| M.I.L.C/E.Y.C. |
Meeting In Love with Christ
Check us out on MySpace!
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M.I.L.C. is our youth group at St. Johns. We have a lot of activities that center around Christ and Christ’s teachings. We normally meet on Sunday afternoons for a light lunch at 12:30p.m., Worship at 1:15 with our own M.I.L.C. Youth Worship Band, and follow up with Youth Group discussions after our Worship service. |
We also like to publicize other activities that our youth are participating in so that you can support them in their activities. Also, since our M.I.L.C. band plays contemporary Christian music, we like to attend Christian concerts and events where our youth can experience the music played by their favorite musical groups. We provide a list of upcoming concerts to support that interest.
We hope you can join us on Sunday afternoons and if you can’t but would like to support our youth group, please contact us by calling or emailing Lynne Gardner at St. Johns or contact 623-582-3984.
Upcoming Events
Our student leaders from MILC will be starting a new unique discussion group at Starbucks in June. We will be looking at the book Venti Jesus Please. Venti Jesus Please captures a conversation between three teens at their local Starbucks as they dialogue about life, God, truth and relationships. As these friends – an atheist, agnostic and Christian – talk about their lives and challenges, the real and raw conversation turns toward the gospel message and how Jesus speaks clearly into the struggles of life. We are going to open this up to kids from all over and we are hoping that some of our parish family will help us reach them by donating Starbucks gift cards. The plan is to offer them coffee and a discussion on Tuesday evenings in June. If you can help us please bring your gift cards to church and I promise the kids will use them! We are also asking for prayer as we try to go deeper and wider with our youth ministry. Any questions please call Lynne at 602-577-3628. Thank you for all your support!
Information for Parents
Does your Child have a MySpace?
CAN IT HAPPEN
HERE AT ST. JOHN”S?????
On March 30th, at a home in Lakeland, FL, six teenage girls in Lakeland, FL beat a 16 year-old female “friend” of theirs without mercy, while two teenage boys stood guard outside. The prolonged violence that Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd labeled an “animalistic attack” with a “pack mentality” gave the victim a concussion and left her unconscious for a short time. The victim was taken to the hospital where she was treated for her wounds, which included some hearing and vision loss and all of this was videotaped by the attackers to be shown on You Tube.
You Tube, one of the most popular sites in the world, is a place where people share video with others. Lots of the videos are innocent and wonderful. Films of babies taking their first step, wedding vows being exchanged and other family memories. Although I could not find any video of our youth group during my quick 5 minute search of you tube, I was able to find many of our kids doing their school activities including Deer Valley’s marching band which includes our own Andrew, Liz, Stephanie, and Tyler at multiple you tube videos including a big competition at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8S4UZTE08 and you can see Alyssa, Arielle, Jeremy, Justin, Jami and Kenry all in Peoria’s drumline doing their award winning show by going to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpstb8WqASw and finally you can find our very own Karl at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTt4rz7tFwQ with an bunch of band kids doing an awesome imaginary roller coaster ride. I am sure I can find more of our kids if I just take the time to search. But will I find any in videos like the one from Florida?
A search entry of “teen fights” yielded a collection of 3,040 videos currently available (many of which are just like the one described here). So can it happen here at St John’s? Did you know that violence is the second leading cause of death in teenagers, that according to the center for disease control in 2006, 7% of high school students admitted to carrying a gun, knife, or club to school and 36% of high school teens admit to being in at least one physical fight.
So what can we do to walk alongside our teens? The first seems simple….Talk with them and listen to what they say. This isn’t a problem that affects “at-risk teens” only. Any teenager has the potential to fall victim to this kind of reckless behavior. A study conducted by the Pew Forum, researchers found, “About one third (32%) of all teenagers who use the Internet say they have been targets of a range of annoying and potentially menacing online activities.” This “cyber bullying” includes sending threatening messages, spreading private conversations, promoting rumors, and even releasing embarrassing photos to the world. That can make the most gentle teen respond with unexpectedly.
Hey parents of TEENS!! Are you looking for a way to communicate your beliefs with your teen or need to answer a challenging faith question that your teen has? A great resource for you is www.dare2share.org/soulfuel. Every week you can get an email newsletter about something related to your faith. Your teen gets a student version that is written in todays lingo and you as a parent get some discussion questions to talk with your teen about the message. This is a simple way to open communication in this busy world and there are even archives of 165 different issues. This is just one of many resources available to Christian parents as they raise their teens in a pretty secular middle school and high school world. Each month we will try to give you another resource to help you as you walk alongside our wonderful teens at St. Johns.
Does your Child have a MySpace?
Does your kid have a myspace? It is amazing how kids as young as 8 or 9 can set up their own myspace and reach all sorts of people without parents having any knowledge of it. Teens will share their feelings, hopes and dreams online quicker than sharing with mom or dad at times so here is some helpful information from christianparentonline.com with 5 ways to find out if your kid is on myspace.
There are several ways to find and view your child’s profile or “space”. Listed below are five search methods.
Way 1: Ask them to show it to you.
Don’t be surprised if their face pales and they try to find a way to avoid showing it to you. The Internet is broken, MySpace is down, I’m too busy doing homework.
Way 2: Google Search
Go to http://www.google.com and search for your child’s name. Chances are they did not use their name, so you will need to search for their MySpace display name (if you know it), email name, friends, clubs or something else they may have written about in their space. Give it a try although you may end up with thousands of links to wade through.
Way 3: Browse MySpace
Go to http://www.myspace.com and click on the Browse button to view profiles. There are currently over 64 million profiles. In the Basic browse option, you can narrow your search by choosing an age range, marital status, why you are there, country or postal code. The advanced tab provides other choices. The most important choice, searching by Keywords or Names is not available here.
Way 4: Browse MySpace Groups
Go to http://www.myspace.com and click on the Groups button to view various groups. Here you can search by keyword or category, but the caveat is that your child must be a member of the group to show up.
Way 5: Use the MySpace Search feature
Go to http://www.myspace.com an click on the Search button. This feature allows you to search by keywords, names, email, display names, schools, organizations or affiliations. You can also narrow your search by the same limits in the Browse section. Unfortunately, MySpace won’t give you the results unless you are a member. So the answer to that is to create a dummy (empty) account. Here’s how to sign up and keep your identify a secret:
There are 2 steps to creating a dummy MySpace account:
First: Set up a dummy Hotmail account. Why? That way you have a separate account to confirm you MySpace account information. You also do not want any MySpace email to mix with your personal or business email.
Second: Set up a MySpace account. You will need the email account first, so make sure it is set up. Next, click on the step-by-step video link above for detailed instructions.
Third: Use the MySpace Search Feature. Once you have access, you can search MySpace without restriction. In order to search for your child’s profile, you may need to get creative. Many kids do not put both their first and last names in their “space.” So you may need to search for those things that are special to your child, such as a pet’s name, a band, a type of sport, their friend’s name, etc. If you find a friend’s name, you can go through their site to find your child’s site. Did you find your child’s profile? Need to get it shut down? Visit http://www.ParentSmartz.com to find out how. Written by Rhonda Geotz Parent Smartz 866.241.9927)
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