This story came in this week that had us absolutely rolling. Enjoy!

So I’ve heard a half dozen talks by Doug Fields over the years, and I’m pretty sure in one of them there was a piece of advice that went something like this: “Preview all movie clips before you show them at youth group” Then what would follow would be a cautionary tale of when this rule was not applied. I’ve always followed this rule, it made sense and it has kept me out of trouble a couple of times. I now have a new rule…use spell check and LANGUAGE CHECK on all slides that come from any youth ministry source.

Last night at youth we played the “Finish the Christmas Lyric Volume 2” game I got from the DYM. We had played Volume 1 last week and it went over well so we decided to do another round. Since I didn’t want to download new fonts for Powerpoint or Keynote, I just decided to use the pre-fab slides that come with the kit. Now before I go any further I should tell you I don’t speak Spanish, and in north Alabama we really don’t have a huge Spanish speaking population, so I really don’t know how I would have caught it anyway. The last slide in regulation was the song “Feliz Navidad”. What I missed is that in the last line there was the word “ano” which was missing the “little squiggly line over the “n” (I was informed later by a student that this is technically called a tilde). Apparently this one little mark makes a huge difference and so instead of wishing my students a “prosperous year and happiness” I instead wished them a “prosperous butthole and happiness”. Which my clever and astute high schoolers pointed out to me. So they had a good laugh at my expense…and I now have a wonderful illustration to tell new youth workers and perhaps put into a sermon one day.

So Feliz Navidad and enjoy!!!
Toby Chastain, Youth Minister

JG