The past month has been a really exciting time at Art: After School. We’ve been talking about Self Image— always a hot topic among youth— and we’ve had some guest leaders helping with our screen printing project.Our guest leaders are three teens from our Bus Student Leadership team. The Student Leadership team at the Bus have been working with Hannah and Carmen (our Lifeteams’ students) for the past few months, learning about leadership and discipleship, and helping out at the Bus.
Hannah and Carmen were away for part of March, so I roped a few of the Student Leaders in to helping me out, and they have been more than willing to go the extra mile and invest in the younger students lives.
The three Student Leaders have taken charge of the T-shirt screen printing, freeing me up to chat a little more with the kids— something I don’t often get to do as I’m usually the one running around trying to get everyone on track with their project!
It has been so fun to watch these young leaders take initiative in working
with the Art Club kids, whether it is helping with some homework, or taking some extra work home to help us finish off our project on time, they have been a great to have around. I hope to be able to include more of these integration opportunities in the future.
Moving from elementary school to high school can be a scary transition, and I think that having older teens working with the younger students can help make that transition an easier one.
As well, it gives the older teens an opportunity to put into practice some of the leadership skills they are learning on the Student Leadership team.
It has been a good experience all around, and I’m excited to see more of this type of integration in the future!
New Beginnings
April is “New Beginnings” month at Art: After School. We chatted about Easter, why we celebrate, and some of the symbols and traditions of Easter. It was a great opportunity to talk about Jesus 
and the new beginning that He has offered.We’ve also talked about spring and how it is a good time to take some of the negative situations in our lives and turn them around. We tackled everything from bad habits, like nail biting, to difficult issues such as anger management and family relationships.
After talking about all these new beginnings, we decided to give some of our trash a new beginning as well! Each of the students brought in something that would normally go in the garbage, and our mission was to make it into art.
It was great to see the creative juices get flowing as the students tried to tackle their trash and turn it into something beautiful.
Plunge Update
Planning for the Plunge trip to Scotland is coming along. Many of the students (and staff!) are working hard on raising money for their trip. We had one fund raiser in March where we were able to spend a good chunk of time with some of this year’s Plunge participants. It was great to get to know them a bit better and see how we work as a team. Please pray for us to grow closer to God as we prepare for this big adventure!
If you want to help financially with my work in Langley,please click here.
