Young Lives ministry is reaching Fort Wayne teen moms for Christ

​Julie VonGuten presents Young Lives, a ministry to teenage mothers and a partner to the nationally-renown youth ministry, Young Life. Julie is a Young Live area coordinator for the Fort Wayne region, and made this presentation to St Joe Community Church on February 3, 2019. St Joe is a strategic partner with the Young Lives ministry. For more information about Young Lives' work in northeast Indiana, visit www.FortWayne.YoungLife.org or call (260) 413-4861. 

Transcript

I'm excited to let you know about young lives that it's thriving in Fort Wayne and we're growing we started to serve pregnant in teen moms at Northside high school we currently work with about no 30 girls within north side and some of the surrounding areas which to me right there I was like what what happens with a teen mom is once they become pregnant and decide to parent their child their whole world changes the friends that they knew gradually drop off they're living a whole different lifestyle they're trying to be adult more adult and make you know decisions are you know stay home or they most of our teen moms almost all of them don't even have their driver's license yet so if you can imagine the isolation that they feel so having 1st of all for them to be seen and to source someone to come alongside them they need community they need to come together and they need a space to do that and so I'm here to thank you for providing that space. So the difference that it's made I've got some pictures we're going to show you here in just a 2nd but it really has made a big difference we started off about 2 and a half years ago at north side and we probably had maybe 6 to 8 girls that we started relationships with we do have a summer camp that we hope to take them to our main desire is to introduce an inner duce the girls to Jesus and to help them grow in their faith and so when we get to take them to this 5 day camp we've built a relationship with them then we go with them to camp which very concentrated in teaching them about the character of Jesus and giving them opportunities to understand how Jesus can be a part of their lives but then we come home with them and we continue the relationship to help foster that and to grow so that's a big part and we are gearing up and fundraising for camp right now we have 11 girls that would like to go in if you can believe there are circumstances they're already trying to buy diapers and formula and they work with limited. Hours and how hard it is for them their struggle to just even graduate to stay in school to take care of a baby to have work hours to meet their own needs so we come alongside them and we raise money to help get them to camp but we also have what we call club and that's once a month where we come and use a building here and we provide community so it's fun they're still kids and they need some fun so we have and we also have a full meal for them where we gather and sit around and serve them and we feed them dinner so we're modeling a family meal time which most of them don't experience outside of our club. Then we have games but we also have what we call the talk and it's just a little bit of a where one of the leaders will share a testimony or share about the character of Jesus and what difference Jesus has made in their life and then also once a month we have what we call campaigners and it's a bible. So we're here the 2nd and the for Thursdays of every month in your building so I want to specifically just thank you that having a consistent location that the girls can come to. Anything that's consistent in their lives is something they're not used to so knowing that these doors are here and open and this location is safe and it's the same place each time means of it's just been wonderful and prefer. We have offered a so much space here you can see in the pictures you'll see in a minute the room that we use is wonderful but having the space for babies so we currently have every club probably maybe up to 15 to 18 girls come all those babies and we have child care workers we have 7 volunteer leaders right now we also have a committee that helps support us with all of this so they help with we have a transportation team and all of these things I'm mentioning I'm inviting all of you into if you would like to pick up a girl and her baby and help them get here that is so needed if you'd like to help bring in meal part of the meal or when we meet together just ongoing support of course of our fund raising if you like to support a girl going to camp this summer that would be fabulous. So yeah let's go ahead and show the next slide I'm excited for you to see the actual space here so these are a lot of the teen moms the top left picture is at camp and you can probably the rest for Miliard to you because they were in your building here one of the 1st meetings we give all the girls a box of diapers just to help. So and we made it met at Northside park for ice cream. There is some brochures in the back that tells a little bit more about young lives. We have just been serving at Northside but. The school nurses we've been meeting with them and other high schools in the area would love for young lives to be present so we're looking forward to a lot of growth in our city I've also started going down to the at this career center where there's a lot of teen moms after they don't meet the attendance requirement for their high school that's where they go next. So there's a lot of need a lot of lonely young. Girls young women out there that are doing their very best and so I just want to thank you for all of the support YOUR You have all provided for us already your generous open hands have just spoken volumes to us and even as a leader among the leaders we feel your support so thank you.