Hey friends and welcome to the happy hour with Jamie Ivy podcast. I'm your host Jamie and I'm so glad you're here.

Each week on this show I invite a friend to join me and we chat about the big things in life, the little things in life and everything in between.

Hey y'all and welcome to another episode of the happy hour. I'm your host Jamie and today we have a great show which every week we have a great show. Let's be honest, but today's a great show because it's first Wednesday in August and most people in America are probably going to be starting school this month.

We have about a week and a half left before my kids go back to school and it's always better sweet. Get back into those routines school but today my guest is here for all of us who have any kind of interaction with teenagers. Now me as a mom, I have interactions with teenagers every single day because I have four teenagers.

Maybe you're a teacher or you're a mentor, you're a youth group leader or maybe you have young kids and this is one day going to be your story with teenagers.

My guest today is Cara Powell. She's the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Her book, Three Big Questions that Change Every Teenager Released Yesterday and today we dive in to those three big questions and how we as parents and leaders and mentors, how we can come alongside and create good, healthy conversation with our teenagers.

Today's show Cara talks about how teenagers often feel that being heard and being loved are the same. Let that sink in for a minute and how important it is to have empathy in order to ask the right questions.

What I know as a mom and from the conversation with Cara today is that teenagers are looking for relationships with adults who don't judge them but who journey with them through their future.

And today I hope that this conversation spurs on some great conversations with whatever teenager you have in your life. Now before we jump into Cara's episode, I want to remind you that we had some phenomenal episodes that we launched this summer on the happy hour.

Now if you're anything like me, August means getting back into every team, which also means getting back into my podcast listening regular rhythms.

The summer can be a little bit crazy to try to listen to the podcast that I love and I'm behind in so many, but I want to tell you if you're behind on our podcast interviews from this summer.

We had a really fun series that I hope we do again. It's called Encounter and basically some of my favorite interviews have been when people have come on the show and shared with us their encounter with Jesus.

What happened to their life? They met Jesus and how it was changed forever. And so we decided to do a whole series this summer and had guests come on and literally just tell us that story.

How did your life change and the messages that we have received have been phenomenal? If you miss those, go to jmeiv.com slash Encounter and you'll see all of those episodes there.

Guys, stick around to the very end because Cara has something special just for you as a happy hour listener. Here's my conversation with Cara Powell.

Cara, welcome to the happy hour. Oh, it's so good to be here, Jamie. This is so great. Now you're a California girl. I am. And you came to Austin right now. We're in person. Yes. And I would want to make sure you don't look around at any real estate because we are not interested. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

There's a lot of California. California. California is coming to Austin. I know I'm kidding. We love y'all. But it's beautiful here. It's so green. That's what I think when I leave California. It's because it's been raining for 78 days this summer.

You're on flood. We've had a lot of rain this summer. Okay. So introduce yourself to our listeners. What do you do? What are you doing, California?

Yeah. Well, first and most importantly, I'm married to my awesome husband, Dave. And we have three kids who are 2018 and 15 years old. And then for my job, I'm the Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Seminary and the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute.

Okay. A lot of youth stuff. I love young people, Jamie. I mean, I graduated from high school in 1987 so people can do the math on how old I am.

And really since then, I have felt called and have had some very divine moments where God really specifically called me to work with young people.

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