"" come on you can, count me in! ""

title song: Count Me In by Leeland

once again, its 10:53-ARG! i didnt realize it was THAT late!
i'm such a old fogie... i need to be in bed at 9 or i'm in trouble. ah well., i'll survive!

today was again great! we do a lot of laughing here, and thats wonderful! our speakers have been awesome! they give good information, they tell heartwarming stories, and they have a wonderful way of making us crack up!

we had 3 great speakers today. Ela Milewska does our opening prayer and worship. she then talked to us about re-thinking some adolecent catechesis. she had some great ideas and information. some different approaches to things that i hadnt thought of. and she had us make lists of questions, pertaining to different categories, so that whatever we didn't touch on in these 2 days she would get to talk about on Friday. so thats great! at least we'll all get our questions answered!

we then had Mike Patin - Part 1. Mike is SO funny! he told some amazing stories that had me tearing up, and then he'd yell out something to wake us all up! he mainly talked about how to get and hold on to volunteers. because, we all need volunteers!! its just that getting them is hard. he talked about approaching them with a different .... way, i guess you'd say. picking out their personal stregnths and asking them in a new way to use those to help our youth grow in their faith.

i wish i'd brought a highlighter so every night i could have gone through my notes to highlight what i really wanted myself to remember! i'll have to just do that as soon as i get back!

our final speaker was Michael Novelli. he talked to us about Storytelling. yes, its exactly as it sounds! he has this awesome approach to scripture!! if you've ever sat down and read the Bible, its a little daunting... and sometimes really hard to understand even what you are reading. he's taken parts-stories-and reworded them in a way thats easy to understand. tonight we did an excersise and he used the Creation Story - but only up until the part where God created Eve, nothing past that. no snake, no tree, no fruit. so he had us get comfy, close our eyes or whatever we wanted to do so we could stay focued on him. he told this story - it took about 5 mintues or so maybe - and then asked us a few questions about it. we discussed this short story for 45 minutes! it was amazing to hear everyone talking about what they saw in their heads as he read this story. what we never noticed before about the story and what we felt when we heard it! everyone had different answers, but in a way they were all sort of the same.

i'm really excited about this particular excersise because i immediatley thought of an adult that would be so perfect to run sessions on these! Michael told us he ran numerous sessions using this sort of storytelling and the kids really got into it! its something about a story that makes people relate to it easier and better.

okay, its after 11. i could write much more but i really need my sleep! otherwise i'll be useless tomorrow!!
night everyone!