last night at my 7th grade guys small group, my 19 year-old co-leader jered was leading. he stopped by my house early to make a few copies of two handouts (we’re using the wild truth bible lessons: dares from jesus right now) for the lesson on loving god with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. the black ink on my printer was out, so i told him he’d have to scan them in, then change the color to blue or something before printing. but i didn’t really know how to use the scanner function on my printer, so we were figuring it out together.

once he got a handout scanned in and color changed, he printed it, and it came out of the printer sized a little more than a quarter the size of a sheet of paper. i came back and tried to monkey with it, and thought i had it fixed, but went downstairs to greet kids. jered kept at it. and he said something to me about figuring it out, but i wasn’t really listening.

later, during the lesson time, there was a handout for a bible interaction exercise, and it looked perfect — full-sized and all. but when he got to the final, application step, he said, “now, i made this handout in a handy wallet size,” and handed out these tiny little blue versions of the handout (not only was it about a 1/4 of the page, there were two per sheet, and were cut in half — so the “handout” he handed-out was about 2″ x 3″). i started laughing. the guys were looking at me like i was crazy, and jered was just smiling. he read the “handout” to everyone (which my 40-something eyes could barely read), and it involved checking a box off a list of choices of a way you might try expressing your love for god this week in a new way, and then writing a plan of action — which he told them to write on the back.

anyhow, the guys actually wrote on them, folded them up and put them in their pockets or wallets. all of this could have been easily avoided if either of us had rememberd that the handouts are all downloadable on the ys site. but, nice improvisation, jered.