In the Thick of It!
Thrive School is starting to pick up speed now as we’ve been assigned to and are becoming comfortable in our internships. I was assigned to my internship on September 3rd, and I am now a worship and production intern at Bayside Folsom! The worship leaders at that campus are Josh Guerrero and Brenna Sullivan. My intern director, Erin Brunswick, is also a worship leader at Folsom and a past Thrive student herself. I have three fellow worship interns: Bailey (a third year Thrive student), Emma (a second year Thrive student), and Amy (a first year student like myself).
This month, I’ve gotten the opportunity to help with midweek ministry–otherwise known as high school and middle school–at Bayside Folsom. I have the privilege of co-leading a 6th grade middle school girls small group. Additionally, I’ve been learning how to set the stage, operate a soundboard, run slides on the screens, and lead and engage with a group of middle school students.
On Sundays, as an awesome learning experience, for September all of the worship and production students at every campus have been helping Bayside Davis. They are a set-up/tear-down campus at a middle school in Davis, so we were there helping from 6am-1pm. I learned through this process how to put a stage together, set up childrens rooms, greet a newer congregation, and grow and lead a campus from the leadership there. I enjoyed this time, but am also super excited to begin Sunday ministry at Bayside Folsom!
We had a host home brunch on September 14th, where my roommate and I were able to sit down with our host family and all of our peers and their host families and learn from leadership at Bayside how to be a good family for each other this year.
Thrive school also had their first retreat this month called the Essentials Intensive, where we were able to learn from Bayside leadership what the essentials of Christianity are and how to live that out in our daily lives. The retreat was September 19th-21st in Nevada City at Camp Del Oro (up in the woods). It was a refreshing, informative, and spiritually intense time.
With our middle school students at Folsom, on September 25th, we had a color wars battle where we threw cups of red and blue paint back and forth at each other to see which team would be more soaked! This was a super fun time with the kids, and you can see me and Amy above covered in paint from this challenge.
September 27th, the worship teams from every Bayside campus began preparing for the Golden 1 event by having worship rehearsals at Bayside Granite Bay. On September 28th, my Folsom team had our serve day project at Dress a Girl, where we helped make new outfits for kids in underprivileged communities all over the world. That afternoon, we headed over to the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento to begin setting up for the Bayside event. There was a dress rehearsal that night. Bright and early September 29th, we were back at the arena for final preparations and the last rehearsal before the service began at 10a. The arena was packed! It was an amazing opportunity to see the body of Christ unified in one place after serving their hearts out all weekend in their communities. Once the service ended at 12p, the worship and production students stayed to help tear down the arena.
Overall, this month I’ve learned to be patient and keep the attitude of gratitude no matter what job I’m doing, big or small. I will work at everything as though I am doing it for the LORD. I’ve learned how to resolve conflict, and many of my relationships in Thrive have deepened and become more real. It has been a huge roller coaster of a month with tons of business, but I am blessed to be a part of Thrive school!
Thanks for reading!
SHAE'S JOURNEY 