Youth Ministry
Wesley UMC Youth Group 2026 Charge Conference Report
Children and Youth Ministries Director: Hatty Lin
Youth Lead: Emma To
Youth Assistant: Caroline Waddington
Children and Youth Ministries Director: Hatty Lin
Youth Lead: Emma To
Youth Assistant: Caroline Waddington
April 5, 2026 Easter
Wesley Youth woke up early to help serve food, manage drinks, and bus tables during the Easter breakfast that was hosted by the Wesley Men’s Group. After breakfast, the youth took the many Easter eggs they stuffed with candy and toys over to the Issei Memorial Building to hide for the God’s Garden children and families.
Wesley Youth woke up early to help serve food, manage drinks, and bus tables during the Easter breakfast that was hosted by the Wesley Men’s Group. After breakfast, the youth took the many Easter eggs they stuffed with candy and toys over to the Issei Memorial Building to hide for the God’s Garden children and families.
Nikkei Matsuri, Sunday April 26
The youth sold about 1,000 Nikkei Dogs during Nikkei Matsuri. We sold out of our popular Teri and Suno dogs before the end of the festival. The sales of the Nikkei Dogs helps cover some of the registration fees for our youth attending Asian Camp.
The youth sold about 1,000 Nikkei Dogs during Nikkei Matsuri. We sold out of our popular Teri and Suno dogs before the end of the festival. The sales of the Nikkei Dogs helps cover some of the registration fees for our youth attending Asian Camp.
Graduation Sunday, June 7, 2026
We celebrated our graduation seniors and Sanematsu Scholarship recipients—Zoe Tang, Kaitlyn Yee and Jeffrey Bao.
June 15-19: Kids Camp
This year 15 MYF youth volunteered to be youth assistants for our VBS Kids Camp. They supported teachers in the 1st through 5th grade classrooms, assisted the various activity leaders, supervised and played with children during the field trips and engaged with the children throughout the week. It was a long day from 8:30am-3pm, but the youth filled the day with smiles and warm, supportive energy.
June 28-July 3: Asian Camp
We had 18 youth and 3 counselors go to Asian Camp this year. The youth and counselors flew down to Ontario from San Jose and then took a bus to Camp Wrightwood. It was a wonderful week of fellowship, faith and fun.
Submitted by Hatty Lin
2026-2027 Overview
The goal of youth group this year is to create a safe, welcoming environment for all youth to build relationships with each other and God. We hope to build a dynamic, approachable curriculum that meets the needs of youth these days and addresses the unique challenges in their lives in our current climate. We meet the youth where they are at, whether they need a place to forgive, question their faith, or even hang out with their friends after a difficult week.
Youth Group for the 2026-27 academic year started on Rally Sunday, which was August 23, 2026. This year, we have 18 MYF youth and 7 CAF youth, with 2 new sixth graders and 6 high school seniors. Each Sunday we average approximately 6-8 youth: 5-6 MYF and 1-2 CAF. We also welcomed Caroline Waddington as our youth assistant on September 20, and she has been building new connections with the youth and helping with our weekly programming and larger holiday events.
Curriculum
This year, the curriculum of youth group is following a trimester system based on Wesley UMC’s new motto: Love that welcomes, Faith that forms, and Justice that Acts. We are spending about 15 weeks exploring each of the three parts and integrating the youth into the new brand of the church to build more cohesive relationships between the youth programs and the church as a whole.
From August to November, we explored love: loving your family, loving the marginalized, loving those that have hurt you, loving your community, and loving yourself. The goal of this unit was to encourage the youth to think more deeply about love, one of the most important themes of God’s teachings. As adolescents and teenagers they are facing academic, social, and peer pressure that pushes love from being at the forefront of their minds. With these weekly reminders, we hope to give the youth an hour in their busy week to reflect on compassion and love, both for their community and themselves. This unit allows the youth to get to know each other and really build trusting connections to facilitate deeper discussions and relationships.
From December to March, we will explore Faith that Forms. After setting up a supportive environment with the Love that Welcomes unit, we will explore everyone’s faith journeys more closely. Due to the large age range of the youth, this section will be more individualized and reflective for the youth. Some of our themes will be: what is a faith journey, what are struggles in your faith journey, what can we do when faith fails, and the power of having faith. We will also spend a week discussing what it is like to be a Christian in the modern world. In today’s political climate, being a Christian is not always a positive label. As a group we will explore this experience and learn how to navigate it with each other while still staying true to our values and faith journeys.
In the last weeks of the academic year, we will start our Justice that Acts unit. This unit will largely be driven by the youth themselves as they will spend about 7 weeks brainstorming and planning their own service project for the end of the year. Youth will have the time to explore what causes they care about and what they want to do about it. The youth lead and assistant will help facilitate and guide ideas about what is possible, but the youth will be responsible for planning and encouraging their peers to participate. Besides the youth staff, the Youth Leadership Council members will also take a more active leadership role in organizing this project.
We celebrated our graduation seniors and Sanematsu Scholarship recipients—Zoe Tang, Kaitlyn Yee and Jeffrey Bao.
