To cap off our Summer Challenge, we headed off to Great America!
This year, our Summer Challenge awarded us throughout with a spin at the wheel! 8 students landed on the coveted "pie any staff" or "choose any" (aka: "pie any staff") option. Check it out!
A couple of Fridays ago, we did something out of the ordinary and went to a beloved location in the Bay Area - UC Berkeley! We stood on the steps of Memorial Glade and had a good time of eating pizza together, hearing one of our staff share her testimony and hanging out. We loved being at Berkeley, and will be sure to visit again.
Come join us this Friday as we do something uber fun - hangout at San Francisco! Element Middle School is planning on having a fun Friday as we go play the 7Ds Experience and explore the city. It's guaranteed to be a good time, so join us if you can!
If you're interested, come this Friday 5/23 to 1255 Harbor Bay Parkway by 6pm. We'll be ending at 10pm.
Usually at Element, we have a pretty orderly schedule of dinner, short time of content and ending with a fun and awesome post-activity. Of course when you're with middle schoolers, you know you gotta shake things up sometimes. A couple of Fridays ago, we broke our usual script of how we do Element, and actually started with sports and hanging out outside. Afterwards then we went back indoors and heard a short message and had a nice chill time of boardgames and snacks.
Check out these great pictures of us having fun and enjoying the sunset at Mecartney Park:
We had a major event at Element this past weekend! Our students spent the whole Saturday washing cars in order to raise funds for Mexico. It was a really fun and eventful time as the middle schoolers did everything a professional would do - washing, drying, even interior vacuum. In total we washed around 80 cars!
Here at Gracepoint church, our students are hard at work with fundraising for... MEXICO! Element students try to raise up a lot of funds so that they can all go to a summer mission trip in Mexico. It's an exciting opportunity for them to serve and labor for the Lord, and we couldn't be prouder seeing them working hard now so that they get to go.
On our Sundays when we have youth church, we also do something called Element Ops! This is a good time for the middle schoolers to get trained up in all sorts of skills and build confidence. We're proud of our middle schoolers as they develop all sorts of talents.
Check out these photos from our Ops times:
Happy president's day everyone! I wanted to talk about a message series we've been going through on Sundays at youth church. The MS students have listened to a series of messages called "What Lies in the Heart?"
Each message discusses the inner struggle we all feel about having desires to do things we know aren't the best for us, but still feeling like we want to have fun and be cool and do whatever we want. The messages go through why we need to keep fighting this struggle and stay obedient to God, and why walking with God is ultimately the best for us.
This message series has been a blessing for many of the middle schoolers as they get to think about what's in their own hearts, and be brought back to God on a more personal level.
Tomorrow, we're doing something really special... on a day that's usually characterized by romance and chocolate, our middle schoolers are using a great opportunity to share God's love with those that often are most neglected - the elderly. We'll be visiting two elderly care homes and sharing the good news of the gospel with them, and helping them feel loved as God's beloved children.
