Thanksgiving Food Drive

We are Thankful for Food...

And the Generous People of Falmouth!

The end of a cold morning yielded 4 carriages full of food for the Falmouth Service Center

Last Saturday, our Supermarket Food Drive was a smashing success. We collected 4 shopping carts full of food, all thanks to the generosity of the people of Falmouth! From 10am to 1pm, we stood outside of Shaw's Supermarket and passed out fliers that listed the items most needed by the Falmouth Service Center for their Thanksgiving Baskets. In addition to these items, shoppers bought other non-perishable foods that the Service Center is always in need of out. Click here for the flyer.

We would like to first thank all the youth that braved the cold, talked with patrons, and made all of this happen. We also want to thank Shaw's and our parent volunteers for their help in making this possible. And thank you to everyone who donated!

Two of our youth take a break and drink some hot apple cider!

Halloween Party

A Spooktacular Success!

I would like to start with a big thank you to all of those who helped make our Halloween Party a fun and wonderful event. Between the doughnut eating contest, the candy corn race, wink-wink murder, mummy wrapping and random dancing, there was a lot to do. Thank you for your help!

This year we played a game called Methodist And Really Incredible Other People Acting Ridiculous Together At Youth-Group (M.A.R.I.O. P.A.R.T.A.Y!) We split into four teams and tried to get as many points as possible. This included playing mini-games, performing task dictated by chance cards and Bowser chance cars, and singing Karaoke. 

The goal of the night was to continue to build a group of young people that can work together to accomplish great things. To this end, we read the story of the Ghouled Samaritan, a tale about helping others no matter who they are. If you had fun at the Halloween Party, please sign up for our Food Drive coming up soon. Click here for more info on that.

Bellow is the full text of "The Ghouled Samaritan"

Once Upon a time in the village of Graveyard town in the land O Halloween there lived a little ghoul. He was scary and grotesque and was very capable of scaring just about anyone he wanted to scare. In fact, he was known as the ugliest ghoul of them all and possessed all the necessary characteristics you would want in a good ghoul. On Halloween night, he would spend most of his time scaring little children, but in the off-season, which was 364 days of the years (365 on leap years) he would spend his time scaring the other inhabitants of the Halloween land. In fact all of the villages in Halloween land would spend the off-season trying to scare each other and out-do the other villages. And the biggest rival of Graveyard town was the village next door, Tombville. Nothing made our ghoul happier than to scare the inhabitants of Tombville and send them crying home to their mummies…

On most days, he would find a bush that was covered in shadows and wait for an unsuscpecting Tombvillian to walk by, then he would jump out and scream at them. It was a classic scare and rather simple, but it was very effective and achieved the desired result. However, on this particular day, things became more complicated. As our little ghoul was hiding in the bushes, he saw a mummy walking up the road, but instead of being happy and skipping down the road like most mummies, this mummy was already crying and seemed very sad. Before it got the bush where our little ghoul was hiding, the mummy sat down under a tree and started crying ever more loudly. The little ghoul wondered why the mummy was crying and wanted to ask it, but he was unsure of what to do. Just then he saw another mummy walking down the road. Our little ghoul recognized it at once, it was the mummy of king tut! “Surely,” our little ghoul though, “Surely the king will stop and ask this poor mummy what it is wrong.” But upon noticing the crying mummy, the mummy of King Tut walked a little faster and passed by without asking. “Wow, what a mean mummy,” our little ghoul thought. But then he saw another mummy coming down the road and he knew this mummy would stop and ask the crying mummy what was wrong. This was because the mummy skipping down the road was the mummy of a mother. It was a mommy mummy and they wre known throhgout Halloween Lan as the most compassionate of the all the creatures. But upon noticing the crying mummy, the mommy mummy crossed over to the other side of the road and skipped by even faster.

Our little ghoul could not believe it, mummies were supposed to help each other, and two of the most respected mummies just walked right by and fellow mummy in need. Our little ghoul could not stand it. So instead of sacring the crying mummy, he walked over and asked it what was wrong. Our little ghoul and the crying mummy ended up talking for hours and hours about allt he issues a young creature faces in the Land of Halloween. Our little ghoul cheered it up and even told it a few funny jokes like, why the skeleton couldn’t cross the road and who Frankenstein took to the school dance. And together they learned that it is ok to compete with one another, but when someone is in need, you should try and help them out.

Geocaching

We found more Treasure!

Mr. Tags holds up a small trinket found in a traditional geocache

Youth gather around as we go through
the treasures in a geocache.

   A small plastic Dora the Explorer ring may not seem like a treasure. But after walking a few miles through the woods, it seems nearly as valuable as gold! After School last Friday the youth met in the youth room and we embarked on a geocaching journey into Goodwill Park. We completed 3 stages of a 10 stage geocache and also found a more traditional cache along the way. For all you muggles out there (muggles are people that do not geocache), geocaching is kind of like a high tech treasure hunt. People upload the coordinates of "caches" to a website and other people like us can download them onto our handheld GPS device and go find them.

