Black Magic

Black Magic is a little game I like to play with my youth when we have a few minutes to pass.

The goal is for IT to correctly guess the object that the group chooses.

One person is IT and leaves the room.

The leader (usually me) chooses one person to select an object that IT must successfully guess.

Once we you choose the object - you then call IT back in.

The leader then begins pointing to objects asking IT if that object is the item.

The round ends when IT correctly guesses the item or doesn't guess the correct item.

There is a TRICK to this game!

Whoever is IT has to know that trick.

The leader cues in IT as to what the object is by using a pattern.

It doesn't matter how many objects the leader points to. When the leader is about to point to the selected object they first point to something black. By pointing to something black - this tells IT that the next item you point to is the object that the group selected.

My youth get so frustrated with this game! I've only let a few in on the secret. They try to figure out patters, watch my body language, etc. I usually remind them that the title of the game is Black Magic.

Help for Haiti

If you are wondering how you can help the crisis in Haiti here are some sites that I've found or been directed to:

UMCOR - Haiti

Shaun in the City

American Red Cross

CNN: has been reporting non-stop

World Vision

Yele.org

If you have other sites you'd like to see here - leave a comment and I'll add it.

Pray for Haiti.

Ireland

I recently had the privilege to travel to the beautiful Northern Ireland (with a short stop in Dublin, Ireland) in November with the wonderful Elizabeth Lobello. Here are just a few pictures of my travels.

(left to right) St. Patrick's Cathedral, The Wheel at the festival, a mural on a house in Belfast.

(left to right) On our way to London Derry, stairs from the Bogside to the wall

(left to right) my traveling mates, a castle off the north coast

Elizabeth - a fantastic traveling partner!

this week i learned

* how much i love my "kids" (what I call my youth)

* when explaining a game youth will ask EVERY SINGLE "what if" question... if you let them.

* a support system through e-mail is still an important support system

* i am slowly - but surely trying to develop my sense of style

* the scent "Fresh Balsam" from Bath and Body Works is my favorite!

* sometimes you need to take a personal day

* working out is hard to get back into - but makes me feel a lot better

* i have developed a bad habit of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning

* laundry is quickly becoming the enemy

* i am a Florida Gator fan - by all means - but will occasionally cheer for another SEC team aka... Crimson Tide.

Underground Church

This past Sunday I played Underground Church with my youth...

They loved it. I loved it because it required little set-up for me.

Here's how you play:

(for a group of about 30 youth - depending on your size you may need to add more policemen)

Before you start: choose a place to be the jail. (We used the sanctuary and turned on only a few lights to illuminate the jail area.) Let the student know where the jail is.

Choose 3 people to be police. Everyone else are Christians

The goal of the police is to get all the Christians into the Jail

The Christians are trying to get to the "safe house" or church.

One of the police will be an Underground Christian though. His or her goal is to secretly lead the Christians to the church.

The easiest way to determine who will be the Underground Christian is to have three slips of paper. On two slips of paper write "police" on the third slip of paper write "Underground Christian."

Let the police choose these slips at random. Make sure to tell them not to show their paper to any of the other police. If they do the Underground Christian runs the chance of being found out - meaning they can be arrested and put in jail by the regular police.

Give all the Christians about 5 minutes to hide before allowing the police to start finding them.

If a police finds a Christian they must escort them to jail. *note that I had to make a rule that Christians cannot run away from the police - they had to go without fighting.

As soon as all three police are allowed to search for the Christians - the Underground Christian must choose a location that will be considered the Church. They do this at this point in the game so that 1)the police won't know where the Church is - and 2) so the Christians don't all run to the safe-house to hide. (making the game extremely short!)

The police arrest people and take them to jail while the Underground Christian tries to get all the Christians to the Church.

Christians can "escape" from jail by being tagged by a fellow Christian. But note - if either Christian is caught by a police while trying to escape they both must go to jail.

The game is won by the police if they successfully capture all the Christians and put them in jail (or capture a percentage of them)

The game is won by the Christians if they all successfully arrive at the Church (or a certain percentage of them)

few things to note

* so that youth were not just sitting around once they found the Church and were safe - I encouraged them to free people from jail -without getting caught. (if they got caught - they had to go to jail)

* police cannot "raid" the Church. Christians are safe - as long as they are in the Church.

* the Underground Christian can be captured by the police if the police find out who it is.

*make sure you have adequate adult supervision in all areas of the church

* I locked any doors that I did not want my youth to go into.

*this game is 100% more fun if played in the dark!

have fun playing and give me your version of Underground Church