the hartsteins

WHAT a NIGHT! I've been up for about 24 hours. Dan's been up longer than me.

Yes, you guessed it! We had a lock in at the church last night.

You know, about half way through each time we have one, I'm always thinking, "This is the last time we're doing this". But they love it :) So we keep doing it.

Let me give you an idea of what I ran into last night ...

First of all, when I asked the kids how many they thought were coming (keep in mind that we do no advertising outside of our regular group of 15 kids or so), they told me they thought it could be anywhere between 50 and 150. I was like, "What??" [we ended up with about 40 - whew!]

About a handful of our regular youth group attenders threatened to leave because a girl came to the lock in from school which none of these kids care for. So what did I tell them? Then go. You don't have to stay. [they all stayed and I heard nothing more about it the rest of the night]

It took us roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes to get through 2 short games and a message. Why, you ask? Especially if they're considered short? Because of the all the chit-chatting. [definitely to be expected with so many kids]

I found one of the guys in a baby crib.

Around 2 am, the girls decided to give 3 of the guys a makeover. It was hillarious ... yet awkward.

First lock in where a known couple were attending together. THAT was fun.. [I had to keep reminding everyone that .. Church is NOT a date...]

3 of our six grade boys decided to play with the baby toys, slides, cooking toys, etc. And oddly enough ... everything seemed about their size...

One of our sixth grade guys was constantly annoying and aggravating one of our eighth grade guys. At one point, I heard the eighth grader say to his friends, "let's go beat him with this belt". Little did he know I was standing on the stairs when he said that, so he heard me say, "Excuse me? Did you say you're going to give him a belt as a gift? Or maybe you said you found his belt and you're going to go give it to him? Because I know that you would never say something like 'let's go beat him with this belt', right? I'm taking the belt and you'll see it in the morning". So the eighth grader stayed away from him. But the sixth grader was relentless. I would walk down the hall and hear him saying, "Just say 'truce'!". And this several times in a row for, I'm sure, more than an hour. At one point, I had to threaten them both that I was going to send them home. It helped a little.

An eighth grader put glue in his hair and made a mohawk.

By the end of the night, the youth room was DISGUSTING. You would not believe how long I felt like it was an uphill battle to get them to start cleaning it up. Even when I would give them a job to do, I would turn my back for a moment, and when I turned around again - they're sitting and talking with their friends! And it's amazing how so many of them all of a sudden don't feel well when I mention the phrase "let's clean up!"

*I think it's interesting to note that one of our guys in particular made it into 8 1/2 of these 10.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg :)

No, don't let it fool you. There were some incredible moments, too. We played a great game that we just learned last week called sit'n'scootch. THAT was fun. And hillarious. Visit our family site at www.thefamilypost.com/hartsteinfamily and check out the videos section to see it in action! It was also neat to see many of the kids start to open up about more personal things and matters of the heart.

YES, it's crazy. YES, it's a tough night to get through - but it's worth building relationships with the students and getting to know new friends. I think I met at least 5-7 new kids of which I have never seen. And I got to share about Jesus with all of them.