 It's good to see all of y'all. I am Emma Williams. I work for the Center for Leadership Development in Faith Formation, and I also am the Children's Director at Grace Chapel up on the 380 corridor. And I will be leading us through this experience today along with CJ Rice. CJ is a veteran youth minister in the North Texas Conference and currently serves at FUMC Plano, the Minister to Youth and Families. She also is an inaugural member of our A Time for Youth cohort, which expands on the A Time for Children model in our conference and has worked with us, with CCYM, and she's super credentialed, so don't worry. She knows what she's talking about. So CJ's here to help us through this conversation as well, especially when we're talking about youth, to talk about some practical things of what she's done in her youth group during this whole time. So if you have been following the webinar schedule of our conference, which I know is kind of a lot to wade through, this started out as a conversation in mid-March when we were thinking about what our children and youth pastors needed as resources and in mid-March we thought certainly by the end of April we would have some recommendations for going back to in-person worship. And so that's what we put on the schedule. So something like next steps for children's and youth ministry. So if you saw that, and now you've seen that it's changed, that's because it has, because we made it to mid-April and it turns out we still don't have a lot of concrete answers. We don't have a lot of, this is exactly what should happen next. This is gonna be the safest way for us to move back into our sanctuaries and into our education wings. This is going to be the right answer. I think we all have found now that there just isn't gonna be a clear cut right answer. And in that there's a lot of ambiguity and anxiousness that our leadership in our churches are feeling, but also our kids and our youth are feeling that because their activities are being canceled or postponed indefinitely and they're looking toward their parents, they're looking toward their pastors, they're looking toward their youth and children's leaders to figure out what's next. And so when we talked about what are our next steps for children and youth ministries, we moved from, how do we get back in person? Because once again, we're just, I mean, we don't have a clear answer on that. It's gonna be probably different because some of us are in Forney and some of us are in Wichita Falls everywhere in between. So our next steps are less about how do we get back in person, but how do we help our children and youth walk through this time rather than sitting in sort of just the loss and the anxiety and the sadness. And in our calls, if you've been on any of the calls with Dr. Terry Parsons or Leigh and Hadley, there's been a lot of talk about the grieving process and how it's not a linear process. It is gonna go back and forth, but ultimately out of that grieving process, we're looking for the idea of making meaning. That something has to come out of this process of grief that God promises us that meaning comes out of our experiences. And so what we wanna talk about today is that idea of how do we move children and youth from that loss and ambiguity and anxiousness to the certainty of God's love into making some kind of meaning out of this crazy time. And Joseph Bradley's gonna facilitate our slides here. So we'll start on this. Let me get this all set for my screen as well. So as we look at what we are called to do as people that work with children and youth, I think we are called to do some things very specifically because we're working with young people. We obviously have a theological call that we'll talk about. We have a call that God has placed on all of us to make disciples. We have a call to show God's love to our kids and our youth, but because we're working with people who are still growing and learning very rapidly, we also have a call to help them developmentally. And that doesn't exist outside of our call to be the church. We want their development to come up alongside of our theological development so that they are learning and growing in the context of the church. And then we have a call relationally. We have a call to connect with our kids and our youth in a way that allows them to grow. We know that peer-to-peer relationship is so important, especially as you get to adolescence, teens are looking at other teens for guidance and for reassurance and to look and see what's right. And they also are looking toward us and they're looking at us, which is kind of a scary thought but they're looking at us to say, what does this mean? How, why does this happen, right? Why can we not just end this? Like, why does God not just end this? They're looking at us in a relationship of certainty that we have it all figured out and how do we help them walk through figuring it out themselves and knowing that knowing that not everyone has, everyone doesn't have it figured out and that's okay because God hasn't figured out. I found this quote actually this morning and I added it in and it was in one of my, or it's in a reflection from Richard Rohr that I get in my inbox every morning and it's talking about liminal space and specifically a dark liminal space. So it was from a chaplain at the hospital talking about what it means to walk through the sort of time between diagnosis and death of, for a person and their family. And what she said was to heal from our suffering, not merely to ease or palpate, sorry, not merely to ease or palliated, but to transform it into the source and substance of our growth and wisdom requires a journey through it. And