Not Your Average Youth Group

"Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity."
1 Timothy 4:12 (The Message)

Early last year, Joseph and Hilda Bwalya, along with their teenagers Conceptor and Margaret, realized that the youth of their community needed a fun, safe environment in which they could learn about Jesus. There was no youth group at the time, so they decided to start one, and thus the Enfys Youth Group began. It is led by Maxwell, a twenty-something who is the main teacher at the Enfys school; Conceptor; and Nicolas, a young assistant teacher at Enfys. The primary theme is simple, yet profound: study God's Word to learn Who God is. Each week, about 50 teens attend a program that includes prayer, singing, dancing, skits, lessons, entertainment, and breakout sessions for small group discussions. Each week, Conceptor, Maxwell, or Nicholas gives a talk to the whole group about one or more of the group's 5 objectives:
1. Entrepreneurship skills
2. Human rights
3. Care of orphans and vulnerable children
4. Promoting talent identification
5. Youth involvement in civic issues.

These youth take this group, and discipleship, seriously. They meet to go door-to-door and evangelize un-churched members of their community, visit nursing homes to help the residents, or visit the market to do community service such as cleaning. They also have a boys football (soccer) team for the boys and a girls net ball (similar to Ultimate Frisbee, but with a basketball) team that play teams from other area churches and are fantastically popular with youth group and non-youth group members alike.

This group is very interested in connecting with youth groups in the US to share ideas and to encourage one another. Some challenges and needs for which they could use prayer and support are:

• Lack of teaching materials and innovative ideas for activities/outreach/teaching/fun

        games to attract new members.

• Some teens have to be pushed to fully participate

• Soccer and Net Ball Uniforms
  

Members of the Enfys Youth Group performing choreography / dance along with a Chris Tomlin song

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Margaret Bwalya sharing her small group's responses to some HIV/AIDS-related questions

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