Teens
From our sisters in Mountain Home!
About their teen organization:
"Friends Into Serving Him, a group of LWML’ers just for 11-17 year olds. Here in Mountain Home, ID, we have been blessed to be able to start a Teen LWML group. We started the group in Sept. of 2009 and are still going strong. We would like to encourage others who want to start their own group in three easy steps.
The first step in starting a group is prayer. Ask God for guidance on how and when to start your group. Just as in the hymn, remember, “With the Lord begin your task; Jesus will direct it. For his aid and counsel ask; Jesus will perfect it”.
The second step in starting a group is: Girls, any amount of girls ages from about 11-17. It doesn’t matter if you have one, two or more girls, think, all girls have friends they can bring.
The third step is two or more adults that would like to work with the girls. Within this step is a willingness to look at the structure set up by National LWML. There are not many “rules” to follow. The one important one is a background check for each volunteer. In our state of ID, this simply cost $10.00 and a form to State Police.
Once you have decided to start a group, now the fun part comes in. Just as LWML is Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, we decided to focus on the missions aspect of LWML with our girls. Each meeting has some element of mission work. Our very first meeting, we made cookies to send to members of our church who were away at college. We have also made nativity scenes at Christmas time for shut-in’s from our church. Our church has a food pantry that needed cleaning, the girl’s cleaned it out and organized it and are keeping it organized.
Each meeting we start out by singing a few songs, having either a devotion or bible study, and then work on our mission project for the month. Our adult LWML voted to buy any supplies that may be needed, so we don’t have to focus on raising funds as we are starting out. Only one of our girls had ever been exposed to LWML before, so we have slowly introduced LWML as an organization. One month we talked about the name, one month we introduced mite boxes. We have gone over where our mites go, what they are used for and the amazing scope all these mites have all over the world.
Starting your own Teen LWML group can be done. We hope we have shown that all it really takes is a desire to continue to share the LWML motto of “Serve the Lord With Gladness” with a younger generation."
Serving the Lord With Gladness,
Jill Clark and Mary Jane Kellerman
Copyright 2009 Utah-Idaho District LWML. All rights reserved.
