Last week our staff took a day off from our ordinary chores around the office to pack all of the Life Support boxes. The cardboard box that shows up in the mail at your parish also shows up on a 1000+ parishes the same week. So you can imagine that filling all those boxes is a big ordeal here in Mesa. Packing the that many boxes is repetitive, but it’s an exciting ritual for staff because it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work. So much time and prayer went into developing each of those resources!

As usual, you’ll find printable PDF (Portable Document Format) versions of our Liturgy Planning Guide, Curriculum Guide, Spotlight, and the retreat in the Member Resources section here on YM.lifeteen.com. The PDF is a useful format for everyone because it allows for high-quality printing. Plus, it’s easy for a Youth Minister to quickly download a Life Night PDF and then email it to your Core team.

I wanted to give you all a quick update of some small upgrades we’re making to the website. For years, we struggled to serve up content on lifeteen.com for both adults in youth ministry and teens in youth ministry until we finally decided to create a new website (you’re on it.) Since we launched this site on April 1, 2007, we’ve slowly migrated “grown up” content from lifeteen.com to ym.lifeteen.com…

You’ll notice two new sections this week: Meet Our Staff and Diocesan Directors. The first is essentially the Contact Us page from lifeteen.com. This is a helpful addition for new website visitors who may not be familiar with the the people behind this website. The Diocesan Directors area is small but informative section that communicates the mission and services of our ministry to the Directors of Youth Ministry at Dioceses. Life Teen has worked closely with DD’s over the years to help develop strong parish youth programs in their dioceses, and we’re excited to help support more directors around the country.

We’ll add more useful sections to YM.lifeteen.com throughout the year.

I hope you all have a great afternoon. It’s hard for me to concentrate because I’m excited about tonight: the first episode of a new season of Lost, and the Suns take on the Spurs here in Phoenix. With all that excitement, it’s hard to keep my fingers on the right keys as I type this.