Blue Skies

Sunset: Often my view while driving home.

Hey Everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed the Easter break and got some rest. Good Friday and Easter Monday are not public holidays here in our district so it was business as usual for us. 

#HeatingUp| It's Spring now and Spring in Texas is like Summer in England with average temperatures of 26 degrees daily. So this is the time we enjoy before it gets really hot and humid! 

#LoveInvasion| Spring break was at the beginning of March and we hosted a youth camp! We had about 70 kids from 3 different church youth groups staying at the church campus for a week (yep day and night!) It was a great week filled with games, laughs, bible studies and serving the community. 

We were split into 7 small groups and went out each day to different community projects. My favourite day was when we went to the North Texas Food Bank. They help feed millions of people in need each year and are mainly supported by volunteers. 

Assembly line: putting together packs for underprivileged children.

#BasketballChurch| I've spoken about basketball church before. It's a ministry that a man called Ralph started - we call him Uncle Ralph. He started it about 20 years ago and every Thursday and Friday night he has about 40 young men come and play basketball at the church. His wife provides dinner and he does a bible study midway through the night. We have been able to help out with this ministry and get to know all the students on Friday night (High school night). Teaching a room full on high school boys has its challenges but I had a good time as I led the lesson last Friday. 

Uncle Ralph's latest initiative is to get the students to memorise a bible verse each week in order to get a drink. No verse no drink. As a result almost all the students have memorised 3-4 bible verses so far and some many more.

Uncle Ralph holding up my sheet of memorised verses ;)

#JapaneseGardens| One of the youth leaders from church took our team out for a day of sightseeing in west and downtown Fort Worth. We discovered many new things to do especially with the weather being nice again. He took us to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens which spans over 109 acres - that's 55ish football pitches!! There were so many different types of plants, trees and even some fish.

#SchoolLessons| We've doubled the amount of teaching we do! We now teach 16 different groups of students each month. It's going very well and we are building much better relationships with the students. 
We teach in public schools and are not allowed to openly talk about God. However, all the lessons we teach are based on biblical principles and morals and are designed to challenge the students and equip them with the tools to make better decisions as they go through high school and onto college.
 Recently we taught a lesson on the 'Fruits of a healthy lifestyle'.

#FoodiePics|This week I really wanted some fat 'chip shop' chips so I decided to make my own! 

Tessa's Homemade Chips 

They tasted good BUT as my good friend reminded me - They will NEVER taste the same haha!!

Other than my amazing homemade chips I also had a really good cheesecake a few weeks ago :)

#PleasePray| We have many students at the church who come from broken homes and face an array of other challenges that we sometimes don't find out about for a while. Please be praying for us to have the wisdom to know what questions to ask and when to ask them.
Also, please pray for my team (Lucas, Jan, Anna-Lena and I) as God leads us all onto our next adventures. Pray for boldness and courage in all our decisions. 

Love you all very much and miss you loads!! 

God Bless
Tess