Sugar Highs

Yesterday was productively spent with a group of people that feel like family- my church family. Saturday was the date for the traditional batch of Easter Candy Chocolate the youth group sells every Spring as a fundraiser. Needless to say, the kids always sell a ton of the chocolate or white chocolate lollipops, peanut butter, fudge nut, or coconut ½ lb. eggs to a church who indulges in their sweet tooth, as well as the community around them, but then again, who doesn’t?

I’m not kidding when I say there is a ton of chocolate to be made. Something like 500 eggs of one kind are produced in a 3 days span along with hundreds of molded and packaged lollipops from the melted chocolate we purchase in a nearby town. Christmas candy is a newer sales technique they have participated in, was enacted when I was a member of the youth group, and we made something like 30,000 little pieces of 7 different kinds of chocolate cup candies.

I always love to go back to lend a hand like many of the adults do. I remember being a youth member and looking around to see adults from the church family come out to spend their Saturday pouring hot chocolate into molds or taffy pans without any benefit. The youth were usually paid minimum wage or more for the hours they worked on top of the total percentage of sales. Yet these adults gave up their time to stop in and make candy for hours on end with a bunch of teenagers. I always made a point to go around to each adult before they departed on their way or the ones who stuck it out until the end to say “Thank you” for coming out and helping us in this effort.

Now I’m the “adult”. I still get that same excitement entered the Fellowship Hall where the tables are set up and the rustling is going on. I can always here some type of music playing, often times CD’s brought in by the kids which eventually get taken out because of majority rule by the fellow teens or the adults can’t take the music anymore. I enter the room and everyone is doing a task, from pouring the hot chocolate into molds, mixing in the peanut butter, putting the chocolate in the toddler’s room which is converted into a freezer room or the sloped up fridges coated in chocolate, wrapping each lollipop into it’s on bag or stuffing pretzels into the Easter decorated boxes, or cleaning up the dishes and drying them off until next year. First off, I take time to go around and say hello and everyone looks happy to see me, especially the adults who consider me gone with no obligation to come and help. But I come. Candy making is more than just the task, not saying I don’t try to do the job to my best ability (I’ve been doing it for years as an old school youth member) but I come also for the fellowship and the service for God that I do in helping out like those adults of the past.

Of course, you’re bound to get tired from standing and walking, sitting and talking, and getting hit with some chocolate from time to time, but when I’m with that group, it’s my second home, and I miss Sunday night youth group a whole lot. The most I’ve missed the old gang was when I attended Jubilee Conference last weekend. I remember the grand days of youth conventions and having that close-knit group around me, like a security blanket. At first, I was stubborn at Jubilee like a child who didn’t want things to change, with an attitude like “Nothing can compare to my old group. My time with them was much better.” But by the end of the weekend, I did have my close-knit group- the family of God, and we were together doing something we all love- learning and praising God.

I guess candy making means a lot to me, probably why I always find out what weekend it falls on. I read Sharon’s post about Leo being active in his Teen groups and it makes me smile. Those were the days, but I must keep in mind, there are more amazing adventures to come.