck a big one!”

Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “You know what I mean!”

I laughed for quite a bit and then leaned in and said, “Off the record.” I gave him a fist bump. “On the record, you probably shouldn’t talk like that.”

That is why I’m a great missionary. Right?

That is all the photos I have, but I have so many more stories. I haven’t even touched the trip to the Emergency Room, the sorta love triangle, the “leader” from Kentucky, or the friend I made at the Soup Kitchen.

Like I said, track me down. I love to talk about the trip. Even though sadly, it was Alisa’s Swan Song. Even though we might not work together doing God’s work for the Boone First United Methodist Church, I know that it won’t be the last time we will work together in this vein.

One last thing. Alisa asked me at both church services, “Explain why you are willing to give up a week of vacation to go on these trips? Even though people throw you shade for it.”

Twice I gave poor answers. I’m working on that answer, in case she asks a third time.

Milwaukee Mission Trip Vol. 1

I thought I was going to write a really long breakdown of my trip to Milwaukee with my church’s youth group for Mission Work.

Instead, I think I’ll settle for a description with each photo. Maybe I’ll be more ambitious with Volume 2.



Halfway between Madison and Milwaukee, we found a Pizza Pit. Just like home.


Across the street from the Lutheran Church we were staying at was a Greek restaurant that sold frozen custard. Not fooling this cone cost me close to $5. They didn’t always give change either.


Found this sidewalk art at our first stop Monday morning at Adullam Outreach. This was an outreach program named after the cave where David spent his exile.


One of the good and bad things about Youth Works is that break your group up into groups with other churches. My group consisted of 3 kids from Boone and 1 adult and 2 kids from Louisville, Kentucky. Our group worked all 4 days at a low income nursing home. They owned property across the street from their main facility. They had us mow that property. Going by the height of the weeds and the amount of garbage, this seemed like the first time they had been mowed all year. Wyatt is pictured mowing.


More Wyatt mowing.


On Monday the low income nursing home (named The Family House) had a free food giveaway on their lawn. They have food donated to them by Aldi and Wal-Mart. Pictured is Cordelia Wallace, the founder of Family House. 80 years old and a house of fire. She is telling her story to Megan (who’s spirit animal is Shakira), Wyatt, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth is from Louisville. One of the things we did was go door to door in this neighborhood knocking on doors to tell people about the food giveaway. It might go without saying, this was not a nice neighborhood. Nobody answered their door. Although we did tell some random people on the street about it.


David organizing their pantry.


Our facilitators at The Family House were Cornelius and Latoya. Can you pick them out of the picture? Latoya showed no team loyalty by wearing just about a different team jersey every day. Cornelius is a bad Prom date. More on that later. The guy in blue is Scott. He was the other adult chaperone from Louisville. He was a good dude. A little daffy, but a good dude. He is also in the FBI. The male kid that isn’t Wyatt or David is Jay. Real name James. But he goes by Jay. In the unabridged version, I’d have a lot to say about the dynamics of this group. The important thing to know is that when I job needed done, they banded together and got stuff done.


After we were done with work for the day and had showered, we went to the overpriced frozen custard place. Anna is the youth that hasn’t been identified up until this point.


Monday night was a free night. We started our free night at the park across the street from our home for the week.


Alex, Anna, MacKenzie, and Megan


Andy spinning Summer


Alex


After the park we went to Dairy Queen. Alex showing off his ice cream eating form.


After Dairy Queen, we went to a park on Lake Michigan and watched the sun set on the Milwaukee skyline.


Posing with Alex


Attempt at a guy photo.


Wyatt with Summer


Wyatt with Alex


David with Alex


Alex and Summer


Posing with Youth Pastor Alisa


Tuesday. Back to work. David. Mowing property #2.


The Family House. The Family House was actually a nursing home that Cordelia Wallace started out of her own house where she raised 8 children. Most of the other houses in the neighborhood were drug houses. So she slowly acquired them and added them to her facility.


Street view. Cordelia worked at a nursing home. She had “ideas” on how to improve the life of the residents and took her suggestions to her bosses. They smiled politely (maybe) and then told her that they get paid to do the thinking. She gets paid to do what they tell her to do. She cried all of the way home. Then complained to her husband. After listening to her, he stopped her and said, “Listen, you can complain about it or you can do something about it. But if you don’t do anything about it, I’m done listening to you complain about it.” She did something about it.


