evenings with 1st group

The devotions were a time for reflection on the day and a way to tie it in to how we are called as Christians to live out our faith. It was short and sweet with a few open ended questions but not too much in depth. That seemed to happen during team time. I stayed and was made to feel welcome which was great. I felt this in Mississippi as well—a chance to get to know people (especially since I wasn’t working with them) and most groups really do make you feel welcome to the point of sharing or just observing. This was a sharing group. If a question was asked it went around the circle and everyone answered…from high, low and mediocre points of the day or week, to what you are most scared of, to where you saw God and Christ at work, to an affirmation circle, to something most people don’t know about you (hard for some as they’ve been friends for a while—pretty easy for me). Some of the questions it would have been more comfortable for me to opt out but that would pull me out of the group. Giving answers is hard but it opens you up and I’ve found that is a good thing.
Thursday night we sang…we’d been hearing songs from the church and choirs all week…it opened with playing “God of this City” (I think that is right) and then led to “How Great is Our God” and others. They had some great singers in the group.

Then came games…Skipbo, Uno, Psychiatrist (one person leaves the group and the rest come up with a pattern that they use to answer questions. When the person comes back they ask questions to figure out the pattern and it can be anything. If someone answers incorrectly according to the pattern the others call out Psychiatrist so that the guesser will know. For example, once we were all characters from Twilight series so we had to answer as a vampire or werewolf would) , Zoo (rhythm game where everyone has an animal with a sound and motion so you send the movement around the circle. Just stay on beat), and Contact (a spelling game with definitions. It starts with someone thinking of a word and telling what it starts with. Others pose questions whose answers would start with that letter. When someone else in the group knows what the answer would be they say Contact-5-4-3-2-1 and say the word. If the person with the word says no it’s not ___ before the countdown it is null. If not and the two say the same word, they are given the next letter in the word).