Lauren Reese has spunk, that’s for sure. When she got to her confirmation class at Mt. Tabor Lutheran Church in Staunton and there was only one other student her age, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
“She’s very outgoing and she is very athletic,” said Deanna Reese, Lauren’s mother. “She has her best friends and they travel in a pack together.””One day she came home and asked if Nevaeh could come to confirmation with her.”
Nevaeh Cox came to confirmation class with Lauren after school that Wednesday and loved it. She was soon joined by Lili Williams, Rorry Allebaugh and Hannah Allebaugh.All five girls are on the same basketball team and when I asked if they hang out a lot outside of practice, they all answered in unison: “Yes.”
The Reese family has been going to Mt. Tabor for the past 20 years and Lauren’s zeal to bring her peers with her isn’t new to the Reeses.
“I’ve always been the type to say, ‘come to my church, come to my church, its great'” said Deanna. “We’ve always been a family that invites our friends to church.”
Lauren’s four friends didn’t grow up in the Lutheran church and hadn’t been to Mt. Tabor before she invited them along. Now they are coming consistently and some of them were even in the church’s Christmas play.
Here’s the thing, this new community of middle schoolers didn’t come out of a program or out of a special outreach. Four new 6th grade girls became involved at Mt. Tabor Lutheran Church because they were already best friends with Lauren. Lauren had the boldness to invite them into every part of her life, including her faith life.
All four moms accompanied the girls as they sang songs like “We Are The Church”, played crazy games, and watched skits performed by the 7th day planning team.
The girls’ favorite activity of the weekend was crafts where they got to decorate their own masks. The craft was meant to symbolize how Jacob wore a mask when he tricked his father into giving him Esau’s blessing in Genesis 27.
The entire event is engaging and interactive. Two wrestlers from Liberty University even came up to do a wrestling demonstration and arm wrestled with the kids. This activity showed the participants what it might have been like for Jacob to wrestle God in Genesis 32.
The four girls were always on the move and their moms didn’t slow down either. For these friends the weekend was not only about learning about God or experiencing their first Virginia Synod Youth Event, it was about living life together.