that's really what we're gonna talk about today is how do we journey through the pain and the loss? How do we not stay in the pain and the loss? How do we journey through it? So we go to the next slide. And if you've done any work with Lee and Hadley, this will look very familiar. This is a model for all ministry really that she calls God-centered spiritual transformation and she will tell you and you'll know if you've never talked about this before that this model will look very familiar even if you've never officially studied it because this is the model that our lives take. This is life, death, resurrection. This is disorientation, reorientation. And it's the model that a lot of our biblical stories go through. So it starts at the top with sort of an entrance into a sacred space. You're given a spiritual tool. Sometimes that's just scripture or other sort of tools. And what we want to do is to move into this deep time of transformation. So moving away from the surface and away from the church answers, the answers of Jesus, God, that's kind of thing. So into this sort of deep time of transformation. And then once we get there, we want children and youth to be able to reintegrate, right? To not just take what they've learned and sit there but then say, what does this mean for my life? What does this mean for my friends and my family? And then we send them out with the blessing that both blesses the children and blesses us and reminds us that the children and youth that we work with are gods. They are not ours to fix, they're ours to love as God loves. And this part at the top, the spontaneous sharing is something that was recently added. And it basically means that once we go through this you over and over and over again, once we experience transformation and we reintegrate into our lives, that we'll see children and youth begin to share with their family and friends. And in that way they are sharing the gospel, they're fulfilling that great commission. And we see especially, like I said, with teenagers they start to change their peer group because teens look to other teens for that sort of blessing that it's okay to be a Christian, it's okay to love God, it's okay to share your faith. So before we get started, I wanted to walk us through the story. If you follow the lectionary, this is the scripture from this Sunday. And it really, as we're talking about how we have kids and youth understand what's going on right now, I think that scripture is a huge source of inspiration and hope because scripture is just a book of people who are going through some really hard times and God shows up and transforms them in some way. And especially this Road to Emmaus story that was really pertinent to the loss that we are feeling right now. We did this exercise actually with our conference council on youth ministry this Saturday. We read the Road to Emmaus and then talked about, using the listening stones, talked about where are you on the road and some really powerful images came out. And so I wanna read this story for y'all. And you can think about where you are on the road. And then we'll also look at how this fits into the you and how we can use this when we're talking about processing this whole situation with our children and youth. So if you wanna follow along, I'm much more of a visual person. So we're in Luke 24. On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about everything that had happened. While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey. They were prevented from recognizing him. He said to them, what are you talking about as you walk along? They stopped, their faces downcast. One of them named Cleopas replied, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of these things that have taken place over the last few days? He said to them, what things? They said, the things about Jesus of Nazareth, because of his powerful deeds and words, he was recognized by God and all the people as a prophet. But our chief priest and our leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. All these things happened three days ago, but there's more. Some women from our group have left us stunned. They went to the tomb early this morning and didn't find his body. They came to us saying that they had even seen visions of angels who told them he is alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women said. They didn't see him. Then Jesus said to them, you foolish people, your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets have talked about. Wasn't it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory? Then he interrupted, or then he interpreted for them the things written about himself and all the scriptures starting with Moses and going through the prophets. When they came to Emmaus, he acted as if he was going on ahead, but they urged him saying, stay with us. It's nearly evening and the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. After he took his seat at the table with them, he took bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he disappeared from their sight. They said to each other, weren't our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scripture for us? They got up right then and returned to Jerusalem. They found the 11 and their companions gathered together. They were saying to each other, the Lord really has risen. He appeared to Simon. Then the two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread. And so when we think about the road to Emmaus story, I've overlaid it on our you thinking about how are we experiencing life, death and resurrection? The story begins with I think where we all are right now and where we have a tendency to get stuck, especially