The first Garage

We had the first Garage session yesterday. The morning started with us leaders turning up, and finding out someone at church had gone into the garage, saw our couches, didn't know about them, and therefore thought it ok to just throw them out. Super. However, Mr. Albury, being the top youth minister and guy that he is, arranged for some new chairs to go in. (They're probably not staying though, so if anyway wants to donate furniture...)

When we came down with the boys, they seemed genuinely excited to be there, and I was pretty excited too. I think it will take a while for them to understand and embrace the kind of openness we're looking for, but that's fine, I wasn't that open at their age too.

We needed to clean up the garage, sweeping, vacuuming, window washing, etc. We paired the boys up, and let them get to separate jobs, but during this, they had to do something like the activity in Remember The Titans, when Coach Boon makes the African-American students pair with the white students and learn three things about them. After the cleaning, the boys came back with mostly surface-level things, but hopefully we'll keep getting deeper as the year goes. It was only the first session after all.

Anyways, I'm really excited about the Garage. It's going to be fun, and hopefully meaningful too. Next week we're going to a toboggan/waterslide park in Whittlesea, just for something cool to do.

I start my internship today as well, am quite looking forward to it.