June 15-19: Kids Camp
This year 15 MYF youth volunteered to be youth assistants for our VBS Kids Camp. They supported teachers in the 1st through 5th grade classrooms, assisted the various activity leaders, supervised and played with children during the field trips and engaged with the children throughout the week. It was a long day from 8:30am-3pm, but the youth filled the day with smiles and warm, supportive energy.
June 28-July 3: Asian Camp
We had 18 youth and 3 counselors go to Asian Camp this year. The youth and counselors flew down to Ontario from San Jose and then took a bus to Camp Wrightwood. It was a wonderful week of fellowship, faith and fun.
Submitted by Hatty Lin
2026-2027 Overview
The goal of youth group this year is to create a safe, welcoming environment for all youth to build relationships with each other and God. We hope to build a dynamic, approachable curriculum that meets the needs of youth these days and addresses the unique challenges in their lives in our current climate. We meet the youth where they are at, whether they need a place to forgive, question their faith, or even hang out with their friends after a difficult week.
Youth Group for the 2026-27 academic year started on Rally Sunday, which was August 23, 2026. This year, we have 18 MYF youth and 7 CAF youth, with 2 new sixth graders and 6 high school seniors. Each Sunday we average approximately 6-8 youth: 5-6 MYF and 1-2 CAF. We also welcomed Caroline Waddington as our youth assistant on September 20, and she has been building new connections with the youth and helping with our weekly programming and larger holiday events.
Curriculum
This year, the curriculum of youth group is following a trimester system based on Wesley UMC’s new motto: Love that welcomes, Faith that forms, and Justice that Acts. We are spending about 15 weeks exploring each of the three parts and integrating the youth into the new brand of the church to build more cohesive relationships between the youth programs and the church as a whole.
From August to November, we explored love: loving your family, loving the marginalized, loving those that have hurt you, loving your community, and loving yourself. The goal of this unit was to encourage the youth to think more deeply about love, one of the most important themes of God’s teachings. As adolescents and teenagers they are facing academic, social, and peer pressure that pushes love from being at the forefront of their minds. With these weekly reminders, we hope to give the youth an hour in their busy week to reflect on compassion and love, both for their community and themselves. This unit allows the youth to get to know each other and really build trusting connections to facilitate deeper discussions and relationships.
From December to March, we will explore Faith that Forms. After setting up a supportive environment with the Love that Welcomes unit, we will explore everyone’s faith journeys more closely. Due to the large age range of the youth, this section will be more individualized and reflective for the youth. Some of our themes will be: what is a faith journey, what are struggles in your faith journey, what can we do when faith fails, and the power of having faith. We will also spend a week discussing what it is like to be a Christian in the modern world. In today’s political climate, being a Christian is not always a positive label. As a group we will explore this experience and learn how to navigate it with each other while still staying true to our values and faith journeys.
In the last weeks of the academic year, we will start our Justice that Acts unit. This unit will largely be driven by the youth themselves as they will spend about 7 weeks brainstorming and planning their own service project for the end of the year. Youth will have the time to explore what causes they care about and what they want to do about it. The youth lead and assistant will help facilitate and guide ideas about what is possible, but the youth will be responsible for planning and encouraging their peers to participate. Besides the youth staff, the Youth Leadership Council members will also take a more active leadership role in organizing this project.
On a Sunday…
In order to maximize the time we have on each Sunday, youth group starts at 10 am in the MYF room, unless it is a Holy Communion Sunday. We start off with an opening prayer led by one of the youth. We also open with a check-in question where all the youth get to share their answers. This is a way to build community and relationships with a very low stakes question. Then, we usually do an activity related to the theme of the day. For example, on the Sunday about loving your family, the youth wrote thank you cards to someone they have not thanked in a while. When we talked about forgiveness, the youth wrote letters to the people that hurt them and gave them up to God by shredding them. After the activity, we read the scripture together and move into discussion. Depending on the group and the theme of the day, the youth are either given time to journal quietly or we share our thoughts aloud. We close each youth group with a closing prayer and announcements for the next week.
Events
In terms of events, we are planning for three lock-ins: Fall, Winter, and Spring. On October 24, we held our first lock-in, a Halloween lock-in. We started the night with a visit to the ABC Tree Farm and Pick of the Patch Pumpkin Patch, where each youth picked out a pumpkin that they then painted for our Pumpkin Painting Competition later in the evening. We went back to Wesley for dinner, games, and crafts. The youth helped decorate the CAF room for the God’s Garden Halloween party, and we all came together to make smores graveyards. We ended the night with a game of sardines with glowsticks in the dark. We had 10 Wesley UMC youth and 2 Aldersgate UMC youth join us for the activities, with 8 youth sleeping over at Wesley UMC. We hope to coordinate with NJAUMC Camping Board to host their annual Asian Camp lock-in in the winter and either a confirmation or Easter lock-in in the spring. We also hope to continue to include other NJAUMC Northern California churches in our events!