I often find that areas our Youth Group go to do mission work aren’t ready for Iowans. Iowans work. On the start of Monday they took us up to a room and told us to organize it. They were planning on turning it into a kids center. We organized it in 45 minutes. Their jaws dropped open. They told us that they were expecting that to take us all day. The previous week they had had 2 youth groups there working. We had accomplished more in 45 minutes than those 2 youth groups did in a week. So they had us start painting the floor. Pictured is Elizabeth and Megan putting a second coat on the floor.

More on this trip soon. Even though I can never tire of talking about it. Mission Trips are hard to talk about to people back home because there is no way to put into words to describe the transformation that happens.

They mostly look at you and say, “Oh. You painted some stuff and served food at a soup kitchen. That is nice.” It is so much more. That is why I would argue that anybody that is a believer should commit themselves to at least one act of service a year. Whatever, that might be. Putting up drywall for Habitat for Humanity. Serving dinner at the local homeless shelter. Anything you can do to help somebody else. I’m telling you, do it!

I should stop rambling, because there are quite a few blog subscriber birthdays today. I’ll go youngest to oldest:



Happy birthday Logan!

Photo of the Day 0063 - July 4, 2014
Happy birthday Derrick!


Happy birthday Jill!

I hope all of you have amazing birthdays!

J.B. McHose House

This Sunday the Youth Group from my church is having a fundraiser for our Mission Trip to Milwaukee. It is a two tiered fundraising effort.

When: Sunday 2-4 PM
Where: The Historic J.B. McHose House – 921 5th Street – Boone, IA

But what is it?

I’ll just steal Alisa’s description from Facebook:

Come take a tour of the beautiful, historic McHose House. While there check out and purchase some beautiful youth-made art. We will be selling cute mugs for a flat rate and having a silent auction for our canvases.

This is will be our last fundraiser before the Boone FUMC youth group heads off to Milwaukee, Wisconsin this summer on a week long mission.

This is an free-will offereing, open house event so feel free to come and go but I can’t promise the cookies will still be there at 4pm.

So you can tour the historic McHose House and pick up some high quality hand-crafted local art. On a canvas or on a mug. Win! Win!

Here are some of the canvases that could potentially be for sale:


Hopefully I’ll see a few or many of you there!

Matthew 28:6

I took a couple of other images before picking my Easter image.

Here are the other 2. One I actually sent out with Happy Easter text messages.


In the end, I found the Jesus statue to be a bit confusing and the cross on top my church to be derivative of my earlier work. Yeah, I’m that self-aware.

On a personal note, I’d like to take the time to thank Jason Baier for coming out and supporting the Youth Group Mission Trip Fundraiser at Panera last night. He got to enjoy some edible food, hear some harrowing tales of nearly lost Maroon 5 CDs, and meet some of my favorite people. Some of my other favorite people. I have several groups of favorite people. You might be in one of them. Play your cards right.

The fundraiser appeared to be a rousing success. The last count I saw was over 80 people came out and supported #Methodists2Milwaukee!* Even people who think Panera food is a bit on the gross side came out to support the Youth Group. That is commitment folks!

So thanks to Jason Baier (and everybody) else that will help fund our Youth Group’s mission of taking Jesus’ message of God’s love, forgiveness, and grace to The German Athens of America.**

*I might be jumping the gun on that hashtag.
**Marginally worse sounding than A Great Place on a Great Lake or Mil-town.

Panera Youth Group Mission Trip Fundraiser Night!

Today’s journal entry is from the SHAMELESS PHOTOGRAPHY 139 FUNDRAISING DIVISION.

THIS Thursday night my church’s Youth Group is having a fundraiser at Panera Bread in Ames. From 4 – 8 PM, bring in the flyer below and a percentage of the cost of your meal will go to help fund our mission trip to Milwaukee this summer!


I can’t emphasize this point enough. You HAVE to HAVE this flyer. It can be old school (printed out, folded up, in your pocket) or it can be new school (a digital copy on your phone), but you have to present a copy of this flyer when you order for the Youth Group to get a cut of your meal.