While meeting with the Youth and Community Alliance of Smithtown (a group I recently joined comprised of people who care about the youth in our community) in June, I was looking and listening for opportunities for our youth ministry to get more involved in the community. One event that caught my attention was a summer program sponsored by the Suffolk county police department at the beach designed to give students a safe place to hang out during the evenings. I volunteered our youth group to come down a few evenings and give away free food and drinks as an act of kindness and to show people the love of Jesus in practical ways. On Tuesday night a group of about 12 of us loaded into the church shuttle along with a grill, a table, freebies, hot dogs, and sodas and headed down to Sunken Meadow State Park to bless and serve the youth of our community. There was a group of about 30 young people and a dozen adults present. The fact that it was a fairly small group was nice and enabled us to spend quite a bit of time meeting and talking with them. Many of the kids said that they would come by and check out our youth group sometime. More significantly, some of our kids actually made new friends! I was especially blessed by Sarah, one of our girls, who met a young lady and they were hanging out together the entire two hours we were there. Before we left it was a beautiful sight to see them exchanging phone numbers. I was also really blessed when Kevin (the director of the event) commented that we had some really great kids and how much he enjoyed having us around. That was a high compliment! Next week we are going back and will be giving away cheeseburgers.
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