In order to foster intergenerational relationships, the youth will also be helping with God’s Garden Sunday school once every 2-3 months. This is an opportunity for the youth to demonstrate leadership skills and be role models for the children. This Christmas, we also plan for the youth to help lead rehearsals for the Christmas pageant, inviting more active participation from both the children and the youth. The youth also continue to volunteer to help with God’s Garden events like Hanging of the Greens and the Easter egg hunt. To build relationships with the congregation, the youth will also be liturgists and acolytes for the worship service once every 2-3 months. This allows the youth to practice their public speaking skills in front of a safe, welcoming audience and to get to know the members of the church. The youth will also continue to participate in cultural and church-wide events such as Mochitsuki, Nikkei Matsuri, and Kids Camp.
We also plan to organize small community service projects this year to have the youth serve the congregation and the community. For example, the youth will be making care packages for the students away at college to help them feel more at home in November before finals. We are also hoping to serve the seniors at Fuji Towers and the unhoused with the Compassion Ministry. One of the broader goals for summer 2027 is a mission trip, but the plans are still tentative as we work with the youth and potential mission trip leaders/organizers.
Youth Leadership Council
The Youth Leadership Council is a group of youth that are dedicated to the church and want an opportunity to develop their leadership and collaboration skills. The application was open to all MYF youth, and this year we have 3 participating members. Meetings are held every 2-3 weeks depending on availability and projects that the youth want to complete. They will also act as leaders within the youth group, role models that their peers can go to if they need help. YLC will help plan events for God’s Garden, the church, and the community as a whole.
Closing
We look forward to the rest of the academic year that is hopefully full of many fun events, deep conversations, community building/service, and much more. We appreciate Wesley UMC’s continued support of MYF and CAF, and we hope to continue to help build the next generation of the Wesley UMC congregation.
Submitted by Emma To, Youth Lead
In order to maximize the time we have on each Sunday, youth group starts at 10 am in the MYF room, unless it is a Holy Communion Sunday. We start off with an opening prayer led by one of the youth. We also open with a check-in question where all the youth get to share their answers. This is a way to build community and relationships with a very low stakes question. Then, we usually do an activity related to the theme of the day. For example, on the Sunday about loving your family, the youth wrote thank you cards to someone they have not thanked in a while. When we talked about forgiveness, the youth wrote letters to the people that hurt them and gave them up to God by shredding them. After the activity, we read the scripture together and move into discussion. Depending on the group and the theme of the day, the youth are either given time to journal quietly or we share our thoughts aloud. We close each youth group with a closing prayer and announcements for the next week.
Events
In terms of events, we are planning for three lock-ins: Fall, Winter, and Spring. On October 24, we held our first lock-in, a Halloween lock-in. We started the night with a visit to the ABC Tree Farm and Pick of the Patch Pumpkin Patch, where each youth picked out a pumpkin that they then painted for our Pumpkin Painting Competition later in the evening. We went back to Wesley for dinner, games, and crafts. The youth helped decorate the CAF room for the God’s Garden Halloween party, and we all came together to make smores graveyards. We ended the night with a game of sardines with glowsticks in the dark. We had 10 Wesley UMC youth and 2 Aldersgate UMC youth join us for the activities, with 8 youth sleeping over at Wesley UMC. We hope to coordinate with NJAUMC Camping Board to host their annual Asian Camp lock-in in the winter and either a confirmation or Easter lock-in in the spring. We also hope to continue to include other NJAUMC Northern California churches in our events!
In order to foster intergenerational relationships, the youth will also be helping with God’s Garden Sunday school once every 2-3 months. This is an opportunity for the youth to demonstrate leadership skills and be role models for the children. This Christmas, we also plan for the youth to help lead rehearsals for the Christmas pageant, inviting more active participation from both the children and the youth. The youth also continue to volunteer to help with God’s Garden events like Hanging of the Greens and the Easter egg hunt. To build relationships with the congregation, the youth will also be liturgists and acolytes for the worship service once every 2-3 months. This allows the youth to practice their public speaking skills in front of a safe, welcoming audience and to get to know the members of the church. The youth will also continue to participate in cultural and church-wide events such as Mochitsuki, Nikkei Matsuri, and Kids Camp.
We also plan to organize small community service projects this year to have the youth serve the congregation and the community. For example, the youth will be making care packages for the students away at college to help them feel more at home in November before finals. We are also hoping to serve the seniors at Fuji Towers and the unhoused with the Compassion Ministry. One of the broader goals for summer 2027 is a mission trip, but the plans are still tentative as we work with the youth and potential mission trip leaders/organizers.
Youth Leadership Council
The Youth Leadership Council is a group of youth that are dedicated to the church and want an opportunity to develop their leadership and collaboration skills. The application was open to all MYF youth, and this year we have 3 participating members. Meetings are held every 2-3 weeks depending on availability and projects that the youth want to complete. They will also act as leaders within the youth group, role models that their peers can go to if they need help. YLC will help plan events for God’s Garden, the church, and the community as a whole.
Closing
We look forward to the rest of the academic year that is hopefully full of many fun events, deep conversations, community building/service, and much more. We appreciate Wesley UMC’s continued support of MYF and CAF, and we hope to continue to help build the next generation of the Wesley UMC congregation.
Submitted by Emma To, Youth Lead
Posted in Charge Conference 2026