Cable_Spring 2011 by GEMS Girls' Clubs

CABLE

spring 2011

A publication of

GEMS Girls’ Clubs

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Shirley Batts – Portage, Michigan Cheryl Boer – Eden Prairie, Minnesota Cori Dykhouse – Port Lambton, Ontario Susan Kepley – Grand Rapids, Michigan Glennys Kuperus – Hudsonville, Michigan Lia Leenstra – Byron Center, Michigan Debra Liccar – Crete, Illinois Henrietta Reinders – Rockwood, Ontario Amy Schaaf – Grand Rapids, Michigan Irene Vanderlaan – Indianapolis, Indiana Mary Jo Vis – Riverside, California

GEMS Girls’ ClubssSTAFF Executive Director – Jan Boone Training Manager – Lenae Bulthuis Customer Relations Specialist – Michele DeHaan Managing Editor – Kelli Ponstein International Ministries Development Coordinator – Emily Thomas Conference Coordinator – Alecia VanHulzen Publications & Web Coordinator – Amy White Executive Secretary – Gert Wolfert Graphic & Web Designer – Nicole Zaagman

the Counselors’ Newsletter

REFLECTIONS Ever wonder about the future? What will things be like for the girls in your club and/or for you ten years from now? If you close your eyes and imagine life in 2021, what does it look like? For me it’s a bit difficult to imagine given the rapid changes today. Take the use of the Internet and social networking. We don’t have a long history of using it, so we don’t really know what the longterm effects of daily use of the Internet will be. Statistically, we know youth ages 8–12 spend an average of 1.9 hours online each day, 13–17-year-olds are on the web 3.5 hours daily, and young people 18–24 spend 4.5 hours daily on the Internet according to 2010 research by Harris Interactive. And do you know how much time you spend? Likely 2-5.5 hours each day. So what did we stop doing with our time in order to have that much web

time? Did we give up the TV? Nope. While TV viewing has dropped 1% in the last year, children spend 3-4 hours every day watching TV or videos, and the average adult still spends about 4 ½ hours daily. That means that right now, the average American girl spends 45 hours with the media, 17 hours with her parents, 30 hours with her school, and 2.5 hours each week with her GEMS Club. Each is providing her with thoughts to think about and consider… Which has and will have the greatest impact, the greatest ability to shape actions? I don’t know. But I believe that personal relationships with the people God sends into our lives have the power to shape us more than anything else. When another human being values us, genuinely cares about us, expresses nonjudgmental love for us, and invests Continued on page 2...

time to passionately teach us about the One that has changed his/her life, THAT will have the greatest impact – it is the loudest voice and the most profound experience. Will GEMS counselors be needed ten years from now? Ever more so as we head into a decade that promises more change than we can really imagine. Commit to the long-haul, GEMS counselors. You are truly needed.

PRESIDENT’S LETTER Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6

Executive Director

Wasn’t that last year’s theme verse? Yes, indeed it was. But it is so important that we need to keep it before us always. When there’s a theme on prayer, we all grow. Last year we grew in recognizing God, listening to God, trusting God, and thanking God – to name a few ways. And from that personal growth in relationship and prayer, God strengthened and grew the ministry. The board and staff understand the positive impact the prayer theme had on GEMS, and when we set goals for the upcoming year it was decided to maintain a focus on prayer. It is a goal for 2011 – as individuals and as a ministry – to make prayer a priority for everyone including the GEB, GEMS staff, ACs and LTs, Club Coordinators, counselors, girls, and GEMS supporters. This happens in many ways already, but if you have ideas to continue to do this well as a whole ministry, please share them! And at this time, remember that it is because of Christ’s death and resurrection that we have this access to the Father. He gave His all so we could have that relationship with God – in freedom and confidence. (Ephesians 3:12) What an incredible gift! Growing together,

GEMS Board President

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cable@gemsgc.org

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a tree!

Canada Post Publication Sales Agreement #41124116, return undeliverable copies to Cable c/o GEMS Girls’ Clubs, PO Box 39, Norwich, ON N0J1P0

To honor God by being responsible stewards of His creation, Cable is printed on post-consumer recycled paper and uses vegetable-based inks.

GET WISDOM: GO BEYOND THE GOLD!

That’s a problem.

16:16rbs

Prove

Yet, despite our ease of access to all kinds of information, our culture is often found wanting in terms of true wisdom. In fact, studies indicate there is little difference between how Christians make major decisions and live day-to-day when compared to secular society.

Chances are you’ve heard the phrase, “I’ll just google it!” with increasing frequency over the past few years. Just type in a search and, voilà, you receive seemingly endless amounts of information on any topic you choose.

