Mission 4 Monday ...the week

Welcome to Mission 4 Monday hosted by Peggy. This week I am dedicating the entire week to our ministry. Last week I asked for your prayers and I have so felt them. God has given me a peace as we wait for his direction that I have never felt before.

I have not spent a lot of time writing about the ministry here and many of you have had questions so this week I'll share a different program each day.

Today our girls teen court Community Service program called Mission Makeover. Here's a couple of photo's.




As you can see some of the girls love their picture taken. Some don't...you know how we are if our hair isn't just right or we don't like what we're wearing. Or we just flat don't like our picture taken.

When these girls walked through our door they had never seen a sewing machine. These little quilt tops were stitched from pre-cut squares on thier first day. You can see from the smiles how happy and excited the girls are when they are able to see a finished product.

These girls came to use from teen court. The girl in the top photo was 13. She sent to us for fighting in school. And the sad thing is she isn't the youngest. The youngest girl we have ever had was ten.

Girls are sent for reasons from fighting in school to theft under $50.00 to drugs, drinking, traffic violations and many more reasons. A typical sentence is 30 to 60 hours community service.

One summer I had two 15 year old girls sentenced to 300 hours because the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission raided the party they were at. If you have teenagers. The best thing you can do as a parent is know thier friends and encourage them to be careful where they go. Even though they have made the decision not to drink or do drugs if they have friends that do it is easy to get caught up in situations that they cannot control.

That is what happened to Chelsea and Megan. They were good kids. They just followed the crowd. This happened the end of thier 9th grade year. They had just been accepted onto the school drill team. They got kicked off the team. They soon learned one simple (or not so simple) mistake changed things forever. Thankfully these two girls made positive decisions after the incident. Thankfully we were allowed alot of time with them and thankfully they opened thier hearts to God. And thankfully they had supportive parents.

But that is not the case with the majority of the teens we work. Most of them have never met their father. Either because they are unsure who he is or because he is in prison. Many of them live with grandparents because both parents are in prison.

Many of them have no Hope. Most of them we end up in prison. Most of them the only Hope is a relationship with God. And that is our calling to share God's love with hurting teens and provide them with Healing Opportunity Purpose and Education

I hope you are looking forward coming back tomorrow. I have many more stories and many more programs to share. Thanks for stopping in today and thank you for your prayers for me, Cowboy, the ministry and the kids.