Lock in madness

Last night, the youth group at church had a lock in. For those of you who don't know what a lock in is, it's where a bunch of mid and high schoolers hang out at the church building all night long and play games and watch movies and eat food until the morning comes. It's a blast! Last night I got there about a quarter to 8. There was madness and pandemonium in the building. About 40 kids came. Girls had to bring $10 and a 2-liter of soda, and boys had to bring $10 and a snack/dessert/cookies/whatever. By the way, they did an incredible job and there was the best selection of cookies and brownies anyone could ask for. It was like the cookie aisle at walmart brought right to FCC. So after everyone got there, we piled into the vans and cars and went over to the bowling alley to start our night. I didn't bowl that great, but I had fun bowling with Esther and Caitlyn and PD and Ben. A strike warranted a little dance, and Shenequa played the second game with us. When we got back to the church 10:30, they immediately set up the volleyball net, with sheets over it to limit viewing...turned off all the lights, plugged in a couple of strobes, and voila!!! Strobe light volleyball. FREAKY!!! It's like the ball could be coming right at you, but since you only see it every other half second, you can't really track it's movement and you could be chasing it along the ground and have really no clue how far away from it you were. It was the good music that made the game fun. hehehe. Then we settled down, got some volunteers and did a little nasty food challenge 11:30. 2 boys and 2 girls got to sit in front of everyone and eat vienna sausages, sardines in mustard sauce, a spoonful of mayonnaise, and a pig's foot. Only a little bit of heaving and gagging came with it, but i was highly impressed. it took a while for the smell of the pig's feet to leave the building. Ick. Then of course, naturally, we followed that with ordering pizza. 12:00 Domino's pizza at midnight it a nice little snack. After we got our little tummies full of energy, we started a rousing game of sardines. 1:00am Sardines is like backward hide and seek. One person hides and everyone seeks, and if you find the person, you hide with them! I'm really bad at that game, I don't know why. I never seem to find them. Me and a couple other people were diligently searching until we realized that it got really quiet and we assumed that everyone was hiding and it was only us three left. Then we realized that not only was that true, but that the game had actually ended and before we knew it they were on to another game. sheesh. The new game was Jailbreak. Similar to hide and seek as well, except when they find you, you go to jail! 1:45 and a free person can help those in jail escape. it's tons of fun. I didn't play, but I got to walk around and see where people were hiding and help the seekers. tricky, i know. After that game got old and people were tired, they set up the GLADIATION PIT! 2:45 Seriously probably one of the best games in youth ministry. Probably made up by none other than the Ben Headley. The only thing I'll say to describe this goodness, is that when you're in control of the ball, you look like a monkey hunched over swinging your large monkey arms around. Hi-larious. We followed that up with a...um...nice little game of "pull apart". 3:15 I think this game was actually invented by people to tire out kids who have too much energy. The guys all get in a big huddle holding on to each other, and the girls have to try to pull them apart and separate them. At 3am in a room where the air conditioning isn't keeping up, this turned in to a huge mass of hot sweaty man. it was disgusting. The girls prevailed and got them all pulled apart. It was a rough fight, one for the books of history, but i was beat. 4:00 Then we served italian sodas and put in the movie Encino Man. I didn't watch...I knew that if I sat down for more than five minutes I'd fall asleep. So I hung out in the kitchen and chatted with the ben cross. good times. A little nap, 5:30 rude awakening, a short devotion and a clean up later 6:00, it was time to go home 7:00. the night flew by, but it was so much fun that the fact that all my muscles hurt and i'm tired is actualy a small price to pay. If anyone is interested, the next time we have one, you can come with me!!!!!!!