Saturday, March 23, 2013

Christmas in March

#placementnight2013 was the official hashtag of the night, and what a night it was.

YoungLife Placement Night is one of the absolute best nights of the year, because it is just one big party and celebration. I am not sure if I have ever dedicated a post solely to YoungLife, but I will be sure to do that soon. Basically, we spend an entire semester being "trained" on becoming a Young Life leader - meaning we get to hang out with middle school and high school kids, play fun games, get to hear about their life stories, and eventually lead them spiritually. It is a truly rewarding experience, and I never could have imagined how much joy my eighth grade girls bring me.


Anyway, placement night is the night when new leaders get placed on teams. Your team is the middle or high school at which you lead, so my team is called Murchison, and those teams add up to make different areas - Northwest Austin, East Austin, West Austin, Central Austin, Round Rock, etc. 205 new leaders were placed last night, which is just incredible. Big things are in store for Austin, Texas!


Each area performs - dances, puts on a skit, or just does something crazy - onstage before the new leaders are announced and welcomed into the area. It's always hilarious, and Jesus is definitely present in that room - there is so much joy and excitement. My newly-formed area chose to do a parody on musicals - one school acted out the Lion King, we acted out Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and the third school in our area acted out Pitch Perfect. We dressed as oompa loompas and had the best time performing the oompa loompa dance onstage. We didn't start practicing until Thursday night at 9:00pm, but we pulled it off, and our costumes absolutely stole the show, if I do say so myself! When I receive a video of our performance, I will definitely share the link - after all, this was my big dancing debut!



After placement night is officially over, each respective area and team then goes off and does their own thing - you might call it initiation (but don't worry, nothing bad happens) - and just hangs out until the wee hours of the morning. Our team took the newbies to our school and had them lay in the middle of a field while we attacked them with squirt guns and water balloons before going over to a committee families house and making s'mores. As per tradition, we then headed over to Kerbey Lane Cafe in Northwest Austin and indulged in some late night snackies. 

Our precious new leaders!
It was a night for the books, and we have SEVEN new wonderful additions to our team. It was a great night, and now I am off to get in a workout before partaking in some 21st birthday festivities! See y'all later!

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