in this time when there just isn't a clear answer to when everything will end. The disciples relive grief and loss and they do that for a large portion of this story. They're reliving it with each other and they are telling this person and who doesn't love to tell someone news that they haven't, someone hasn't heard, especially if it's dramatic news. And that's what I think they're doing right here, but instead of processing through it, they're just reliving it. They're just saying, I can't believe you haven't heard this and it's so sad. And someone said that his body wasn't there but I don't know, I didn't see it. All I know is this horrible stuff that happened before and they live this and they live up here in the top of the you in this grief. And then when we talk about a spiritual tool, we see that the scripture says that Jesus opens the scriptures for them and explains all of the things that scripture had predicted. Scripture had said would happen and we see them walk into Emmaus and what is the transformation but a shared meal? A meal that resembles the Eucharist, a meal that we know to be transformative in our lives and their eyes were opened and then they reflected on their time with Jesus. They said, we experienced him opening the scriptures earlier. And then once we had this transformative experience, we understood what we were experiencing. And then they leave Jerusalem, they leave for Jerusalem changed, blessed by Jesus and they move to share the good news. So in this road to Emmaus story, we see maybe a model of what our response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be with children and youth especially. So like I said, it's important to acknowledge the grief and the loss. And if you haven't watched either the webinar with Dr. Parsons or Leigh-Anne Hadley, I really suggest that you go back on our NTCUMC.org page under COVID resources and check out those webinars because listening empathetically without trying to fix problems, especially for kids and youth who adults are constantly trying to fix their problems is a huge part of what's gonna help them move through this grief. But we can't stay there. We can't stay at the acknowledging grief part. And certainly every milestone that passes, every birthday that you don't get to celebrate with your family or friends and the graduations, those days will sting. But we have to be able to acknowledge them move through them. And so the next is that spiritual tool. And CJ, I think especially, will talk about sort of some curriculum that'll help you in this spiritual tool part. But I think most simply, what you can do is use scripture to help process where kids are feeling. If you wanna sort of strip it down to just sort of the basic parts. So processing what you're feeling through the lens of scripture. And that's where the heart, which does transforming grief into meaning, and that simply is not our work. That's the work of God. We're gonna set up the spiritual tool and we will set up the reflection and the blessing, but that transformation happens when we put that work into the hands of God. And then we move up to the reflection. What have we gained in this time? And how are we changed? And then the blessing that God is always with us, even in right now when things seem hopeless and when things seem unsteady, that God is the steady thing with us. So constantly reminding kids of these certainties is something CDA is gonna talk about as well. And when we do this and we do this over and over again and it won't be super successful every single time, but sometimes it really will be amazing. And when we do this and we get kids in this practice, they will reframe our, they will reframe this pandemic for their friends and their parents and their congregations. They'll become leaders in their congregations and they will be the hope that we need right now. So part of, especially with, we can go to the next slide, especially with children and youth, part of our job is to help them when we talk about developmentally, is to help them have some perspective on what's going on right now. It's very, of course we're sad that they're going to miss a final concert and of course we grieve with them that they're missing these special things that honestly we probably all got to do. And so a little bit is saying you don't dismiss it, but we have, as adults, have the gift of a fully developed brain. The brain doesn't finish developing until like between 25 and 27. And so when we're asking kids to have some perspective, that is something that we're gonna have to help them along with. And sadly, we're gonna have to help them maybe a little faster than they want to because it's time for us to keep moving. I keep a journal for my, I have a three-year-old and a six-month-old. And I keep like a little one line a day journal for them. And I've been dating the days of the pandemic since I've been at work is kind of what I started with. And I'm pretty sure last night it was day 45. We are a month and a half into this and we need to help our kids. That means they have been grieving for a month and a half. And if we haven't already helped them sort of along with caring perspective and developing empathy and gratitude that it's time to help them as a group start looking for how we're gonna grow out of this. Doesn't have to be a silver lining per se. You don't have to think about it like that. It's not that we are happy that this happened so that we can trust God more, but because it's happened it means that we have to find a way to grow in this time. And so part of that is empathy development. And I'm sure everyone understands what empathy is, right? Understanding other people's