Small Rejoicings.

For several weeks in September/October, I have donned snazzy Sunday morning duds, loaded up my Sunfire with marketing paraphernalia, and driven to various local churches around Arlington. I set up a big YD display board and stand beside it looking friendly and un-bored. I then spend hours talking to strangers about who we are and what we do. It makes me nostalgic for the days when I worked in Taylor's Admissions Office and would greet visiting families and talk to prospective students at college fairs. It's also scary, fun, and exhausting (having been to my home church about Sundays since June...part rafting, part YD trips, part church presentations).

The purpose in doing these presentations is two-fold: First (and primarily) to continue to communicate to the community who YD is and let them know how we are impacting the community....Second--to recruit mentors for our new mentoring program.

The mentoring program is a baby that I asked to have for my very own this summer, and besides reading books on mentoring, downloading resources on mentoring, and going to training seminars on mentoring, I am building and structuring an entire mentoring program from scratch! The intent is to pair up Christian adults with any of the 200+ kids that Arlington YD worked with last year...confident that one-on-one mentoring will make a bigger impact on kids than big, flashy programs.

So, I'm preparing for our first mentoring training day in November by following up with people who've expressed an interest in mentoring, planning the training day, writing the mentoring handbook, and planning out how we're going to pair up students and volunteers. It's big, and I'm excited about it...and it's so big, that it's hard to see how it's all going to come together.

This morning, I am rejoicing in a small way at my computer screen while I spent quality time with Microsoft Word, and I have just mastered the fine art of creating a Table of Contents (okay, not exactly a mastering...moreso a preliminary introduction).

Please be praying for this whole process of training/recruitment/pairing, expecially for wisdom for me as I put it all together...(I'm suddenly being reminded of this woman I know who creates programs from scratch, writes handbooks, leads training...who is that woman? Oh, right. My mother. I am becoming my mother.)