March 2017 Youth Ministry Highlights

Catch up on the March 2017 updates and highlights from Unification youth pastors nationwide.

Chicago, IL

“We had our first internal event this year. We used an activity from the Youth Ministry website in which everyone wrote down a challenge we were facing in our lives and put it in an envelope. Then other people wrote a letter back to that person from God’s perspective. I’m glad we were able to participate with sincere hearts. Also I’m proud of the Sunday schools we had. All four weeks, we talked about practices of how to gain inspiration, or what is inspiration, etc. Our middle schoolers have read parts of the True Father’s autobiography and learned many things about True Parents. Sunday School is when most kids are present, so I’m glad we’re doing something substantial weekly.” –Kosuke Enami

New York, NY

“We are dedicating our Saturdays as ‘Saturday of Service.’  The first Saturday was dedicated to doing something special for your own family and one neighbor. Other Saturdays will be dedicated to helping your local church center and more public community service projects. This is a great way to get a natural ‘high’ and learn life skills. After serving on Saturday, the youth will head up to the Tarrytown youth meeting, Up and Coming.” –John Theriot

Omaha, NE

“This month, we had dinner together and then each took the love languages quiz. After we had all completed the quiz, we discussed the results. We shared our reactions to the quiz and whether we agreed or disagreed with the outcomes. We discussed our personal ways of giving and receiving love best and also talked about which love languages we see among our family members. I encouraged the youth to have their family members take the quiz and emphasized the importance of knowing how you and others give and receive love best.” –Aimi Asanuma

Milwaukee, WI

“Milwaukee youth connected to this month’s theme by having a youth service with a sermon by Helen Ferch titled ‘Self-Empowered.’ The youth team also met with our local pastor, Marian North, for an intimate Saturday potluck dinner to discuss self-care and guiding youth. ​She then invited us all to see a local high school play, The Princess and the Mattress. It was an unplanned surprise that brought the team closer through laughing together.” –Sarah Keating

NOVA Family Church, VA

“During one Saturday this past month, we supported Women’s Federation for World Peace’s (WFWP) food donation drive by going door to door asking for canned food and dry goods. For me this was inspiring as you could see the kids who are shy by nature start to get really hyped and eager to ask the people we approached if they could spare some food for people in need. There is no questioning the buzz that we felt afterward; we smashed our goal and got to bring joy to God by helping others. We raised 108 lbs. of food, which the local WFWP chapter was very thankful for. So proud of the kids for their effort and sincere offering of time and heart.” –James Jenkins

Columbus, OH

“This month we took a spring break vacation to the Smiley Mountains in Tennessee. We invited the Chicago and Indiana youth to join us on our journey. We rented out a nice cabin in the woods and went hiking on the highest mountains there. At the cabin, we had chill hangouts and a guys’ and girls’ night.” –Rena Kanazawa

Dallas, TX

“This month, we all focused on how we can become inspired in our lives of faith. Some activities we have done are: bracelet prayers for each other, inspirational quote windows, drawings of our unique relationship with God, and skits on values that we hold true to ourselves. We also had an exciting girls’ night to connect the young adult sisters with the youth sisters. They had an exciting day full of activities and chill time to get to know each other naturally. They all felt a different level of closeness to one another after that night.” –Sawa Suina

Tarrytown, NY

“A highlight from this past month was introducing our theme of brother and sister relationships to our high school group. I think it was a topic that was highly anticipated by our participants and I was glad to be able to get right into it. We started by talking about the importance of being able to honor your brother or sister and at the same time being someone who is trustworthy. We started by trying to understand the unique experiences and challenges that each sex undergoes and increasing our awareness of them. The middle school youth ministry focused on bullying as an issue and focused their content on recognizing their own value as well as each other’s.” –Toyomichi Hagiwara

Bridgeport, CT

“We made an art piece with the kids that we turned in for the ‘Arts and Mind’ event. This is an event that the local church community hosts, where we showcase the artistic talents of those in the community. This year’s focus was the principles of truth, beauty, and goodness. We had the kids use colored tissue paper to decorate an outline of a tree we made, and then write things on those tissue papers that came to mind when they thought of Heavenly Parent’s love, grandparents’ love, parents’ love, and siblings’ love. These were represented by the roots (Heavenly Parent), trunk (grandparents), branches (parents), and leaves (siblings). We ended up getting an award for the piece, as well as $100 that we plan on using for some kind of outing for the kids.

“To incorporate the monthly theme of ‘Inspire’ we continually reminded the kids that inspiration is about their connection to God. We included activities such as the ‘Five Finger Prayer’ and read from True Father’s words during every session. On our last day we did an affirmation and connection game after hearing a reading about how God loves you even when you feel at your lowest and don’t see your own value. Then we had them write letters from God to themselves, which we will return to them at the end of the semester.” –Ricky de Sena

Indianapolis, IN

“A highlight in the past month was our youth event: ice-skating. Right before the event officially started, we were surprised to hear a couple of sisters, who rarely if not ever came to youth nights, asked if they were able to come for the ice-skating. Furthermore, one girl’s mother was grateful for the event and happy that her daughter had spent the day ice-skating with our youth group. We are very happy to provide an event to those who don’t normally come to church and we will continue our best to welcome them.

“For the theme ‘Inspire,’ we touched on the topics of ‘Awareness / Mindfulness’ and ‘Who is God to Me?’ For the former, we worked on how to be aware of the people around us by having each person do a quick TED Talk activity about their personal definition or viewpoint about value. For the latter, we briefly discussed together with simple questions about how we all connect to God on a personal level.” –Norikuni Nishikawa

Little Rock, AK

“In March, everyone was busy but luckily my co-assistant Ayako Koga helped plan a door escape program on the 26th. A door escape is a popular activity in which you’re locked into a room and need to use your skills as a team to find useful items and solve puzzles to escape. We banded together as crew members of the battleship the USS Enigma. Our captain had gone missing, and we had to connect the clues he left lying around in his quarters to prevent a disaster from happening. We did not know if we would succeed or fail. All we could do is work together as a team and solve the trail of clues before an hour ran out! Fortunately we won! We completed our mission with two-and-a-half minutes left on the clock.” –Bernard Rigsbee

Thanks for an INSPIRING March! It’s amazing to see all of your creativity and effort. You are all doing such an amazing job! –Kaeleigh