feelings. That's not something that we're born with. It's something that happens in our brain in that we can mirror people's emotions but the actual ability to understand... I'm still on the first one, Joseph. No worries, you were right. The actual ability to understand and sympathize and empathize is something that we're taught over our entire adolescence. And this part is really important because we can't move down out of the surface of the you. So when you look at the you that top is sort of the like the fun stuff, the surface stuff, the things that you don't have to dig too far into. So empathy helps us move down toward that transformational moment when we can both name our feelings and others' feelings. And I found this, when I was looking through all of this I found something that said empathy is caught. It's not taught. And that basically was referring to the fact that you don't have to sit kids down and teach them like empathy is when you understand other people's feelings. Now, sometimes those lessons are good but you're not gonna do that every day. What you're gonna do is weave it into the ways that you teach children and youth throughout your year. And it's things like practicing when you engage in scriptures. I mean, who hasn't done, what do you think that person was feeling? If you were in this scripture, which person would you be? So practicing recognizing feelings and recognizing others. And we can increase these empathetic responses by noting similarities rather than differences. So when we're talking about our communities and serving people to point out that our unity in Christ, right? Or that person's the same age as you or they want to be a doctor when they grow up some things like that. So finding points of similarity rather than pointing out differences especially when we move into missional work which a lot of our work is gonna be during this time both sort of immediate need and also emotional need. And children and youth need help to develop these muscles. Even teenagers, they might think that they have all of this down but they are inherently selfish not in a judgmental way but that's how their brain is wired. They're wired to look at who am I? Who do I wanna be? What is me? What is not me? They're figuring out who they are. And so they also need help flexing those empathy muscles. And so when you look at developing empathy you can look at things like understanding you have distinct feelings and perspectives recognizing your feelings which is a big one for teenagers because during adolescence that whole part of the brain is running on 150%. And the feelings that they are feeling are big and they are not sure what those are all of the time. So helping them especially when you're reading other people's stories helping them identify those feelings might help them identify the feelings inside of them. Regulating emotional responses. Once again, I have a three year old so I know all about the need to regulate emotional responses but even in youth there are explosive feelings that need help being regulated. Placing yourself in someone else's shoes so the same sort of perspective how would you feel if that were you? And then lastly, imagining what kind of action or response might help a person feel better? And that's a big one for right now. How are we gonna serve people? What does somebody need? That need is not necessarily gonna be the same as my need. Maybe somebody needs to be listened to. Maybe somebody just needs to hear a funny story. Those could serve the same purpose but they're very different needs. And what we're looking for when we develop empathy is ultimately this idea of resilience. And I'm sure that y'all have done many a continuing ed on resilience but right now we need a specific kind of resilience. And resilience is this inner strength that rises to meet needs. And when I was looking at article at, it's called the greater good Berkeley and they do a lot of with social emotional learning and they identified three different of these inner strength, safety, satisfaction and connection and right now I think what our kids need is satisfaction and by that I don't mean that the safety obviously is important in the connection but they're getting a lot of these things. And of course, I guess I should have preempted this with I'm not talking about kids that have lost someone to COVID-19 but I'm talking about kids that have lost sort of their social structure. And so when I think about, when I look at these that area of satisfaction stood out because if y'all have heard anything you have heard that your kids are bored who has not heard that they're bored. They wanna go see their friends. They want to get out of the house. Maybe they are leaving the house even though you don't want them to. They are getting into everything if they're younger. And so the four skills that they need to meet that satisfaction because they're just in this listless place right now is mindfulness, which is being present in the moment. So not longing for something that was supposed to happen but not happening. So how do we practice mindfulness? Gratitude, which is a huge thing that we need to work on both children and youth with. Once again, not ignoring loss but recognizing what we can be grateful for. Motivation, especially in youth pursuing opportunities in the face of challenge. Not just saying, oh, well, this year is over. I guess nothing is gonna happen or with our seniors. I guess maybe I'm gonna start school in the fall or what if it doesn't start in person? So they need motivation to pursue and face those challenges and then aspiration looking to try and achieve results that are important for you. And so this could