BREAKOUT Christmas Party!

Today was the big Christmas Party for BREAKOUT; the name of the youth ministry I serve as youth pastor in at Parkview in Fairview Heights, Illinois. I hope they had as much as I did!

The teens can be a wild bunch and they may have some small barriers up between each other, with age differences or relationship drama, but one thing is for sure, they make me feel young, and they know how to have fun without destroying things that weren't meant to be detroyed.  When it is all said and done, I am proud of them.

I got pretty creative with some Christmas inspired games!  Here's some for anyone else's future ideas, including some tweeks that I found, after tonight, that may make the games a little better:

• Christmas Ornament Bowlgolf - Mark an "X" on the floor at one end of the room, and have the teams stand in line at the other end.  Each team gets two ornaments.  Each teamate has two chances per turn to roll their ornament closest to the "X".  The team that gets one or both ornaments the closest gets a point.  The line goes in order from front to back twice, so each teamate ends up with a second chance to roll.  The team with the most points wins!
• Stocking Stuffer - Teamates have 10 seconds each to reach in a Christmas stocking and feel a Christmas related object that is hidden inside.  They cannot take the item out or look inside the stocking.  Teamates must remain quiet and think to themselves what the item may be until all participants have had the chance to feel what is inside.  Once everyone has had their turn, teams can then talk amongst themselves to come up with one answer each team's captain will give.  The team with the most correct, once all items have been guessed, wins!
• The Perfect Gift - Each team chooses someone to be the "gift".  Teams have two minutes to wrap their "gift", using wrapping paper, ribbon, bows, tape, etc. The team that uses the most material in two minutes, and  covers their "gift" the most, wins! (we used Thomas the Tank Engine and Justin Beiber wrapping paper, but you can use whatever design you want)

My other dilema was how to give Christmas presents to everyone this year, because we've grown to the point where it's hard to buy specific gifts for indivual teens now!  (That's a great problem to have!)  So I bought an assortment of gifts and we had a gift exchange done white elephant style!  First, when each teen walked in the door tonight, they recieved a Christmas bow with a number on the bottom.  We used these numbers to not only decide on teams, but also to decide the order to go in choosing the gifts.  It worked out great!

We ended the night with a circle of prayer, and then those that could stay a little longer stuck around while we showed the movie, "Elf".

A couple teens brought me gifts tonight, too!  One just got back from Hawaii not too long ago, due to the O'Fallon Township High School's marching band getting to go, and she had a leather braided wristband made for me with my Hawaiian name engraved on it!  The other found me a mini Bumblebee Transformer and one of those snap wristbands with "AUTOBOTS" printed on it!  You have no idea how excited I am to get these gifts! 

All in all, this Wednesday ROCKED!