This past weekend we had the pleasure of living
out our Family Focus for the first time this calendar year! We were honored to be a host home for DNow at
our church. Disciple Now was my very
favorite youth group activity growing up and I had the blessing to stay at the
same host home every year from 7th grade through 12th
grade.
Disciple Now is a youth retreat weekend. Students are split by gender and grade level
and spend their days in corporate worship with an outside band/speaker as well
as small group Bible Study led by college students. They are “hosted” by church members in their
homes and spend time in fellowship.
Coach & I were so excited to see the announcement in the church
bulletin back before Christmas and immediately approached our youth minister
with the desire to be a host home.
This past weekend we have been able to open our
home to five senior girls & their two college leaders. Those college leaders by the way…such a
picture of Christ’s love and encouragement all weekend, not only to the girls
but to us!
I loved preparing snacks, playing games and
spending time with these sweet young ladies and we were so blessed by their
spirits.
I’ve had several inquires of how a couple with no
children or teenagers of our own prepared to be descended upon by a group of
high school girls so here is our D-Now Preparation Recap broken down into three
categories.
Food
The church provided the girls with breakfast
lunch and dinner which was huge! The
girls also brought their own favorite snacks and drinks for the weekend but I
wanted to make sure they had plenty to munch on over the course of their time
with us.
We started off with tortilla chips, salsa, Cheeto
Puffs and an assortment of soft drinks alongside water bottles. I also made mini pigs in a blanket (my
favorite snack of all time!) and chocolate no-bake cookies. I cut up a plate of fresh fruit and had that
available to the girls as well. It was
interesting to me that the fruit and mini pigs were gone the first night! Paper plates and plastic cups with sharpies
to write their name where also available at the snack bar. It made it easy on everyone.
Lodging
We have two guest rooms thankfully and it made
housing the girls much smoother. The
leaders shared one bedroom while the girls commandeered another one. We were really blessed to have friends lend
us air mattress for the weekend so every girl wound up having a “bed” to sleep
in, instead of bunking down on the floor in a sleeping bag. It was a treat for them to have one big
sleep-over room and it made it nice for us as well. We were able to keep our routine schedule on
Saturday & Sunday without worrying about disturbing them.
Welcome
Gifts
Finally we wanted the girls to feel welcomed, at
home and comfortable in our home. One
thing was to make sure all the girls had our Wifi password! This was such a
simple thing but it made apparently a big deal to a house of teenagers. We also had small gifts for the two college
leaders waiting on them when they arrived.
Since my best friend’s husband is the Associate College Minister at
church I was able to get the inside scoop on the girls favorite things and made
a small bag. I included a couple snacks,
some drinks & cute notecards from the Target Dollar Spot. It was an immediate ice breaker and something
I will always attempt to do if we are able to continue hosting.
We had the best time having the girls! It is definitely something we look forward to
doing again next year.
