My Call to Youth Ministry - Part 2

My Call to Youth MInistry - Part 2
    (My Call to Youth MInistry Part 1 - Here)

    For as long as I can remember growing up I believed with my whole heart that God was calling me to a career in law.  I did everything I could in Jr. High and High School to help prepare myself for this aspiration.  When I graduated from High school I was well prepared to enter college and major in English/Literature with a minor in pre-law and preparations to continue on to law school immediately after college.  This plan was also the primary criteria in choosing the college I decided to attend: Whittier College.  Nothing could have prepared me for what God has in store for my life even in the first Semester at Whittier. 
    When I arrived at college I found that there was an aspect of my life that I felt was missing; I didn’t feel as complete a person as I did before coming to college.  As I prayed and evaluated what aspect was missing, I concluded that it was the lack of working with youth.  When I was in High School I actively helped with the Middle School group at my church and became as involved as possible in my own High School youth group.  This was the aspect that was missing.  So I began to pray, and asked others to pray, that if God wanted me working with youth in California that he would bring the opportunity to me--I knew full well that you couldn’t just walk into a church for the first time and be able to get fully involved working with the youth in that church. 
    A week after I began to pray about this, one of my fellow college students approached me and asked me if I was interested in working with a youth group on a voluntary basis.  He informed me that the pastor of his old church had planted a new church and needed someone who had a heart for youth to work as the “active youth pastor.”  Because I had expressed my prayer request, this fellow student thought I might be interested.  I told him that I would be very interested so he set up a meeting between the pastor, Daniel, and myself.  When Daniel and I met, things went very smoothly and it seemed quite clear that we were both interested in working together.  Daniel then informed me that the church was 45 miles away from the school.  This was a problem because I didn’t have a car in California.  I was extremely disappointed, but only for a moment because Daniel told me that he lived two miles away and would be willing to give me a ride to the church anytime I needed it or to loan me his car.  So, needless to say, I took the position and began working with the youth at Armenian Christian Fellowship of Orange County.

Part 3 Coming Tomorrow (Jan. 12th, 2006)