Ignite Youth at Grace Avenue UMC

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to wear more youth shirts? Want to support youth mission trips? Buy a mystery grab bag of youth t-shirts! ✨They’re only $5 and have 3 random youth t-shirts from events that date back to 2012! 🤯 bring cash up to the church or DM us to get yours today! We have S-XXL but amounts are limited, once they’re gone they’re gone!

Tonight we had our annual Youth Christmas Party! We had a blast playing games and celebrating together. We also collected laundry items to donate to our friends at the Paris Junior College Wesley Center so they can help college students do laundry for free. One more week until Christmas! 🎄

Our final day of mystery activities: roller skating and a turn in the Immersive GameBox! We had such a blast all weekend trying new things, growing our relationships, and having fun! We’re already looking forward to next year’s mystery trip!

Our day started out normal, we attended the contemporary service this morning at FUMC Arlington. Then things got a little… weird. A trip to Meow Wolf and Ripley’s Believe it or Not expanded our horizons and exposed us to the odd and unusual. Then we got out of our comfort zones at Bolder Adventure Park. One more day of adventure left!

Middle School Mystery Trip is well underway! We started the weekend at Adventure Landing where we suprised the students with our friends from First United Methodist Church Richardson. We haven’t seen them since Mission Trip! Then we headed to Arlington where we are staying for the weekend. We have had a packed day of exploring a local park, and tons of fun activities at the Fort Worth stockyards including a ride on the train and seeing the cattle drive! Now we are at Epic Waters indoor water park and our night is just beginning!

👇👇 how you’re gonna feel if you miss out on this year’s middle school mystery trip 😧. The sign up closes tonight, it’s not too late to join us!

https://onrealm.org/GraceAvenueUnit/PublicRegistrations/Event?linkString=M2Y0NzliMzAtNjMzYi00YjdmLTg0ODUtYjA5NjAxM2I1NjM5

Middle School Mystery Trip 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. What was your favorite Mystery Trip destination? Its not too late for current Middle Schoolers to join us for this year's mystery adventure, more info and registration is at the link!

https://onrealm.org/GraceAvenueUnit/PublicRegistrations/Event?linkString=M2Y0NzliMzAtNjMzYi00YjdmLTg0ODUtYjA5NjAxM2I1NjM5

We had a great night handing out candy at our fall festival then celebrating Halloween together! 🎃🎉

*edited to add more pics of youth and youth families at trick-or-treat. Happy Halloween everyone!*

Mission Life is so much more than just a week long mission trip. It means that High Schoolers, Middle Schoolers, and Adults from our church and others can come together to support a community. Many hands across generations have worked so hard on this house so that the owners can have a safe and accessible home. Now they don’t have to worry about their house and they can continue to bless young people through their work at the Paris Junior College Wesley Foundation. Thank you to EVERYONE who helped support our work in Paris this summer and beyond!

Our Middle School Mission Life crew had such an amazing week serving in Paris, Tx! Everyone worked so hard to be the hands and feet of Christ in this community and we did some truly incredible work. We also had a ton of fun and will always cherish the friendships we formed with the students and adults from Grace Chapel Church and First United Methodist Church Richardson. We are so grateful to them for joining us! We are so proud of all of these middle schoolers for giving their all to be of service and live a Mission Life this week.

45 middle schoolers and 22 adults from Grace Avenue UMC, Grace Chapel Church and First United Methodist Church Richardson are in Paris, TX this week to serve together and live a Mission Life. We had a great first evening of meeting our teams, dinner graciously provided by Mt. Zion United Methodist Church - Paris, Texas and opening worship with communion. We are already up and at ‘em today for our first day of work!

We do a lot of incredible work on mission trips but we also have a ton of fun! We can’t wait to return to Paris for our Middle School Mission Trip this Sunday!

We’re home safe and sound from our trip to Paris! These students accomplished some truly incredible work this week and grew closer to each other and God while doing it. Thank you for all your support and prayers for us this week!