GET WISDOM: Go beyond the Gold!

We need true wisdom, and making wise choices begins with God. Proverbs 9:10 says, The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. When we really grasp what it means to fear God, we can begin to live our lives in light of His wisdom. So step into the GEMS stadium and learn how to Go Beyond the Gold and get wisdom about words, relationships, integrity, work, money, and more at GEMS Annual Counselors’ Leadership Conference as we introduce the all-new theme for 2011/12!

Your Personal Invitation to Fort Collins, CO GEMS seeks to bring girls into a living, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ. To do that effectively, we strive to equip, motivate, and inspire counselors to be successful leaders. So, in addition to introducing the new theme, Conference serves as a refreshing, encouraging time that will prepare you for your important role as a mentor in the upcoming GEMS season. You’ll receive training in all kinds of areas through a wide range of exciting and informative workshops and keynote speakers. In addition, Conference affords you a one-of-a-kind opportunity to interact with, learn from, and worship together with sisters-in-Christ from all over North America. You’ll be challenged to grow in your personal walk with God as well as to find new ways to motivate and enfold the girls in your club. So come to Conference; we know you won’t be disappointed! Send in your Registration Form or visit www.gemsgc.org to sign up, and join us July 7-10 at Colorado State University!

CLUB NEWS

NEW Merchandise Watch your mailboxes in late summer or early fall for the GEMS Supply Catalog. In addition to the all-new theme materials, you can look forward to new merchandise including a lightweight backpack, a GEMS koosie, a travel mug, a prayer journal, and new GEMS canvas bags! Follow GEMS! Follow GEMS on twitter (twitter.com/ GEMSgirlsclubs) or join our Facebook group to get the latest information about the ministry, great resources for your club, and to connect with other women and share ideas for mentoring and motivating your girls! GEMS Sunday Ideas Most clubs will be hosting GEMS Sunday on either April 10th or May 1st. This event is a way to keep your congregation or organization informed about what your girls have been up to this season, and it also offers your girls a chance to give back and serve. Check out GEMS Leaders’ Blog (www.gemsgc.org/blog) for ideas for making this year’s GEMS Sunday an event to remember! Club Coordinator Mailing Club Coordinators – watch your mailboxes this summer for important information from the GEMS Service Center. In late June or early July you should receive a checklist for the upcoming season, SHINE brightly and Sparkle renewals and invoices, as well as a Supply Catalog and order form. If you are not returning as the Club Coordinator next year, please inform the Service Center so we can ensure the correct person receives this information.

MORE THAN a Meal With 16 girls and 7 counselors, Fort Collins Immanuel GEMS in Fort Collins, CO makes it a yearly mission to serve their church family. “We’ve been hosting one form or another of a soup luncheon since GEMS Girls’ Clubs (then Calvinettes) started in our church,” explained Club Coordinator, Julie Norrgard. At this year’s Soup Luncheon, the GEMS served soup to over 200 people immediately following their Sunday service.

How has the Feed the Fire! theme motivated your club to take action and live a life of PASSION? Share your stories with us by visiting www.gemsgc.org.

This season, as counselors and girls explored the Feed the Fire! theme, Life Lesson 10 in the December issue of SHINE brightly gave them added enthusiasm about the idea of serving (see page 35 of Connections to learn more).

“We have decided we like how [the luncheon] teaches the girls to serve others,” Julie said. “It is so sweet to see these girls interacting with the congregation. The church benefits so much…There aren’t many times as a church we can sit and break bread and have community.” In order to make this blessing a realty, counselors divide up the prep work (like browning the hamburg for one of the soups or preparing the beans for the veggie chili), and girls arrive before the service to put rolls in baskets and set out center pieces (that they make in club). During the Soup Luncheon the girls serve the soup, help carry people’s meals, serve drinks, and keep condiments filled. Afterward they clear away and do the dishes. To help integrate this event even more for the girls, prior to providing a meal for their congregation they do a lesson on etiquette in club. Even though this also serves as a fundraiser, Julie notes that is far from the main point. “I think my favorite part this year was seeing the girls interact, work hard, and enjoy serving others,” she concluded. “It took a village to pull this off. It was such a long and exhausting day for us, but the benefits for God’s kingdom are incredible.”

Women’s Night of Worship Engaging Mothers and Daughters Year after year, one of the most anticipated parts of GEMS Annual Counselors’ Leadership Conference is the opening Women’s Night of Worship. In an attempt to ready our hearts and posture ourselves before our heavenly Father, we begin with an evening of celebration, thanksgiving, and praise. “There is something about women coming together in harmony that is indescribable,” said Annie Syens, Club Coordinator from Bethel Christian Reformed Church in Waupun, Wisconsin.