  

   Some caches like the one we did last Friday involve multiple steps. We were directed to locations and then we had to find letters that were either found on a plaque, written under a rock, or stapled to a tree. Once we collect all the letters, we will be able to figure out the coordinates to the final cache and collect the treasure!

   

   At the end of a long and tiring afternoon, we closed with a circle prayer and thanked God for our wonderful group of young people and for the adventurers out there that hid and maintained the caches we enjoyed. Thanks geocachers, and thank you Mrs. Harbison for being a volunteer chaperon!

Youth Group Begins Again!

Youth Group Starts This Sunday

A game of "mummy wrap" during our annual Halloween Party

It is a new year and time to start meeting again. This year, we will be meeting every Sunday evening from 4-5pm down in the Youth Room. We have lots of fun events planned for this fall including Geocaching and a Halloween Party. We are also going to do some community service in the form of a canned food drive during the Thanksgiving Season and our live nativity around Christmas. See you soon!

Six Flags was Fun!

by Zoe

The end of a tiring and fun day at the park.

On August 4th, 2014, the JWUMC Youth Group took a road trip to Six Flags New England! At the start of the day, Skylar, Miranda, and Mr.Tags were brave enough to ride The "Bizzaro!" while Milo, Josh, Zoe, Clayton and Tyler rode the Gotham City Gauntlet at least 5 times in a row.  Even though it was really hot, everybody had a blast! (There were misting machines to help us cool off a bit!) 

Getting ready to ride the Buzzsaw

We had a picnic lunch in the shade of sandwiches, veggies, chips, and fruit. Then after lunch we headed down to the water park to refresh and take a cool dip. We rode the Tornado water slide together, went down tube slides and body slides. We played under a big fountain and splashed around in the wave pool. It was a great end to a great day.

Special thanks to our volunteer sponsors, Ms. Tiffany and Ms. Julie. This would not have happened without Mr. Tags, so THANKS Mr. Tags! Six Flags was a great way to spend a summer day with friends!  If you missed Six Flags this time around, you definitely don't want to miss the next trip!

Summer Programs

Summer is Here,

Lets Have Some Fun!

There are plenty of fun and exciting things happening at the church this summer:

Lock-In

July 18

5pm to midnight

Come to the youth room for a night of games, food, movies, and lots of fun.  This is a great event to bring a friend, and lots of energy to.  We will try and stay up until midnight!

Falmouth Bike Lab, Earn-A-Bike

July 7-11

July 21-25

9am to noon

This summer, the FBL will be holding its Earn-A-Bike program where youth can come and learn about bikes and how to ride them.  At the end of the program, youth will have earned a bike that they can take home!  It is a lot of fun and teaches many valuable skills.  Sign up by emailing Mr. Tags at jwygfalmouth@gmail.com. More info at www.falmouthbikelab.blogspot.com.

Field Trip to Six Flags

August 4

All Day

Celebrate the last few weeks of summer freedom with a trip to Six Flags.  We will meet at the church early in the morning and drive to Six Flags for the day.  We had lots of fun last year and even road some big roller coasters!

Cape Cod Puppet Gam

July 8, 15, 22, 29 and Aug 5

4pm

Come and enjoy a puppet show put on by Dream Tale Puppets and other troupes throughout the region.  It's a great event for the whole family and one that will surely make you smile.  More info at www.dreamtalepuppets.org.

Egg Hunt

The Eggs Were Found!

we hid over 1800 eggs

Holy week was a very busy week for us at the church so I apologize for the late post.  But just so you know, our Easter Egg Hunt went great!  We had over 1800 eggs and they were gone is just under 18 minutes!  There were potato sack races before hand and delicious "resurrection rolls" to eat after all the egg hunting was done.  Thanks to all the folks that helped out and to all the youth that stuffed all those eggs!

we had so many eggs, some of them were just "hidden" on the lawn

We Stuffed Over 1,000 Eggs!

Thanks to all the youth and parents that helped stuff Easter Eggs last Sunday.  In two hours, we managed to stuff over 1,000 eggs and eat three large pizzas!  We would also like to thank the good people of John Wesley UMC for donating so much candy.  We had so much candy, Mr. Leonard thought he had died and gone to candy heaven!

Join us this Saturday at 8am to help hide Easter Eggs for the 10am Easter Egg Hunt that is open to the entire community.

Falmouth Eats Together Clean-Up

This Thursday

This Thursday from 5:45 to about 6:15 pm we will be helping the folks from Falmouth Eats Together to put away chairs, move tables around, and generally help clean up.  F.E.T. is an awesome community event that feeds more than 300 people.  Show up between 4 and 6 pm to get a free meal yourself and then stick around to help us clean.  Bring a friend to join in on the food and fellowship!

