Your gift this month helps YouthPartnersNET support our summer urban missions program called CityConnexx.  As highlighted last month, this program not only provides valuable volunteer service and funding to our network of ministry partners across the nation but helps them all year long.

As you will see on the last page, this month our YPN grant goes to a new partner, Long Island Teen Challenge. Before we tell you how your gift will help their Super Saturday Kids Krusade program, let me introduce you to a new member of our staff, Rev. Jim Galanaugh who is our National Director for CityConnexx. Jim grew up in NYC and knows these ministries like the back of his big hand (he used to play basketball there). To tell you more, "Here's Jimmy . . ."

"As a passionate team member of CityConnexx, I am proud and honored to be in strategic partnership with Long Island Teen Challenge, reaching hundreds even thousands for Jesus Christ!

My association with the leadership of Teen Challenge began on a basketball court in Long Island, NY nearly forty-five years ago. In a fierce and competitive game at the age of fourteen, I found myself toe to toe with a player who later would become my best friend. His name is Barry and our friendship continues to this day.

In a close, violent altercation, Barry and I shook hands after the game and went our separate ways. One year later while attending Long Island Lutheran High School, I again met Barry.  This time he was my classmate.  Soon we became like brothers and for the next six years he and I engaged in alcohol and drug use. Upon graduation, I headed to college on a basketball scholarship.  Barry remained in New York working with a local company.
 
After six long years of doing pot, LSD, cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates and heroin, I gave my life to Christ out of desperation and loneliness on December 31, 1973. I fell in love with Jesus and three months later received a call on my life to minister to inner-city youth. I am passionately serving to this day, 35 years later. 

Barry was not as fortunate. He continued doing drugs for 15 more years and became so addicted to crack cocaine, he ended up in prison facing 20 years.

It was in the jail cell that God did a miracle. Jimmy Jack, a long time friend and drug partner of Barry, gave his life to Christ several years before. Jimmy became the Executive Director of Long Island Teen Challenge and Pastor of Freedom Chapel.  Under the authorization of the court, Barry was released to Pastor Jimmy’s program.

This drug dealing, drug addicted and convicted felon graduated with honors from this eighteen month spiritual boot camp.  He then went to Bible College and became a pastor of the men’s program and outreach director for the organization! What a transformation!
 
I believe in miracles! Barry, Jimmy Jack and countless others who were described as misfits and incorrigible are serving Jesus Christ through the amazing and life changing ministry of Long Island Teed Challenge! Teen Challenge in the past ten years has reached tens of thousands of people for Jesus Christ throughout New York, the nation and the world.

In 2008, CityConnexx and Teen Challenge teamed up to provide many suburban churches throughout America the opportunity to minister in the concrete jungle of New York City.  “Rock the Block”, an amazing outreach, targets Harlem, Spanish Harlem, China Town, lower east side, Brooklyn and Long Island. We take it to the streets giving a message of hope and love of Jesus Christ to the drug addicts, prostitutes, misfits and the opposed!

I thank God for Teen Challenge and look forward to a powerful and lasting partnership with one of the top Christian organizations reaching the world, one life at a time."

Jim Galanaugh
CityConnexx National Director
Re-Creation Unlimited Executive Director
Denver Street School Student Development Director

For Him and Them,

Dean Cowles
YouthPartnersNET President

LIVE COMPASSION!

Your Donations at Work:

Long Island Teen Challenge (LITC) is a new ministry partner joining our network this past summer as a CityConnexx ministry site.  Teen Challenge started in Brooklyn NY in 1958 to work with gang members and eventually started programs to help those addicted to drugs and alcohol.  After obtaining a large home, they started a year-long residential discipleship program for youth and young adults to learn how to live drug-free lives offering a balance of Bible classes, work assignment and recreation.  By 2002 there were 178 Teen Challenge programs in the US and another 150 in other countries.

In addition to their Rock the Block, Hoop Challenge and Vocal outreach programs, they have Super Saturday Kids Krusade (SSKK) which buses in children from the most underprivileged areas of the island.  In drug-infested neighborhoods where crime runs rampant, SSKK provides a Christian alternative to Saturday morning trouble by teaching them life skills through games, lessons, music, dance, food, homework assignments, and the love of Jesus.  YPN is proud to be a sponsor of this amazing youth program.

Prayer Request:

Cameron is 10 and is involved in the programs at LITC.  Cameron’s mom is going through a lot of things at work and he has no father figure around for him.  Cameron asked that we pray for his momma, that she would come to church and believe in Jesus.