Ingredients:
1 unused attic
3 Family Promise families, including 3 teenagers, 3 “tweens”, a couple of elementary kids and two newborns.
1 out-of-state youth group
34 other local teens
11ty buckets of paint
Random stencils
1000++ W pent-up energy
Caution: improper mixing can result in an explosion. Understand why you are proceeding before undertaking this.
Directions:
Ask God’s blessing on the task, then give the teens from the families and the youth group ownership of the task: to collaboratively design a teen room in the unused attic. Give them more paint than instruction. Put out the word for local teens to join in.
Mix paint and teens, then place in preheated sweltering attic during one of the hottest summers on record. Bake until done without peeking in the attic until the baking is complete, roughly four days.
Allow the teen leaders, including a sometimes-sulking 16 year old and an effervescent “tweener” take you on the tour. Acknowledge that this is a work of theirs and God’s, not yours. Recognize the joy you see, made by people brought together by something that neither they, nor you, could have done in their own power. Appropriately and liberally apply the word AWESOME to this work instead of a sandwich.