be with kids or with youth. People need to find, people have an opportunity to find their gifts right now in a way that is really needed. And that's not just adults, it's children and youth. So finding what you're good at and how you can use it. And resilience also means that you need to acknowledge what's lost and name what is given to you in this time. So that includes, like I said, providing a safe place for grief and a strong place for moving forward. So the next slide just has sort of what does this look like for children? And it's some stuff we've already talked about. Practice taking on perspectives. And that you can do that with, I know a lot of people are reading, doing bedtime stories with their church, but you can do that in fiction or you can do that in the Bible. Practice taking on other perspectives and naming those feelings, what are they feeling? And that also will allow kids to create outreach and mission opportunities that they can drive in the community. And it doesn't have to, a seven year old probably can't organize an entire food drive, but they can write letters to firefighters if they're worried about them. So that kind of thing, if they think about in their community who needs something, what do they need and is there a way that that child or youth can fulfill that? Having children retell stories in their own words. Once again, this can, you practice it with our Bible stories and then they can do it in real life. And retelling stories doesn't have to just be telling stories that aren't theirs. A lot of times we tell children stories for them. So helping them practice in the Bible, retelling stories will help them tell their own stories. And that helps them have that resilience to know that they have some control in their narrative. And then making lists of what they have lost and what they're grateful for with their family and just posting them around in this time. That's, I know a lot of people are doing both sort of like Facebook Live, Children's Times, but also some activities for kids to do at home. And this is a pretty easy one that a family can do together. And it both acknowledges the things that are lost, which is important. It lets there be a place to say, I didn't get to have my fifth grade play, but also to post right next to it, I got to have dinner with both parents every night and or I got to watch a movie with my sister, that kind of thing. So that's an easy activity to do or to have your children and family do during the week. And then this last point is, this is a great time to expand children's leadership in both in your ministry and in the larger church. And so this is what I was talking about before. This is a great time for, if you can help your kids identify what they're good at and what they might wanna do, this is a great time for them to become leaders in your ministry and in the church's ministry if the church will have you, will make some space for that. So letting them record a message. I saw a lot of children's recordings during Palm Sunday, which was awesome or children reading Bible stories and posting those. So creative ways to expand the actual child's leadership during this time when your pastors probably could use some hope and a breath and congregations would love to see their faces and know that the children are leaders. And that helps them take this time that didn't make sense to them and become a time where they found their meaning and found their worth and found that their church family believes in them. So the last thing I have before CJ takes over is a list of books that actually our good friend Liz Diebold provided for us resources for children both working through grief and not just to help them under some of them. I think if I understand right, are particularly about the loss of a person, but most of them talk about just loss in general and change and a lot of it can be extrapolated out. So you can think about what you're losing in the same way as losing a person and that might help the kids understand because the loss right now is so abstract, especially for young kids that are still, they're are still pretty concrete thinkers. So these are good to take note of. Liz was the children's director at First Ark Isle for many, many years and I trust basically anything she says. So she said that these were great resources and so take those and run with them. All right, so I am in no means like, by no means an expert at all, but I did just several weeks ago, like I was texting with Emma and I said, I don't know when it's appropriate for me to start like pushing these kids out of, pushing my students out of like just this cycle of the same things that we are frustrated about and we're angry about rightfully so, but like at what point is it appropriate? Because my natural inclination is to go ahead and start pushing as soon as I felt it and I started feeling it two weeks in and then had to gain some perspective that says like, okay, this is where the teenagers are and they are different than I am. And so that's kind of what got me roped into this conversation and so thanks for having me. And so we'll just kind of get to it as best as I know how. So we've been at this like Emma said for a really long time, like five, six weeks kind of depending on when you started being at home and being online with your students, with your kids, children or youth. And so at some point, like Emma mentioned, we have got to figure out a way to start moving toward the bottom of the U, toward hard transformation, start shifting the conversation so that we can make our way out of this, so that we can start to see hope, start to see how God is working in and through this. And so it's