Hello and Goodbye

Hello Summer!

If you can’t tell, we’re pretty excited for you.  Because Summer on Long Island means Youth Group at the beach and tonight we had our very first one.

We met up with our incredible students and headed over to Rogers Beach.

It was an absolutely perfect night at the beach.

We ended up being a crowd of about 33 and we started our night off with a few games.

After games, we hung out.

And after we hung out, we gathered at sunset to be encouraged through Jeremy’s Bible lesson.

Jeremy did a great job introducing The Life of David as our theme for the summer.  He shared that what’s most important about us is our hearts.  Because goodness knows as a teenager, it seems like it’s all about the outside… what you look like, what clothes you wear, what sports you play and what grades you get.  But the Bible tells us what’s most important about us all.  And it’s what’s on the inside.

It was a pretty good reminder and a great way to kick off the summer.

And at the end, we took some time to say goodbye to these sweet friends.  We got to know Lauren when she joined up with our Youth Group last year.  She was just the most incredible girl…  hard working, smart, fun-loving, helpful and caring.  We loved catching up with her not only on Thursday nights at Youth Group, but also on Wednesdays for Hangtime where she was one of our most trusted and dedicated helpers.  We were anticipating getting to know her awesome sister Erin more as she would have joined up with our Youth Group this summer, but then we learned that their fantastic family was leaving Long Island and heading to a new home in Tennessee.

And our hearts broke just a little bit.

But honestly, we’ve learned that it’s kind of a norm when you live on Long Island.  You get to know these incredible families, and then they leave and it’s always sad to see them go.

So you love them and you pray over them.  You truly trust and believe that God will bless them as they start a whole new adventure in life.

You pray that they will connect with a new church and a new youth group, because you know just how special and important they were to your church and to your youth group.  To the entire Nicholson family, we just want you to know how much we all love you!  We will pray that God will richly bless you as you pursue new adventures and look forward to seeing you when you come back to visit.

And in the end, it was the most beautiful evening of hello and goodbyes.  If you are in 7th through 12th grades and are local to Eastport, we would love to have you join us on Wednesday nights for Youth Group at the Beach.  We meet up at the church at 6:00pm and pick up is at 8:30pm.  Please note that we will not meet next week (July 13th since many of us will be at NTS Camp) but we will meet up on July 20th and every summer Wednesday evening after that.