Painting is so Much Easier in America

God must have thought that it had been a few too many months since I had spent any time painting walls, because, I spent today in the old youth center - now activity center - repainting, so that it could be turned back into a youth center for the high school group. (Even with as old as the building is, though, there was no paint that needed to be scraped off, and we could use rollers on the walls without worrying about the entire wall flaking off. Just a little different than painting in G-town!)

Everyone worked hard, and there was an amazing amount done for a fairly short day of painting. And...we managed to more or less leave the carpet in the same condition that it was in when we started. Impressive, right? They fully understand that this is their space and that it will look as good as they make it look, even if they can't do anything about the mismatched light switches or the woodwork that is probably from the seventies. It was fun to hear them imagine out loud as they mentally rearranged the space just the way that they thought it should be.

Over the fall, we have tried out nearly every space on the church campus as possible meeting locations for Intersect, and this was the building that they chose. Since we moved to this property ten years ago, middle school and high school youth groups have gone in and out of the double doors that don't quite stay closed unless you lock them and walked on the floors that echo downstairs like a herd of elephants is going through the building. It may not be a "nice" space compared to the rest of the church, but there is something about it that feel right to them. If youth group is supposed to be a family (albeit, a family with a heavily skewed age ratio), then they ought to have a place to meet that feels like home.

Painting is more work than it seems like it ought to be, and, by noon, there were some hungry people in the building. Yes. They woke up long before noon, on their first day of winter break, and came to paint. They really must want to be in this building. :)

A few of the moms brought in crock-pots full of soup for lunch, and, without being asked, went straight to work vacuuming downstairs - where we plan to paint next Tuesday. One mom even went across the parking lot to the main building in search of a better vacuum when they discovered that the resident vacuum was lacking in suction power.

Proud leader moment: the group today was a pretty decent cross section of the youth group - guys and girls. These kids, all of them, know how to serve, and they do it well.