Regional Post: The Midstates Region

All of our sites are split up into four different region teams that work year round developing relationships in communities and working out the details for the summer. Regional Director Jason Atkinson and Area Directors Mike Thompson and Melissa Bonetti comprise the MidStates Region. In this post, Jason reflects on the life change that we see in our summer staff year after year. 

Each week of the summer we ask our site staff to fill out a weekly check in form.  It is not a complicated document, just a few simple questions like:

• Where did you see God this week?
• What was difficult this week?
• Name something you appreciate about your community.

We see this exercise as a way to help our summer staff process what they are seeing and feeling each week as they are serving on site.  We collect these forms during the summer and then in January we mail the forms back to our staff so they can look back on their summer experience after a few months back in normal everyday life.

This past week I was blessed to email out these documents to all of our MidStates staff from 2013.   I didn’t expect the response I received.  I was very encouraged to have staff write me back and tell stories from their summer; I had many staff talk about how working for YouthWorks had changed their perspective and changed the direction of their lives.  I even had one staff write to say that she is moving back to the community she served in last summer.

At YouthWorks we focus on the life change that happens in teenagers as they come to a community to serve for a week, but I will admit that I often forget about the life change that happens in our summer staff.  I am so encouraged to see young adults each summer take the opportunity to give their time and energy to this ministry; it was a great reminder to hear from a few of them this past week about what the summer experience meant to them.