Afterward women and girls were encouraged to stay for coffee, hot chocolate, and desserts. “Personally, the evening to me meant a little escape,” Annie concluded. “Escape from life and just completely focusing strictly on God for an hour, coming to the realization that I, yet again, need to release my control to Him.”

The Bigger Picture “There is something about women coming together in harmony that is indescribable.”

Coupling their love of Conference with studies that indicate parents, more than anything else, are looking for ways to do things with their kids, Annie and her fellow counselors decided to host their own Women’s Night of Worship for the second consecutive year. One of the hopes of activities like this is that discussions about faith will naturally flow from these shared experiences – in this instance between moms and daughters. “It took, more than anything, a lot of communication to put this event on,” Annie explained. “We found a great worship leader who understood our purpose and the type of atmosphere we desired, [and] we advertised a lot in the local papers, local church bulletins, notes in church mailboxes, Facebook, Twitter, etc.”

As they arrived, women and girls were welcomed by a balloon-filled entry and uplifting background music. The worship leader then led the over 150 participants in a variety of songs including some from GEMS’ Love in Every Language CD – giving girls a chance to get up on stage and help sing the familiar tunes.

Not only was this event able to draw in, inspire, and refresh women from the church and community, the counselors from Waupun Bethel were opening a very important door for the parents of their GEMS to actively step into their roles as the primary faith nurturers of their daughters.

Facebook Contest! How can your club actively engage parents as your season draws to a close? How can you reach out and help motivate and equip families as you partner with them to bring girls into a living, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ? Do you have any events planned? Or, do you have other tools you use to help foster this relationship? We want to hear about it! Visit GEMS website (www.gemsgc.org) to become a member of our Facebook page, and then post your story on the wall. Not only will you give other counselors great ideas and resources for their clubs, but if we have any magazine-worthy stories posted, the most engaging will appear in an issue of SHINE brightly next season!

Mothers and daughters alike reveled in this opportunity to share a worship experience with one another. “We go-go-go all day,” Annie said. “To stop, sit, and participate in a meaningful time of singing and Scripture, where the focus is off ourselves and upward to our heavenly Father can be very touching or overwhelming if we’re open to it...I think that for women, coming into the presence of God and yielding our worries and concerns to Him can be very emotional.”

Girls from Waupun GEMS demonstrate their creative movements at their worship night.

NOT Your Average GEMS Clubs Fifty-three years ago one woman wanted to create a place for the girls in her church to learn, thrive, and grow in their relationship with God. Barb Vredevoogd began writing a curriculum at her kitchen table, and her simple act of obedience ignited a movement that now spans continents as girls around the world meet in GEMS Clubs each week.

Homeschoolers Association

With no church building (or church budget) to use as a springboard, Lisa and her fellow counselors do face some challenges unique to many clubs based at a specific church. Families are charged a small fee for their daughters to participate, and fundraisers are essential.

Lisa Cooper of Fairview, Texas was seeking intentional Christian fellowship for her daughters. “I wanted my girls to have a close group of girls with whom they had experiences that encouraged their activities and thoughts to be about God,” she explained. After helping start a club in a church the year before, Lisa, who home schools, decided to extend the invitation to other families in her area who do the same.

Moving from a borrowed room in their home school cooperative to a space in a local church was another obstacle they had to overcome, but, as Lisa put it, even transitions like this can be seen as a blessing, “As homeschoolers, we are used to cooperative classes in borrowed facilities so we are used to moving into a facility with all our supplies, holding our meeting, and then packing up and cleaning up to leave.”

Now, after four years, the club has grown from six families with eight girls to 36 GEMS and eight counselors. The club is sponsored by a local Christian home school support group that organizes activities for member home school families.

Lisa’s club also requires moms to get involved. Some watch siblings, some help in meetings or bring snacks, and some organize service projects and fundraisers. “The atmosphere at GEMS is so positive, so encouraging, so helpful, and so giving that I believe it totally feeds the soul longing for good in our lifes – good that only comes from knowing, following, and serving Jesus,” Lisa said. “Our girls get a big picture of this every time they come to GEMS and this sets a vision for them for the rest of their lives.”

Maybe your church or organization has been involved with GEMS for fifty years, or maybe your club is brand new. Either way, we want to celebrate the diversity of our clubs and the vast ways women have taken GEMS materials and used them to spark change in the lives of girls everywhere.