Yesterday we made SO MUCH progress on the house! We prepped the house for paint and started priming. The middle school work teams will return to finish painting the house that we primed this week. We also made amazing progress on rebuilding the deck and will finish it up today. The highlights from yesterday though were 1) a frozen grape delivery from Heather, who is cooking for us this week, and 2) sharing a dinner with our clients and having great conversations with them. We took some group photos last night as well, and are already up and at ‘em for our last day of work!

We had such a busy day yesterday I didn’t even have time to post! We made amazing progress on the deck and on prepping the house to be painted. We got a popsicle delivery from Christopher Vaughan and a sonic delivery from Laura Echols-Richter. Thank you both for coming by and giving us a boost to get through the day! After dinner we had our annual Paint Games and had a blast playing together! We’re up and moving for day 4 and can’t wait to share our progress with you after today!

Mission Trip day two! We finished two more ramps and made progress on the house we are all working on. We also got a surprise visit and popsicle delivery from Deborah Bouis. Thanks Deborah! 💚

Our High School Mission Trip is in full swing! We built two wheelchair ramps today and started various work on a house we’ll be working on all week. We also got a visit from the Grace Chapel Church ministry team to celebrate Brayden’s birthday! 🎂🎉

Shout out to all of our youth volunteers at VBC this week! So many youth helped prep and decorate, and lead groups and activities to make week 1 amazing for all the kids. We can’t wait for week 2!

With the help of a game of art telephone and a well timed BeReal, we are excited to announce our Mission Trip Theme: Dig In! We are going to talk about a lot of different metaphors related to digging in as we work and live together for a week. It’s not too late to sign up to join us, you can register at the link here: https://linktr.ee/IgniteYouthGAUMC

Theres no better way to kick off the summer than by tossing stuff off the roof and lighting stuff on fire! We can’t wait for a summer full of fun activities, fellowship, and growing in faith. See you there!

Congratulations to our Spring 2023 Confirmation class! We are so proud of you!

The Confirmation Class of Spring 2023!

Congratulations to the Senior Class of 2023! What a great time to recognize our seniors as we talk about the seeds we are planting for the future. It is a joy to see these young people blossom and we can’t wait to see what seeds they will plant and grow.

Our Spring Confirmation class helped plant some trees on our campus for Earth Day as part of their confirmation retreat this weekend. We’re excited to see these trees grow alongside these young people!

Some pictures from our youth-led Easter Sunrise service this morning. Happy Easter everyone!

This past week, a group of our High Schoolers have spent their spring break serving and hiking in Denver. We’ve gotten to help out at Denver Rescue Mission and A Precious Child and learn from Showers For All. We’ve also been able to have some fun and enjoy the great outdoors as well. Keep us in your prayers as we start driving back to Texas tomorrow!

This is what happens when middle schoolers steal your phone

We are halfway through our Middle School mission trip and these students have done SO MUCH amazing work. We can’t wait to share our stories with you when we get home. We want to give a special shout-out to Joshua Manning and Christopher Vaughan for driving in just to help lead at a worksite on Monday and Tuesday. Thank you for sacrificing your time to come serve with us!

It’s the last team spotlight for all the hard work that our High School Mission Trip teams did in Paris. Today’s team spotlight is on the Yellow Team! 🐥☀️🍋🟡

The yellow team started the week at Mr. McCarty’s house building a new fence panel with a gate for him and cleaning up and painting the outside of his house. The new fence will allow him to let his dog (named Happy! 🐶) roam free safely in his yard. The yellow team also helped out at Ms. Johnson’s house and the PJC Wesley Center. They went out on the last day with some guys from the local Kiwanis club to build a wheelchair ramp in under three hours! Thanks for all your hard work yellow team!

Congratulations to the Senior Class of 2022! Your church family is so excited to celebrate your accomplishments with you!