Caned Food Drive

Chaperons Needed for Canned Food Drive

(Sunday, March 30, 4:00 to 5:30 pm)

We need chaperons for our canned food drive planned for our next meeting.  Chaperons will help lead a group of our youth as we walk around town and ask for food donations.  Our neighbors are very supportive of this mission and typically give generously.  This is a great way to spend some time with our youth and get a little exercise.  The more chaperons we have, the more groups we can have canvasing the neighborhood, and the more food we can collect.  The harder it is to pull our wagon full of cans and boxes, the more accomplished our youth can feel.  Help make this a successful event, email or talk to Jeremy if are willing to help.  

Youth are encouraged to bring a friend as well.  More people usually means more food for the Falmouth Service Center.

We're Stars!

Thank you to Falmouth Community Television for showing us around their studios last Sunday.  After a quick tour and explanation of how things work, we got a chance to host our own talk show.  We probably won't win any awards for best writing or visual effects (although we did learn how to use a green screen) but we might win the award for having the most fun.  We had a great time and may have even discovered some new talent.  Watch out Jimmy Fallon!

NEXT MEETING: March 30, 4:00 p.m. Canned Food Drive

Falmouth Eats Tomorrow Night!

Falmouth Eats Together Clean-Up 

(Thursday, March 13, 5:45 to 6:15 pm)

Meet in the fellowship hall to help put away chairs, tables, and generally help clean up after Falmouth Eats Together.  Show up early to enjoy the meal and feel free to bring a friend (many hands make light work).

Puppets are Fun!

The youth group would like to say a big thank you to Jacek Zuzanski and Dream Tale Puppets for another fun and successful workshop!  This time, we learned all about table top puppets and how to make them come alive.  We even had a chance to produce a few short skits.  We had a lot of fun performing for one another and some of us even laughed so hard we cried.  It was a great time!

Join Us for Pizza and Puppets

Pizza and Puppets!

(Sunday, March 2, 5:30 to 7:00 pm)
Our resident puppeteer is due for another visit to the youth room.  Join us for pizza, followed by a puppeteer workshop with Jacek Zuzanski of Dream Tale Puppets.  We always have a good time with Jacek, and his puppets are sure to make you smile.  Don't forget to bring a friend to join in on the fun!  

Super Bowl Results

That was a fun game!  is what members of the youth group were saying before either football team took the field last week.  Before the big game, we played a bunch of our own.  Each time someone won a game, they had the chance to flip the commemorative super bowl coin which had an S on one side and a B on the other.  Whichever team's letter was facing up got the points earned by the youth during the game.  We continued this over the course of the entire party in order to predict what the score would be.  Believe it or not, at the end of the night, we had predicted that the Seahawks would win 46-12, not to far from the truth!

The other big winner was Miranda, who correctly predicted more stats about the game than any other youth.  Congratulations to her and thanks to everyone for helping out and having fun!

Youth Group This Sunday

Pre-Super Bowl Party 

(This Sunday, Feb 2, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.)

The Pats may no longer be in the hunt, but we still have a reason to come together, play games and eat tasty food.  Paper football tournament, referee balloon pop, Super Bowl of Nouns, and all sorts of other fun is planned for the evening.  Join us this Sunday to get excited for the big game.  Bring a friend to join in on the fun!  Parents, if you are willing to help provide snacks for this event, please let me know by replying to this email.

MLK Day

To celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we joined up with folks from around the Cape and took part in the Americorp MLK Day of Service.  We traveled to Cape Abilities in Dennis to help out with their mission.  While there, we helped install hydroponic tomato plants.  Gov. Patrick even stopped by and helped us with our work.  We all had a great time, and meeting the governor was way cool!

We want to thank Americorp and all the folks that helped us out make this day possible.

Fire Department Tour a Success

The youth group would like to extend a huge thank you to Mel Trot and the Falmouth Fire Rescue Department for showing us around the firehouse last Sunday.  Youth and parents alike enjoyed seeing all the engines, the ambulance, search and rescue vehicles and boats.

We had the chance to climb into a fire engine and got to pretend to be scuba divers in the scuba bus.  We saw the living spaces and office spaces of the department and heard all about the day to day operations

Officer Trot also told us stories from his career and some of the ways that he helps to educate folks about fire prevention.  He even gave us carabiners and pencils to take home to remind us of our tour.



At the end of our tour, almost on queue, a call came into the station and we got to see the firemen spring into action and go to the rescue.  We want to thank all the folks at FFRD for all they do to keep us safe!

Tour of Fire Department Rescheduled

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you are all staying warm and enjoying the beauty of new fallen snow.  The new year brings some exciting new events with youth group and we will start next week with a tour of the Falmouth Fire Department.  Meet at the church at 4:00 pm next Sunday (January 12, 2014).  We will be back at the church by 5:30 pm.  Hope to see you there!