DNow 2016

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 7^th grade through 12^th 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.