I was introduced to YoungLife through a Super Bowl party my junior year of high school. I had no idea what it even was at the time, I just knew that my aunt had done it when she was in high school and my boyfriend went and hung out with people every Tuesday night. He had been nagging me to come with him. I showed up to the house of the person hosting the party to find a group of people who were insanely energetic to say the least, yet so overwhelmingly welcoming. I felt loved and cared about from the second I walked in the door, and had literally no understanding why. How could people who has never met me care so much about me?
After the Super Bowl party, I rarely missed a YoungLife club or opportunity to hang out with the people in YoungLife. I couldn't get enough, it was also so crazy and chaotic but in truly the best way. The group in my town had only started a few years prior, so there were only about 20 people, but we were all very close and the girls specifically in my YoungLife group became some of my best friends. I grew to learn more about YoungLife's purpose and came to find that everyone I met had a common goal: to love others just like Jesus loves us. You could just feel like you belonged from the second you walked in. One of my favorite things was seeing everyone's shoes piled up at the front door of the house hosting that week: it was something so simple that showed the amazing community we had.
I went to YoungLife camp that summer at TimberWolf Lake. My leader joked that if couldn't say it was the best week of our life by the end of the trip, we could have our money back. Until I experienced it, I didn't believe it, but I came back 100% unable to say it wasn't the best week ever.
I left camp committed to forming a relationship with God and having such an appreciation for the encouragement I had in that process. I came home and started doing a bible study each week with my leader, Martha, and the rest of that summer spent afternoons with her at a park close to my house learning more about scripture. Martha became one of the biggest mentors in my life and truly showed me what it meant to love like Jesus did.
Without YoungLife, I don't know if I ever would've found a relationship with God. It was by total happenstance that I wound up going to that Super Bowl party and found an organization that made such a crazy impact on my life. I left high school and went on to college continuing to grow my faith and helping to start a Christian sorority on my campus.
If you ever have the opportunity to be a part of YoungLife or something like it, I would more than recommend it. For me, it was a huge step out of my comfort zone. But without it, I would've missed out on some of the best experiences of my high school career and never learned the true power of a real group of friends and an even more real faith.
