Youth Ministry
Young people, God's animals, and faith learned with your hands.
Meet Hunter
This page exists because of a fifteen-year-old. Hunter Yoder is the reason The Oaks Animal Ministry came back to life — she resurrected the whole dream, and it has become her calling: youth ministry through animals. She loves the Lord and wants to serve Him, and she has a gift for helping other kids discover that caring for God's creatures is one of the surest ways to understand the God who made them.
Hunter lives and breathes animals, with a special love for the ones most people overlook — reptiles especially. She's homeschooled and well ahead in her studies, shoots on a local archery team, and is active in her church youth group. And she has a dream she's building toward, in her own time and at her own pace.
Her Dream: A Homeschool, Faith-Based Animal Program
Hunter wants to build a program where homeschool families — hers is one — can learn animal care the faith-filled way: hands on the animals, hearts open to what God teaches through them. Feedings and fence lines alongside Scripture and stewardship. Responsibility learned by doing it, shoulder to shoulder with other young people who want their own future families to live close to the land and close to God.
The shape of it is still forming — quiet days with a church youth group or a few homeschool families, parents present, animals as the teachers. As it takes shape, this page is where it will live. She also serves in the ministry now as its first Honorary Junior Member, learning the work from inside, the way callings grow.
4-H and the Bow
Faith isn't the only place Hunter is being stretched. She's involved with 4-H — she chose the Boone County program, just over the county line from home — where animal projects put her skills to work alongside other young stockmen and women. And she shoots archery on the team at Valley Springs, a strong program where making the competition squad is no small thing. She loves the bow either way. We think a young person learning to aim carefully, work patiently, and trust God with the results is learning ministry, too.
For Parents
All youth activities at The Oaks are family-based, with parents present, and everything runs through the ministry's general contact — you'll find it on our Contact page. We don't publish personal contact information for our young people, full stop. If your church youth group or homeschool family is interested in a visit as the program forms, reach out there and tell us about your group.
“Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”1 Timothy 4:12