by Rick Hudson and Scott Gronholz

One Friday a month the Middle School Youth Group comes together for a fun evening activity (game night, laser tag, broomball, etc). What? You haven’t heard of broomball? Broomball on the ice is basically hockey without skates, a puck, or a hockey stick. Instead, it’s tennis shoes, a volleyball, and a broom. It is actually comical because tennis shoes on ice make it difficult to start or to stop. January’s fun night was originally scheduled to be broomball at an ice skating rink, but it evolved into something much more.

In response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti, January's middle school event turned into an evening of service and fun in Bethany’s Fellowship Hall. The youth group, along with Fraser Ratzlaff of Children of the Nations, ended up packaging 4,000 meals to be shipped to Haiti. There was definite joy found in serving:

"It was really fun working together for such a good cause. We did everything so fast and were laughing the entire time” (Becca Nelson, 8th Grade).

“Three stations were set up to quickly separate, weigh and package each meal of rice and beans that could be made into soup. “I never knew packing food could be so much fun!” (Willem Steenstra, 7th Grade).

“It was really cool because you got to work with kids in the youth group that you don't normally work with and got to serve with and got to know people a little better. It felt really good to be able to serve so many people in Haiti... I made a lot of fun memories. it was awesome!" (Abbey Westburg, 8th Grade).

“The original event was planned with a twist: it was “super hero broomball” – where everyone dresses up like a super hero. Of course we kept the theme! From Incredible Dawn to Stupendous Man, it was quite a crew serving as the hands and feet of Jesus that evening. Amazingly, “Stupendous Man was made even more stupendous while throwing more bags of rice and beans” (Tyler Nelson, 6th Grade).

And after all of this, we still did our best to play a few periods of broomball in the fellowship hall! This became a very different game because now (instead of when on the ice) we could start and stop. We kept the team sizes to six on six and had a blast trying to get the ball through the other team’s goal. With a broken handle or two and a lot of straw left on the floor, the brooms didn’t fare so well.

Nor did some of the leaders: "I was sore for three days! Between catching bags of packaged soup in boxes, chasing a ball across the floor with a broom and trying to keep my super hero costume together I used all the superpowers that I had, but was still overflowing with joy from serving together and alongside such great friends!" (Dawn Bonker, Leader)

Our final event of the evening was seeing how many broom straws each person could pick up before the zamboni…ok, vacuum cleaner…made a couple passes over the floor. It was an amazing night of service and fellowship.