Rad and Rude

Last Friday night we thought about making decisions about good and evil. Some decisions we make are only to serve ourselves and are quite selfish in their reasoning. We often make decisions based on: "it feels good, so it must be good", "I am not going to hurt anybody, so it must be good" or "everybody does it, so it must be good". However, these reasons can be very misleading and cause us to make bad decisions. When we make bad decisions, we might not see the consequences of that straight away, but after some time, they will turn out to be negative.

We played a game of balloon hockey, a game where everybody has to be active!




We also did some rope pulling (boys against girls), which got really competitive.

At the end of the night we played cops and robbers, where a gang of robbers got secret instructions from their boss and the cops were out to get them all (in which they almost succeeded).

After cops and robbers we sat down to think about some consequences of making bad decisions. If we choose to ignore God (which is a bad decision) we cannot live with him after we die.

POOL NIGHT OUTING !!!

Anger

Once again good to see you all and welcome to the new youth. Always neat to make new friends. The topic on Friday night was Anger and how to deal with it, how to handle our anger. But of course first come the fun and games. neat fun as normal :) hereby some photos of that...

then for some thoughts about Anger....

"One thing we all need to understand, is that anger is not wrong. In fact it's a gift from God! In the Bible it quite often talks about things that cause God to "get angry." It even talks about Jesus getting angry. Its like a protection designed to make us stand up for ourselves, or for what is right. So what's the problem with it? The problem is, that lots of people don't handle their anger correctly. Instead of using it to help them take control of their lives, they let their anger take control of them and lose their tempers, saying and doing all sorts of things that they'll regret later, or which will make them lose friends or hurt people. Heaps of times as leaders, we see you saying things to each other and doing things in anger, which do real damage to your friendships. Many of you will have parents who hurt each other with their words and bitterly regret it later. So what should our reaction to anger be? We've got 3 choices. Either:

1. Let it all come out. That often feels great at the time, but usually does damage that can take months to repair.

2. Hide it away. This means we pretend we are not angry and just bottle up all the frustration and pain. Unfortunately this just makes us more and more stressed, until we start showing our anger in other ways like depression or bad behaviour or it can even make us sick!

3. Deal with it. In the Bible there's a letter to some people called the "Ephesians," which means they lived in a place called Ephesus. Anyway the guy who wrote it had some good stuff to say about anger and how to deal with it. This is what he says:

(Chapter 4)

"When you are angry, don't sin and be sure to stop being angry

before the end of the day. (v26) Never shout angrily or say things to hurt others. Never do anything evil. Be kind and loving to each other and forgive each other, just like God forgives us through Christ (31-32)

The best way to do this is:

1. Walk away from the situation until you have cooled down a bit. If you try to "discuss" an issue while you are still furious it will almost always come out wrong and you'll regret it later.

2. Think about why you are really angry. Why do I really feel this way? Whose fault is it really?

3. Tell someone about it - either the person who made you angry, or someone you can trust who can see both sides of the story.

please remember these things.... and don't forget you can always pray to God to help you deal with your anger and how you are to react.

have a good week. Keep smiling.

Luv,

Your DropZone Leaders

Violence

Hi all!

Last Friday's program was about dealing with violence and violent situations. One of the youth shared a story about a 10 year old boy in the states going around with a gun, telling people to pass their jewelery to him! Where does he get those ideas from? We asked a very searching question: Will violent movies and TV-shows bring very loving thoughts into your mind?
The answer is straight forward, but has far reaching consequences: NO!
If we take this lesson serious, we should all be very careful of what we watch (and what we listen to), because it is shaping our acceptance of violence in our minds (as well as to many other issues).

We started with a very violent reaction to a situation: a dangerous spider had been released and we were all stomping around for almost a minute. This teaches us that we can react in different ways to certain situations. We could have chosen to catch the spider and bring it to the zoo!!!

We played some cool DropZone favorites like ...

... poison pole ...

... balloon pop ...

... and days of the week.

In little groups we discussed how to react to different violent situations.
Jesus always tells us to love our neighbors, but also to love our enemies. We usually do not feel like this attitude when we are attacked, but still, that is the greatest challenge in order to show what love really means: just like we hurt God when we sin and He still loves us ... He was even willing to die for sinners ... like us.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. " (John 3:16-17 KJV)

Wow, what an awesome God!