Monday, July 4, 2011
The structure of the mission trip is this: I wake up around 6:15 to get ready and be at breakfast by about 7:20 (I’m a slow getter-readyer). We then take a half-hour van ride to the church, work on last-minute skit, music and lesson preparations for about an hour, have a quick devotion, and the kids arrive right about then. I tear my voice to shreds for about twenty minutes while leading music, and then we break into our age groups. Class, recreation/games, snack, crafts, then fifteen minutes of music again, then the kids get back into the vans and head home. It sounds like not much happens, but that’s just how I wrote it. It’s really quite a process.
This morning I got my coffee and took it into the van, which turned out to be the boys’ van, so we listened to classic rock and I watched them laugh at Family Guy clips the whole ride. It actually wasn’t bad. I like classic rock, and I like watching people laugh. It was good to have that down time before we got to the church and I became SUPER stressed out. We were in charge of the skit, we didn’t have our lesson quite finished, and we realized there were still some kinks to work out with the music, so I had all of that to deal with when we set foot in the church. I was freaking out a little. You would think I would’ve learned my lesson, by the way, and made sure I was good to go before pulling out of the parking lot to head home this afternoon. Yeah, not so much.
Anyway, I finally got my ducks in a row thanks to the capable help of many of the others, and things ran smoothly when the kids arrived. We sang many of our favorites today – Awake Alert Alive Enthusiastic, Strong Young Tree, Pharaoh Pharaoh, Star of the Morning, Awesome God, All in All, Ain’t No Rock, Father Abraham, though half of those were in the afternoon session – and I had to down a bottle of water to be able to handle it all. The morning skit was cute. We sort of stuck to the whole Steve Erwin thing about the diversity of creation. I won’t lie, I was shuffling music transparencies and keeping kids still on my lap and beside me, so I didn’t pick up the whole thing. Sorry, guys. :-/
When we split into our age groups, the middle and high school kids went with three other teachers and myself. We’ve combined these two classes for a couple years now, and it’s nice to have the larger group. It’s really nice to have the extra teachers. Jon, one of my co-leaders, headed up the lesson today (I’ll admit that I kind of threw him under the bus, for we’d planned it together last night and I just handed him all the notes today) and did a great job with it. We discussed how God called Abram to collect all his family, employees and possessions in order to go “to a country that I will show you.” In other words, God hadn’t even told him where to go yet – he just said to get all his stuff and people and get moving. God often gives us the beginning steps, the first part of the directions, without revealing to us what the end result will be. We are called to obey and step out in faith, trusting that he will use us and our talents and weaknesses to complete the plans that he has made for us.
Recreation was after that. We played kickball and my team got killed in the first half-inning. They scored twelve runs against us. Then, when we got to kick, we had one out, one on, fly ball to left, and when the kid caught the kickball, he popped it. That was Trenton, for those of you who know him. Seriously. He popped the kickball. I died. And I made sure to thank him later for ending the game. There’s no slaughter rule in Bible School kickball.
I had the chance to talk to dear pastor Bo when all the kids went inside for snacks. I do enjoy being around him. He’s hilarious, and he has a life that’s God-centered to its most base element, but still remaining real. We joked around for a while before I returned to my kids, who happened to be halfway through their crafts at that point. Whoops. Their project today was to make a little person that looked a whole lot like a gingerbread man, then clothe him and arrange him with the others around a big Earth we colored and put up on the wall. It was way cute. I liked how there were different skin tones on the gingerbread people. Hello, diversity! I love you!!
After we had closing songs (including a marathon round of the ever-loved and famous Bugaloo) and sent the kids on our way, we met, prepared for tomorrow, and headed back to the college campus where we’re staying. And I got in bed almost immediately. I tried taking a nap, but I pretty much just lay in bed and went in and out of snooziness for a while before dinner. Devotion time after that was quite excellent today – two of the leaders from one of our partner churches spoke briefly about finding one’s identity in Christ instead of in things others say and think about us, and we discussed it at length as a group. This is something I had been thinking of quite a bit lately; I struggle with finding my identity in Christ, instead tying my worth to my abilities and accomplishments. The perspective they had was that we should be confident in what we can do because Christ gives us the strength to do so. Conversely, what I got from it is that I should be humble about my gifts, for all of them came from Christ himself and not from anything that I have done. That’s a really tough pill for me to swallow.
Our big group meeting tonight was focused on prayer, but it was a shorter lesson and a meaningful individual prayer time after that. The speaker told us about Epaphrus, a young man mentioned in Colossians as being in constant prayer for his fellow believers, wrestling daily in his prayers for his brethren. We should not just have stagnant prayers or formulaic prayers. We should instead wrestle as Epaphrus did, passionately pouring out our hearts to God with thanks and cares of all kinds.
The evening ended with a trip to Sonic, the perennial gathering place and watering hole for all Appalachia faithful in the evenings. Since it’s the Fourth of July, there were fireworks off to the northeast that many of the residents had gathered downtown to see. The execution of the show was strange – there wasn’t much of a logical progression in the order of fireworks – but the different types were fantastic. Some of my favorites were the really loud ones, ones with gold and orange fizzles, one that looked like an eyeball, and one that looked like a butterfly. I like fireworks a lot.
Once again, back in my room, feeling very thirsty for just some plain old water, and more than ready to go to sleep. I will have to post this one tomorrow, but once again, be praying that we will reach children with our words and with our love, showing them who Christ is and who He means for them to be while walking with Him in life. Pray also for energy and patience for all of us. It’s only Monday night, and it’s already feeling like Thursday. That’s not good.
Praise to my Father for allowing me this opportunity once again!
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