our job and our call to help them do this. And I just really think that should have been a couple of weeks ago. So if you haven't already started doing that with your children and with your youth, I really encourage you to start ASAP that this needs to start sometime really soon. And you know your children and youth the best because you're around them the most. I can't tell you exactly when that looks like but when there starts to be just like this over and over and over cycle of like we talked about this exact same frustration with the exact same verbiage last week and the week before, then it's time for us to like move past that particular verbiage. And so use your discernment, pay attention to where your kids are and when you feel like, okay, we are done with this conversation and we got to start moving towards that. And obviously it's not, this doesn't necessarily exist in the same way for kids who have preexisting trauma that they have dealt with before COVID-19. This is very generic for like COVID-19 time and the grief that has come from that, the loss that is coming from that. And so use your best judgment and your discernment with those kids with preexisting things, but generally speaking, like ultimately our job is to look at the whole group and to figure out when we can take the whole group and the whole ministry toward moving forward toward hope, like that is our goal. And so that we're not just like continuing the cycle through the exact same things. So a couple of things in curriculum or even just like conversation starters, I'm no curriculum expert, but I have started using a curriculum with my youth a couple of weeks ago that has been really, really helpful for me. And so I want to talk about that. And then just some other basic ways of having conversations with our students that can hopefully lead us into this. I'm speaking from a lens of youth ministry, but I do think that some of this, I actually know that some of this works for children's ministry as well. But the first one is very youth ministry specific and it is a curriculum that some of you may have already heard of, but the Fuller Youth Institute has made this curriculum called faith in an anxious world. It's on sale right now for 37 something dollars. But if you really want it, you just email me and I will submit your direction. I don't know if that's allowed, but it's here we are being recorded and that's where we are. But it's kind of the basic structure of this and it was written before COVID-19, so it has nothing specifically to do with this particular world, but that teenagers are constantly in an anxious and kind of depressive state with so much pressure that is being put on them as teenagers trying to grow up quicker than they should. And so it's a great curriculum that kind of helps guide in the direction of like let's figure out scripture, let's figure out where Jesus is present, let's figure out how Jesus was with Jesus' disciples and that like we can kind of put ourselves in those stories and start to find how steady and constant Jesus really truly promises to be and is. And so there are videos that come along with that that have high school students talking about some of the anxieties that they've experienced and how they have worked through that with various resources around them. There, like I said, there are continuous stories of Jesus with Jesus' disciples and when there have been like anxious times which is like all the time fun fact, how there have been anxious times and how Jesus never leaves the side of his disciples is constantly right there. And so there's some repeating stories of that and then there is some small groups discussion questions that come along with this curriculum as well. And I just think like even past COVID-19 it's gonna be a really, really helpful conversation for us to keep coming back to as teenagers continue facing just real struggles that we see in their lives every day as we talk with them, right? Whatever those might be, but in this particular instance COVID-19, losing prom, losing graduation, losing banquets, end of year concerts, all of those things, summer trips camps. So, but hoping or giving hope to a situation that like we as Christians believe that Jesus is risen and that is our hope, right? And so we have to keep coming back to that. That is our job to remind our kids that our hope is found in Jesus. It is not found in material things. It is not found in experiences that we have with our school friends. It is found in Jesus because Jesus has been resurrected, right? So, outside of faith in an anxious world which I think is a great resource, we have to utilize scripture. Like Emma said, the Bible is full of stories of people suffering and struggling through X, Y, Z things. And God shows up boldly, bigly, and he shows up right there. And so we have got to be utilizing scripture. And so you can pretty much like open like anywhere in the Bible and find stories of people who are struggling. I asked my youth a couple of weeks ago, where sometimes where you find, what characters are you finding in anxious times? And they were like boom, boom, boom, like every single character they've ever heard of and being able to point to the exact story and exact turning point of anxiety for them. And so there are plenty of stories and our youth know them. So let's point back to them, let's show them where God has shown up and been present in those spaces. And then also doing a little plug for some listening stones here. And so Joseph, can you go to the next? Great, so these are listening stones. Some of you might know of them and some of you might not. It is a really, really helpful tool to help open up