Name that Ball!

Tonight we wrapped up Wednesday nights with our junior high students, and it was a BLAST!  We had games, snacks, and a whole lotta laughs.  I think the room and surrounding hallways smelled like b.o. in about 10 minutes, which might be a new record.  Lito Solorio had two sweet games planned, both of which I've never played before.  

The first was a sock game, where everyone stands in a circle around a trash can.  You put a sock between two people, and the object is to yank the sock out of the person's hand standing next to you, or make them hit the trash can, and they're out.  Last one standing wins.  At first it was just a lot of tugging, pulling, and dodging of the trash can, but after a while, some students got pretty strategic and ganged up on the sponsor's by clothes lining them to the ground.  Genius.

The next game might've been even better.  "Name that Ball!" is probably the best game we've played all year.  Here's how it works:  Get 10 or so kids and send 'em out to the hallway.  Find a youth leader (usually a guy who can make a scary face) and put his head between two 6' tables.  Along the tables, you place different kinds of balls.  We had  a purple bouncy ball, a basketball, KJ's head, and then a frisbee (again, funny Lito).  You cover the table with black table cloth's (hiding KJ's body),  then put the balls on the table, and put t-shirts over the balls.  The student's walk in one at a time, and the crowd cheers them on.  You tell them that the object of the game is to lift up the t-shirt and "Name that Ball!" and whoever does it in the fastest time wins.  Greg Hafer was "timing" the game, but actually timing the screams.  One of our 7th grade girls won with a record 3 seconds.  Our last contestant was Dan Mitchell, who had happened to play the game before.  To KJ's surprise, he didn't scream, but instead smashed a whip cream pie in KJ's face, which is fun for pretty much everyone except KJ.

It was a good wrap up with lots of laughs and memories.  Friday night we have our 8th grade girls slumber party, so that'll actually be the last time with my girls before they head off to high school.  This is the completion of my 2nd year as a junior high volunteer, and honestly, I don't think ministry gets better than this.  It's a smelly, funny, difficult, inquisitive, awkward, wholly lovable age group, and I'm hooked.