End of February and Juvenile Delinquents

I can't believe February is already over, meaning we're officially one-sixth into the year (which actually doesn't sound that great so I'll restate the stats at the end of March when one-third sounds like way more of an accomplishment). I'm so glad January and February are overfor another 10 months and now I only have 7 weeks left until the end of classes! I can't believe how fast time goes out here.

March looks pretty exciting for me. Most of the exciting things happen at the end of the month, but it will definitely give me something to look forward to. This month there's another Vocal Point concert, a Harry Potter marathon movie party this Friday, Rachelle is visiting from the 22nd-25th, Emily and Jacquelyn are coming out from the 27th-April 1st, and my mom's birthday is the 26th! I'm actually looking forward to March (which normally I don't really) and I've realized that because time flies by so incredibly fast right now, regardless of the month, I need to resolve to have a good time anyway.

Moving on, for my American Heritage service hours, Katelyn and I are going with a volunteer group to the Slate Canyon Youth Detention Center to do activities with some of the kids there. I'm in a group for the 10-18 year old girls from 7:00-8:00 and then I move to work with a group of 15-18 year old boys from 8:00-9:00. When I told my parents about this they sounded a little dubious about the matter, but I love it! It is such an amazing opportunity to actually work with these kids who you find out are really good kids, but they just have bad decision making skills. My favorite group is the boys group because they're at the facility longterm. (The girls are there short term and are usually waiting for a court date or something of the like). Even just going there the two times I have, the boys are really courteous and they actually want to be there and work with the volunteers. (They earn the privilege to work with volunteers so the ones that are there want to be there). The staff there constantly remind us that these boys earned their way into the detention center and that they think criminally, so watch out, and while I see the need to keep yourself safe, these boys really aren't horrible people.

Last night I was thinking about the scripture that talks about "the least of these my brethern" in Matthew and I realized that what I'm doing at the detention center is directly working with the "least of these." When I go I'm able to see these adolescent criminals as Christ sees them; they don't act like criminals when you're there and I can see that some of these boys really do want to change and that they recognize their own fallabilities and weaknesses. When I'm there just playing games and talking with them, I'm really just having fun. I've been able to make connections with a couple of them and I'm really hoping that I can in some way impact them.

Well, I must sign out for the time being--I wish I had more to blog about, but alas I'm drawing a blank. So I will go back to doing nothing at the Physics and Astronomy Department!