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Burks Youth- May 2021

Welcome to the Burks Youth Newsletter! Your one-stop shop for all things Burks Youth and the only place that we give you a prize just for reading! (Yes, the prizes are for YOU, not your youth! Because you are awesome, and you deserve some swag, too!) Just text or email the secret phrase to Casandra before May 10 to win a personalized olivewood pocket cross!
It's gonna be May!
You've all seen the meme, right? The one where Justin Timberlake and his year 200 ramen noodle hair boldly mispronounces the word "me" as "may" as though all of that is completely normal. Your kids have seen the meme, too, I'm certain. but I'd bet dollars to donuts that they've never stopped to think about where it comes from. This month, I encourage you to have some fun with your kids by sharing a music video or other piece of pop culture that you thought was *bomb* when you were a teen and ask them to share one of theirs with you. I guarantee you'll end up starting May with a good laugh. (To be clear, your teen will be laughing at you and you will be laughing at yourself.)

Check out this article on the importance of having fun with your rapidly growing teen!
The Importance of Working at Family Play
Jim Burns -President of HomeWord and Executive Director of the HomeWord Center for Youth and Family at Azusa Pacific University
This may sound like an oversimplification, but the family or marriage that isn't healthy is the family or marriage that isn't playing together. Playing together is an essential trait of happy, healthy families. Certainly our children need to do their chores, and of course they need discipline with consistency, but what they also need desperately from their parents is a rousing game of hide-and-seek or a monthly Ping-Pong tournament.

A great thing happens to families when they play together: They begin to talk and laugh and lighten up. Family memories are built, inside jokes are shared, and serious moments of intimacy are communicated. Families need special times together to build lifelong memories and to play together!

As most experts on the family will tell you, a family that plays together stays together. But I would add that a family that plays together will also be much more happy and healthy. For many families, play is the missing ingredient to glue the family together. Play opens closed spirits and heals broken marriages.

We know instinctively that play produces family togetherness and support. We know that when we play together, we have a deeper sense of belonging and community in the family. Parents must proactively work at making a sense of belonging and community one of their key goals for family togetherness.

Playing together as a family may open up the communication lines better than anything else you try, so now is the time to be proactive and create those family fun days and events that provide the catalyst for more effective communication. Do whatever it takes to keep the communication lines open, even if it means picking up a basketball or going to the park on a regular basis. Playing together and having a good time just may be the safety net you need to make a difference in your child's life.
This year, instead of taking a mission trip *away* our youth will be focusing on serving in our own community! We will be combining this with a virtual mission trip to Guatemala, where we will zoom with Mission Guatemala staff at the end of each day for devotions and activities relating to the work we are doing. This will be an awesome and unique experience, so don't miss it! Check burks.org/youth for more information as it becomes available.
With everyone being so busy, we are going to change our Game nights to just once a month. We will start out playing online games, but we should be able to transition to in-person before the end of the month. Keep an eye on the Burks Youth social media pages for updates!
Sunday Nights:
Wednesday Bible Study
Rekindle the Flame is wrapping up this month! So far, we have read through the whole New Testament except for 1, 2, & 3 John and Revelation! YAY US! I know things are getting busy, but encourage your youth to keep up with the readings and join the discussion. Live discussion sessions will be held on Zoom every Wednesday at 6, plus check our social media accounts for videos, devotions, and other supplemental materials! This month's secret phrase is: "ramen noodle hair"
This newsletter is pretty comprehensive, but there will still be a few things that are exclusive to Social Media, such as:

- Nightly Devotions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

- Saturday Devotion and ICYMI videos on YouTube

- Fun stuff like games, puzzles, and challenges on Snapchat and TikTok

I will try my best to cross-link all of this, but the best way to be sure you don't miss anything is to like/suscribe to burksyouth on any social media platform you use. If your kid uses social media, have them suscribe, too! (I'm going to guess that they're on social media more than you are.)

Here are the links*:
http://www.facebook.com/burksyouth http://twitter.com/burksyouthtwitter http://instagram.com/burksyouthinstagram http://snapchat.com/add/burksyouth@snapchat http://youtube.com/burksyouth
* for some reason, there's no button for TikTok, but the link is:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJv5ny11/