“I think there are two awesome developments I have seen [since we started],” Lisa said, “One is the real Christ-like friendships these girls have developed. We don’t go to school

GEMS on a Mission

together or church together or even live near each other for the most part, but as soon as the girls get to club, they are friends welcoming each other and participating together. The other is that these girls take ownership of club time. Our older girls lead during worship, and they have decided on and direct games during the fellowship time at the end. They are eager to help set up or clean up.”

Tim and Marilyn Westergren arrived in Tres Cantos, Spain (just outside of Madrid) in 1994 with Christian and Missionary Alliance. Sensing a need, Marilyn decided to start a girls group for her daughters and their friends using the same program she had been a part of as a girl growing up in Goshen, Indiana.

But, hidden in the challenge is also immense blessing. “Many girls have never heard about having a personal relationship with Christ, or the desire He has to be a part of every aspect of our lives,” Melanie continued. “GEMS offers a great avenue to speak on different subjects that they perhaps would not talk about with their parents nor would they look to Christ for His perspective on the matter. And, parents are thrilled to know that their girls are working on their English and learning healthy ways of living in their world. We also see that the girls are beginning to form healthy relationships within the group where they can grow personally and be supported by the others…We feel that GEMS is a fantastic bridge into presenting girls with the love and forgiveness of Christ as they work through real life issues.”

Exceptionally Unique “They started meeting in her home during the two hour lunch break doing various crafts, cooking, and working through the [curriculum],” explained Melanie Wendel, who currently leads the Tres Cantos GEMS Club. “Parents were thrilled knowing their children were being exposed to English and biblical values.” When the Westergren’s left on furlough, Melanie and her husband, Tim, who arrived in Tres Cantos in 2001, didn’t initially intend to continue the club. But, after being approached by a mother who was eager to extend this opportunity to her daughter, they decided to go ahead. “Two new groups were formed,” Melanie said, “and [they] have continued to grow each year. We currently have 6-8 girls in the Badge Book and 11-12 in Finishing Touches with one leader for each. The groups meet every other Friday after school. We begin with the lesson (the story translated into Spanish while the girls follow along in English), and then complete the rest of the lesson in English. We always finish with a craft, cooking, or sewing class.”

Have you ever thought about taking what you do in your current GEMS Club and using it in a new environment to minister to more girls? Maybe starting a Saturday morning club in a local community center or as a summer program at a local school? If so, we’re here to help! The Service Center can equip you with the tools you need to get started and help girls everywhere meet their Savior.

While Melanie says they encounter many of the same challenges as clubs in North America, the biggest challenge for their group is that the culture is generally apathetic toward faith. “The girls might agree with what is being taught, but because they feel alone in their growing faith, they are unable to defend it or stay true to what they believe is right,” Melanie explained. “Knowing how to reach the family, so they all grow together, is difficult.”

Dynamic Youth Ministries P.O. Box 7259 Grand Rapid, MI 49510

NON-PROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE

P.O. Box 39 Norwich, ON N0J 1P0

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Girls

GRAND RAPIDS, MI PERMIT #931

Everywhere Meeting the Savior

GREEN TRUTH

PLEASE RECYCLE

Going anywhere for spring break? Here are a few travel tips to help you lessen your impact on God’s creation:

• Flying? Book online and then print your e-ticket on recycled paper.

• Staying at a hotel? Take them up on their offer to NOT replace your towels and linens – help save water and electricity!

• Want to make a memory? Forego buying a trinket to remember your trip by – they usually end up collecting dust or in the trash, anyway. Choose a travel journal or digital pictures to record your adventures.

GEMS 15TH ANNUAL GOLF CLASSIC What do justice, mercy, and humility have to do with putters, irons, and woods? Come find out at GEMS 15th Annual Golf Classic on Friday, May 20, 2011! GEMS strives to equip women and girls to live radically faithful lives that embrace the truths of Micah 6:8, and this event is an integral part of making that happen. Each year, GEMS hosts a day of golf where friends of the ministry are able to relax, fellowship, and enjoy some time on the greens. The Golf Classic is the only fundraiser held for the overall GEMS organization. The money raised helps support the ministry and helps underwrite Get Connected! Camp – a summer camp for early teen girls. Check out the GEMS website (www.gemsgc.org) to sign up to golf with us this year at Quail Ridge Golf Course in Ada, Michigan. Is the commute too far for you to join us this year? Check out the sponsorship opportunities and find out how your business or family can help impact girls’ lives around the world! Clubs from Calgary to California are encouraged to find a way to get involved with this important fundraiser!