conversations. This works for children very well. I think that's where it originally was like introduced to. But I know that it works for youth and actually really well with adults. So like any person, this will work well for. And so you can put these stones on a screen for right now or have them in real person whenever we get back to that life. Have them on the screen, ask them a question. How is it with your soul? How is your heart feeling today? How is your head feeling today? Is your body feeling today? Any of those kinds of questions that you wanna be asking your students and have them pick one or two stones. And none of these have any meaning to them. There's not a word on the back that says this is exactly what this means. It means whatever it means to the kid. However they are going to interpret it. And you will be so happily surprised at how open they become way more than they would if you were just to say, how you doing today? Cause all you're gonna get and you know it is the word, I'm all right, good, fine. That's what we get from teenagers, right? And so with this, you're gonna get kind of to the heart of where they are, whether it's really, really good or really, really bad. And you're gonna get a feel for how they are. You can also use these listening stones when you are thinking about and interpreting through scripture, right? So you read any scripture story, like Emma said, she read the road to Emmaus scripture with our CCYM kids the other day and had them pick these out. And it took a second, but once they started opening up, like man, it was some beautiful deep thought and contemplation on the road to Emmaus scripture, right? That I hope we expect from our teenagers, but maybe sometimes don't, right? And so you're gonna get into some deep conversations and ways of knowing where your kids are. And before you know it, your time is gonna be up, right? Like there's gonna be so much sharing that is happening that you're gonna be like, wow, we just got to the meat of what we needed to. And it took no structured script, no structured curriculum for you to get there. So I highly encourage these. They're on Leon Hadley's website free for anyone to take because Leon is the nicest human to give us all of her stuff for free. So Leon Hadley's website, I don't know what it is, LeonHadley.she's cool, yeah, okay, awesome. So these are gonna really help your kids. So as we know children and youth and even young adults and sometimes even adults, there's so much going on that we have such a difficult time articulating what we're feeling, why we might be feeling it. And these listening stones I have found to be such an incredible tool to help people find verbiage language to help articulate how they are really feeling just in the deep deep part of their heart and be comfortable to share it in that space. Okay, okay, okay. And so also something else that I want that I've been thinking about is that like we, I have to remind myself of these things a lot is like what am I able to control? What am I able to not, what am I not able to control? And then thinking of that in terms of conversations with our students that says like, okay, so if we wanna be focusing towards hope and that is our goal that there is hope regardless of what's going on and how do we find that in the midst of just some real like not fun stuff is that we need to be thinking about what are we certain of when it comes to who Jesus is? What are we certain of when it comes to what scripture says? What are we certain of when it comes to what we say the body of Christ looks like? And then those are the things that we have to be focusing on rather than the things that we are uncertain about which is everything else. When do we get to see our friends again? When do we get to be back at school? When do we get to be worshiping together again? Those are the things that we are not certain about but the things that we are certain about are over here and how do we keep bringing them back to this thing that we are definitely certain about? So let's hope our kids focus on those things and then just another plug for another great space of resource and I think maybe some of you youth ministers already know about these but Princeton Theological Seminary, their Institute for Youth Ministry has made a page with like all the resources that you'll ever want and it's very, very helpful. There is specifically a tab for or a button for mental health support which will bring a lot of conversation and helpfulness that's actually where you can find the faith in an anxious world curriculum other than just Googling it but that's where I found it from and so I invite you, I think Joseph just threw that up in the chat and so I invite you to go check that out with a lot of resources and it actually might be very helpful for children as well in terms of just like helping guide in this way that says like we need to be kind of moving our kids into this hard transformation space instead of just continuing to sit in our loss and our grief with all of the things that are going on and so I just want to remind you that we are all called to walk alongside our students to meet them exactly where they are but that we are also called to like take their, take them behind their backs and just guide them along to transformation, to the heart of God and so that is our call and we as hard as it might be even for ourselves to find our own hearts in that space that we are called to be doing those things and then beginning to ask the kids like what have we learned from this? What are we gaining from our experiences here? So that's what I have. Thanks. So that basically concludes the content portion of our webinar