God In This City was a mission that we began several years ago. Some youth ministers got together and had a dream of helping some of the smaller churches in our community. Four years ago, we had our first work camp at the McBroom Chapel Church in Cookeville. This year we came together again! Several of our teens, along with teens from Willow Ave. and Sycamore, gave up their Spring Break week to help another congregation. We went to the Cubb Creek Church of Christ in Gainesboro and worked for a week. We helped with various projects in their community and we held a nightly Vacation Bible School/Gospel Meeting for the church there. It was a great week at Cubb Creek, and I’m thankful to all that dedicated the time to make it happen!

Brad Montague and the GO! Staff challenged us with a mission. At GO! 2012, we want to feed over 100,000 children through the Feed My Starving Children organization. Thanks to the incredible experience we had at GO! 2011, we accepted the challenge to raise money for this event. To date, we have raised over $7,000 for the mission (Our original goal was $2,000…CRAZY!!!) The total goal is $30,000…and we still have a ways to go. If you would like to contribute to the FMSC project, go to www.thelovemission.org and make an online contribution. It’s for a fantastic cause!

UPDATE: The Jefferson Avenue total topped $10,000, and the Savannah (Tenn.) Church of Christ raised more than $25,000 for this mission.

This project was from the brains of two of the mothers in our group (Sharon Vetter and Paula Kelly). We learned, through teachers in the school system, that one of the needs of some children in our community was bedding and pajamas. We compiled a list of young people in the elementary school system in Cookeville, and we invited them and their families to Jefferson for a meal. We had breakfast for dinner, we showed Looney Tunes for entertainment (because, whether teens today remember or not, cartoons used to be a necessity with breakfast on Saturday mornings!), and we gave each guest a Bible, books, bedsheets, and pajamas. It was great to see the families of our youth ministry meet and spend time with families from the community. The Bed and Breakfast Dinner was a fantastic event, and we hope to make it bigger and better in 2013.

For a Wednesday After School project, we gathered up every broom we could find and headed over to the Upper Cumberland Christian Home in Cookeville. It is an apartment complex for senior citizens in the Upper Cumberland. We swept every porch, every sidewalk, and picked up any trash we could find. It was a fun project, but we learned a valuable lesson…they have fantastically clean porches already! They do a great job of sweeping the porch! We will definitely spend more time in the future at the Upper Cumberland Christian Home, but we may choose a more needed project next time.

One of our members, Jerry White, approached us about coming to help clean the CAC on a Wednesday afternoon. We graciously accepted the task. 15 teens went and helped clean the entire center. The Community Action Center is an effort by the Jefferson Avenue Church to reach our community by giving away clothing and food. We help thousands of people every year. On another Wednesday, the group also went to unload over 2,000 pounds of food to be given away through the center.

Before the Kony2012 video went viral, the teens learned of the needs of the children in Central Africa (specifically Uganda). On a Wednesday afternoon, we watched a video, we walked to several spots in our building where we were challenged to pray for specific things regarding Uganda and the work there, and we handed our bracelets made by displaced families in Uganda. It was a cool afternoon that our high school group helped make happen. We have worked on other projects throughout this journey to make donations to campaigns such as this, but this time…we lifted them up in prayer. It was a great experience.

This was a project we started last year. On random Wednesday afternoons, the teens would work to write notes and cards for another youth group in town. Sometimes we would just send a stack of card to hand out to the group (like we did with Collegeside this year), and sometimes we could sneak in to their youth room and cover it with encouraging notes and letters (like we did at Sycamore). It is a great way to let the other groups know that we are all in this together, and thanks to the Encouragement Bombs that we’ve dropped…other groups in town have done the same for us.