To the editor:

Often times, people have preconceived notions that high school students who are involved in school activities such as cheerleading, sports, choirs and bands have little or no time to take an active part in their church youth activities. Perhaps church youth groups are looked upon as uncool organizations.

We would like to share with our community a little about our special youth group at Zion United Methodist Church three miles west of Gordonville. Our youth groups are made up of A and B honor-roll students, students involved in varsity volleyball, basketball, chamber choir and band as well as organizations such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, foreign-language clubs, FBLA and many others. For those of you who are high school students or can remember your own high school chaotic schedules, you know how difficult it is to put balance in your life.

These youths not only stay active with this important part of their lives, but they also make a point to keep Christ as a priority in maintaining that balance. At a recent Youth Annual Conference, part of the theme was keeping God in the center of your life and all else will come around.

In the recent past, some of our activities have included a mission trip to Louisiana to help the Houma Indians, a mini-mission trip to South St. Louis attending a Jars of Clay concert, taking in a Cardinals baseball game, doing fund raisers, pizza parties, movies or just hanging out listening to music in their personally decorated room.

Our future activities include a pie auction and a sale of T-shirts and polo shirts with an embroidered picture of our Gordonville church. Also, during our church's Memorial Day supper, we will have a hamburger stand. Last October we put on a fish fry, which was huge success and have another planned for this October. We are raising funds for our upcoming trips.

Our next trips include our annual planning retreat at Lake Wappapello, where we try to plan out our entire year. Our big trip is Youth '99, which is held in Knoxville, Tenn. We are very excited about this event. We will be sending more information on this soon.

We have also been active with our church services, and we provide special music on the third Sunday of each month. This is an open invitation for those interested.

We, the so-called leaders, are very proud of our youths for trying to keep that balance we all need. I say so-called leaders, because I am sure we learn much more from them than they do from us.

LISA NISWONGER

Zion United Methodist Church

Gordonville