Hello Friends of YoungLives!

A little over two years ago, Kayla and I went to Carolina Point for a weekend as childcare volunteers. It was a crazy, adorable, exhausting weekend, but left such an impression on us of the potential impact of YLVS. At camp, moms and their babies are welcomed out of the buses they arrive in by a tunnel of volunteers cheering them on and carrying their luggage ushering them to their cabins. After the celebration of their arrival, Kayla and I were giddy dreaming about welcoming girls from our area in the same fashion. Two years later, that dream came true as 3 mentors, 2 mommas, and 1 baby piled out of Whitney's Honda pilot in the beautiful mountains of Brevard! 

Our week at Carolina Point this summer was also crazy, adorable and exhausting - but I was left in awe of how the Lord has already provided so beautifully for this ministry in the short year (?!) since Whitney has been hired!! We were able to introduce two amazing mommas to their first ever YL Clubs, connect them with hundreds of other young moms, and engage in gospel conversations. It was such a full circle moment to sit in a club room with our friends, and also so sweet to come back to Durham with them and sense their energy and excitement to lean into YLVS. I can't wait to see what else the Lord will do through this ministry and excited to see how the gospel will impact not only our momma friends but their children and their families as well!

Kenna White, YoungLives Mentor

We could talk for hours about the week we spent at Carolina Point, but some of the highlights include: one friend doing the zipline for the first time ever, our friend who is pregnant getting to have a spa day, spending two hours making friendship bracelets and drinking coffee during free time hangouts, watching our friends go from complete overwhelm at the first club to actually smiling and singing along at the last club, pure joy on their faces getting to dunk Whitney at the carnival night, and getting to gift them with Jesus Storybook Bibles in Spanish on the drive home.

All glory to Him and a truly incredible week!

SUMMER HANGOUTS: For most in Young Life and WyldLife, summer tends to be a time where regular scheduled hangouts go on pause since college leaders are gone. For YoungLives, our mentors all live here and are around. Plus, we felt like it was important to keep connections going and create consistent opportunities for us to have touch points with the girls regularly. Instead of structured events we planned hang-outs around the area. We did things like go to the Wonder Lab in Durham, popsicles at LocoPops, and a s'mores night at Whitney's house. In general we averaged 8-9 sweet mommas coming to these events which is SUCH an answer to prayer. One of the sweetest things is watching these young moms make connections and become friends. Most of the time we have to make them leave and take them home, because they're having so much fun just sitting talking to each other :)

MINISTRY PARTNER UPDATES: I continually feel that one of the best parts of my job as Area Coordinator is making connections with various individuals and organizations in the community who are willing to help us in various ways.

We are thankful once again for New Horizon Church saying yes to having us use their space one per month for our Club gatherings.

The Nest in Chapel Hill has offered to donate a membership to us for the year that will allow us to take moms and babies to an engaging indoor play space for free whenever we want.

Her Plan, a pro-life organization that works to connect expecting women to resources in the community,  has invited us to speak at a panel about mentorship and mental health for moms and pregnant women in September.

We're also looking forward to starting "Lunch and Learn" sessions back up at Southern Durham High School, and working with the Orange County Adolescent Parenting Program to help connect some of our friends with resources.

We hope to continue to make connections with area churches, schools, and organizations that share our heart for serving young mothers and their kiddos throughout the next year. Please reach out to younglives.dch@gmail.com if you know of someone we should be trying to connect with!

There are so many ways you can volunteer with YoungLives this fall! Fill out our Interest Form by clicking on the link above so we can get you more information!!

Some of our more specific needs are outlined below as well!

HISPANIC AND CATHOLIC CHURCH CONNECTIONS: As we continue to meet mom friends who are primarily Spanish speaking we are hoping to make connections with more Hispanic and Catholic churches in the area. We hope to find volunteers in these congregations who can help us bridge the language and culture barrier we currently feel. If you have any connections with these congregations in the area please email younglives.dch@gmail.com.

NEW HORIZON DONATION CLOSET: New Horizon Church continues to shower us with generosity and has donated an entire early childhood classroom to YoungLives to convert into a donation closet/storage space!! The room is right across the hall from the room we use for Club which makes it so easy and convenient. We hope to be able to turn it into a "boutique-like" setting with baby clothes, maternity clothes, diapers/wipes, feminine hygiene products, household necessities, toys, baby equipment, etc available for girls to "shop" for during certain events or times. In order to do that we are looking for some of the following items (new or used) to help renovate the space and have it stocked and ready to unveil for the fall. If you are cleaning out this fall or have any friends/family cleaning out or looking to unload things please reach out to younglives.dch@gmail.com or 502-551-2827 (Whitney's cell). A list of items we would gladly take off your hands is below along with pictures of our new space to renovate :)

The fall semester events:

We've spent the past year doing contact work and we are stepping out in faith this semester implementing a more "typical" YoungLives routine of club once/month and campaigners once/month. This will feel different to our friends compared to the more low key hangouts we've been doing up to this point, so we pray they will still have a desire to come and be open to hearing the Gospel presented more frequently when we gather. 

Easy referral bases to organizations that can meet tangible needs for our friends:

As we start to get to know our friends better we start to learn more about ways they are in need. YoungLives cannot be the rescuers from food or housing insecurity BUT there are so many wonderful non-profits in our counties that can. We are praying as mentors we can learn more about the processes involved with things like WIC and social services so that we can know when it's appropriate to point our friends in those direction. We also are praying that we can maintain healthy boundaries ourselves as we navigate these tricky situations at times. 

Language barriers to be broken:

- Spanish speaking volunteer mentors and childcare volunteers to join our team.

- Current mentors to feasibly and easily learn Spanish so that we can communicate with our friends in a much more natural way. 

- Developing church partnerships with a diverse range of congregations that we can take our friends to as they express interest in finding a church home

Drivers/Vehicles/Car Seats:

Reality is that the majority of our friends need rides to our events. At this point our mentors are almost beyond capacity with who we can fit in our cars. Pray for tangible and logistical needs to be met in a way that serves these girls best and is sustainable for our mentor team

- Vehicles - a 12 passenger van, a Tahoe or Expedition, more mini vans among the mentor team -- we are open to anything that helps us fit more girls and babies in cars

- Car seats - small profile, rear-facing, easy to install lightweight seats that our mentors can all have on hand when driving 

- Drivers - the girls we know are spread out ALL OVER Durham, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough making pick up logistics tricky at times. We are praying for more mentors coming from various spaces in our community and/or adults who would be wiling to drive for events if needed at times.