so my poor old book group still hasn't happened. emily and i had set the date, read the book, told people and everything (we actually have people to want to come and everything), and then she had to work saturday and we can't rearrange for a couple of weeks, so it will give me more time to process the book, which emily chose as our first. its called 'the bride stripped bare' and its interesting, to say the least.

my first impression: 2 dimensional at best.

i'm picking the next one!
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works still not great, but at least i don't feel like crying.

we've got an interesting challenge with our youth on a sunday morning. for a while now there are a couple of girls (teens) who live locally who have just been wandering in, helping the hospitality people may tea and coffee, and then hanging out, but they didn't really want to come and do 'stuff' with us. ('stuff' being our rather relaxed version of what to do with 11+, involving lots of killer uno, footy and general messing around (i often wonder if we ever grew out of it actually, cos it comes so naturally to both the Boy and myself!) there are a whole bunch of reasons why we do it like that, primarily because they can choose if they want to come to the youth home group, but most of them get no choice about being there on and sunday morning and i remember what that was like).

last week it came to a head. there were more of them than normal (about 5 or so) and as they were a bit loud in the service steve ln, who was leading that morning gave them an choice of being quiet during the talk (hmm, even i can't manage that) or joining us. so we had a them and us situation which was interesting, the churched kids on one side the others in a gang on the other. steve gave them a big stern talking to (soo glad he did it, cos I could never have done it as well as him) and then most of them went to play footy, and i hung out with 2 of the girls and played hangman.

this week most of them were back, and were great. we played footy and hung out again, and i made friends with another of the girls. they want to bring lots of friends next week, so its a shame we are taking our gang away to dti. but what was really cool was the way that one of our regular girls made an effort to talk to and get along with the new girls without even being asked. curls (steve's wife) has suggested that we try using a much adapted youth alpha on a sunday morning, and get our churched gang to help lead it, which sounds like a good idea to me, although it really is going to have to be much adapted to fit with the new girls pattern of attendance, and the way we see sundays. what a cool challenge though.
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