Letting our energy efficient lights shine!

We made light switch stickers to remind people to, "Please
turn off this little light of ours."

Even the youth group members need a reminder on our
light switches.

The youth group is going green, and we are taking the rest of John Wesley United Methodist Church with us.  It was a little too snowy/rainy for us to go on a food drive last Sunday, so we decided to stay in and work inside.

We took a short tour of the church to see all the great ways that we save energy.  The church uses programmable thermostats.  This means that the church is warm when people are using it, and cooler when there is no one here.  And since nobody likes to walk into a cold church, the thermostats can be programmed to kick on before anyone shows up.

But a few things that aren't programmable are our light switches.  So we made some light switch stickers that will remind people to turn them off when they are not in use.  We put them up in most of the Sunday School rooms.

Join us this upcoming Sunday for our food drive.  The weather is looking OK, so pray that it will be nice out!

Food Drive Take Two

As the town of Falmouth recovers from the big storms (including one that canceled our meeting last week), the youth group will be doing our part by helping to restock the Falmouth Service Center's food supply.

This Sunday, February 24th at 4:00pm, we will be walking around the neighborhood to collect nonperishable foods to donate to the service center.

Last time we collected so much food that we had trouble carrying it back to the church, so if you have a wagon that we can borrow, please bring it.  Also, if parents are available, please stay for the meeting to help chaperon.

It might be cold, so wear warm clothes (I think we might even have some hot chocolate).

No Youth Group Tonight

There will be no youth group tonight (Feb 17th) due to the snow.  Please be safe.

We will reschedule this meeting for next Sunday, Feb 24.

Enjoy your school break!

A picture from Peterson Farms the day after last week's snow storm.

Food Drive

As the town of Falmouth recovers from the big storm, the youth group will be doing our part by helping to restock the Falmouth Service Center's food supply.

This Sunday, February 17th at 4:00pm, we will be walking around the neighborhood to collect nonperishable foods to donate to the service center.

Last time we collected so much food that we had trouble carrying it back to the church, so if you have a wagon that we can borrow, please bring it.  Also, if parents are available, please stay for the meeting to help chaperon.

Recycling Paper

Tiffany Van Mooy shows the youth group some of her
paper made art.

The large tub is filled with the slurry and we used sponges
to soak up the extra water.

Sunday, Feb 3rd was all about paper.  After a quick lesson about how paper is made.  Tiffany Van Mooy brought in some of her recycled paper sculptures and showed the youth group some of the cool things that can be made by reusing paper.

Then it was time for us to get our hands dirty and make our own paper out of old paper.  We took the old paper and pureed it in a blender with some water.  This purple oatmeal-like "slurry" was poured into a plastic tub and mixed around using our hands.

Then we took something called a "deckle" and scooped up some of the slurry.  The deckles were made by taking some fiberglass screen and clothes pinning it to aluminum baking trays with holes cut in them.  This let the water drain out and allowed the woods fibers called lignin to bond with each other.

We dabbed the extra water off of the paper with some sponges and set them out to dry.  After a few days, we had paper.  It is kind of heavy, almost like card stock and will work great for sending thank you notes.

Here is a video about how other people make paper.

Making Paper

We can use our paper to write thank you cards to people
like Officer Macguire and other folks that help us out.

We will take old paper, put it in a
blender, and make into new paper.

This Sunday, February 3rd, we will be making recycled paper and talking about things that we can do as a Youth Group to make our church "greener."  We are going to need newspaper to let our paper dry on as well as some old paper to recycle.

Here is what the paper looks
like while it is drying.

I used some of my old homework assignments to make into new paper.  Feel free to bring in any type of paper that you don't want any more.  You can also bring some glitter or bits of flower to through into our paper "slurry" to make our paper more fun.

You can also bring a friend.

Police Department Visit a Success: No Youth Left Behind in Cell

Youth and Parents inside the control room. 

 Last Sunday the Youth Group and a few parents visited the Falmouth Police Department to take a tour of facilities and ask questions to the men and women in blue.

We got to see the control room where all the 911 calls are answered and dealt with.  We were told to be quiet in this room since the dispatcher would be taking calls.  Officer Maguire, our tour guide, told us that we were the quietest group he ever had in there!

Officer Maguire shows us a battering ram

We also got to see the detective division and interrogation rooms.  However, it seemed like the youth were doing most of the interrogating.  Thanks to their questions, we learned things like the most outrageous 911 call ever received, what it feels like to be tazed, and how crimes get solved.

no door is safe 

We got to take a quick peak at the holding cells and booking rooms.  Officer Maguire told us that most of the people he has to deal with are not bad people.  They are probably just having a bad day or a string of not-so-good circumstances.  He became a police officer because he wanted to help out his community.  So even though that means arresting people from time to time, he truly wants to help everyone he comes into contact with.  It is nice to know that we are in such good hands.

The tour ended with a look at some of the vehicles the officers get to drive.  You may see these cars parked in our church parking lot from time to time.  This is because most of an officers job is filling out paper work after something happens.  They use our lot from time to time to sit and fill out these forms on their build-in computers.  And we certainly don't mind having an officer around.


We want to say a big thank you to Officer Maguire for giving us a tour and the entire staff of the Falmouth PD for all the great work they do keeping us safe.