Wow, these last weeks of summer have gone fast! I'll try to catch up...
Beacon: I found this sign above the sanctuary, and my first thought was, "oh dear, they are certainly not going to want to have kids in here," but it turned out fine, and in my head, I added "joyful" to the list. This evening Bible school was really easy for me because of the great number of volunteers. And even though it was the week before JOY camp, I found 4 new campers here. The first night of Bible school, we had around a dozen kids and as many volunteers. The second night, we doubled the number of kids.
JOY camp: What a fun week! This was the second year I got to help as a coordinator, which involved getting to hang out with all the groups of JOY campers and help their counselors with anything they needed. It was great to see all the kids grow- for many of them it was their first time away from home. Watching counselors share their faith with the campers was a pretty cool experience. I'm so thankful to be a part of getting these kids to camp, kids who would not be going were it not for these scholarships.
Donnellson: I got to stay with Karen, a wonderful hostess, again this week. I had stayed with her a few days previously when I went to Bonaparte. This was a VBS where three of the churches in town went together, which turned out to be a great deal. We had some 17 volunteers to help with the 48 kids that came the first day. Yep, that deserves repeating: forty. eight. kids. They just kept coming and coming. Fantastic! These volunteers really had it under control.
And now it's time for summer to end. No more living out of a suitcase. We have board meeting on Thursday, which will be a pretty important meeting to get some things figured out for the upcoming year.