Joy.

So camp was last week. This marked my tenth year of JOY camp, I counted, which makes me feel kind of old. Everything was much as it has been in previous summers- late registrations, last-minute scrambles to get transportation worked out, trying to minimize conflict with strategic camper grouping. And once I got there, with all the new names to learn, the heat, the countless mosquito bites, the homesick campers, the camper quarrels, the many chases after the upset runner- it was immensely refreshing.



Yes. Refreshing.

Why?

God does cool stuff at camp. And God does it through a community. Paige and Cherie came with me this year for the first time, and it was so nice to share this experience with them. We assisted the inpost coordinator, so we got to support each pair of counselors on a daily basis. We talked through individual camper troubles, spent time with groups, and encouraged counselors with devos in the morning. We watched as counselors patiently modeled for campers what good conflict resolution looks like, what it looks like to turn to God with problems, what it looks like to stay positive and work as part of a team. At no point was anyone a lone ranger.  Sometimes as an individual classroom teacher, or even sometimes as a solo VBS traveler, I forget this- that it is a powerful feeling to be part of a community, a support network, a group of people doing the same thing you're doing, ready and happy to step in to help at any time.

A first-time camper gets her hands dirty.

It was also refreshing because of things like this:

• The high school boy who saw a little girl struggling to take her broken chair down from the table. He took it down, fixed it, and made sure to sit in it before she did to make sure it was ok. 
• The junior staff member who offered a crying child her shirt sleeve as a hanky. 
• My first canoe experience, paddled by two girls who were also out on their first canoe experience. It was an excellent distraction from one girl's homesickness. 
• The next day, having that same homesick girl announce that she wanted to stay until the end- and then climb to the top of the rock wall. 
• The sight of campers going down to pray with counselors at outdoor chapel.
• Oh so many moments of just looking up through the trees and hearing the birds sing. 
• A counselor I'd had when I was a camper coming to give the Easter message, reminding us that the worst thing is not the last thing. 

Naps were also refreshing.

The last one of the summer?

Paige and I learned, sang, and played with 17 wonderful kids at Tingley this week. I knew they would have good helpers, because Tingley has a cool afterschool program called "We Care" that helps with reading. They shared their stories with us as we were developing the Change A Child's Story initiative. We had at least 14 adult and youth helpers who helped at some point throughout the week, which helped things go very smoothly. We were blessed to have a music leader who had been on J-staff at Wesley Woods, and the kids adored being penguins, hippos, and sharks in all her camp songs. I wish I would have started here so I could have used all the actions she made up for the G-Force songs, as well!

The kids were a good group of listeners and thinkers. I wish I had written down the one girl's answers for questions like "What is justice?", "What is a disciple?", and "How could you share God's love with someone else?" She listed off all the colors on a bracelet she had given her friend and how they were all symbolic of something. There was red for Jesus' blood, white for how we were washed clean, and green for how we grow. I had heard of this before, but I didn't remember the green for growing and I think that is a very important piece. Another girl mentioned to our puppeteer, as we talked about disciples following Jesus, that we couldn't be disciples because Jesus wasn't here anymore to follow. She explained that He was still here, just not in the same way....but the girl definitely captured a difficult aspect of faith. We follow an example, we follow God's spirit- though it's comforting to think the disciples messed it up many times when they DID have a flesh-and-blood person to follow.

And of course there was the one four year old boy in the front row. He was a talkative kid, and he definitely wanted to be involved in whatever we were doing (until he got bored, which he would also announce to the group.) For the storytelling on the last day, I give out numbered phrases to kids so they can help me tell the story. His row had 5. UP and GONE!, which he said as soon as I handed it to them, and many times after that. I told him he'd know it was his turn when he saw my hand like this, with five fingers out. Well, if you know me at all you know how much I talk with my hands. Poor kid, I think I threw him off several times. I almost had to put my hands behind my back until we got to his turn. :)

Checkers was in good company here.

Taking our friend to see Jesus

I always feel a little bad for the folks I have right before JOY camp, because my pitch winds up sounding like "Hey, there's this awesome free week of camp I want you to come to- and if you can come you need to tell me, like, yesterday." Despite the short notice, I signed up four campers for next week!

Speaking of time, I can't believe that was our last VBS of the summer. I have no idea how it got to be JOY camp time already. I need to go pack! See you later! 

Bonaparte (pop quiz inside!)

This week was VBS at Bonaparte, located in lovely Van Buren County.

Test your Iowa knowledge: In Van Buren county, you cannot find:
a) a Mennonite general store
b) a place that uses Queen Anne's Lace to make beautiful pottery
c) work by local artists
d) a traffic light

I love Bible school. :)

The correct answer is d) a traffic light. The rest of it and much more makes Van Buren a wonderful place to spend a week.

We had extra time one day, so we made puppets. This looks as good as the real Checkers!

I've been here a few years now, and there are LOTS of kids! 23 on the first day, 36 on the last day- at least 40 different kids came at least one of the days. Also exciting were the 8 high school helpers. They were doing service learning toward the hours they need for graduation, and it was so nice to be able to hand off a camera/computer/puppet/science activity to eager volunteers who were instantly cool to the kids. This church does a very nice job with kids' programs, and they are the site for summer lunches in their community.

Having such a large crowd makes for a very different dynamic compared to a VBS where it's the same 10 kids every day, and both have something to offer. Small, regular groups become a mini-family.  Large groups can too, there's just four times as much running around and jumping and squirming and talking and occasionally kicking the back of the pew. But that makes it all the more remarkable when that energy is harnessed into singing "My God is so Great" or responding to our action words: "God wants us to move, act, care, follow, and share." "LET'S GO!" They also did a nice job participating in our scripture time, helping me create props and acting out the Bible stories. Once the craziness was over on Friday, I was packing up stuff when one of the kids (who had to have been about three) came over. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Packing things up," I replied. "Are you leaving?" she asked with her cute three year old concerned eyes.  I told her I was. "We will miss you!" she offered, at the height of her adorableness. I really will miss them too!

Of course, staying in this neck of the woods means staying with Karen, a former MUMMs board member who is a wonderful hostess and friend. Cherie was doing Montrose this week, so she stayed there too and we all had a fun week. There is such a strong community in Farmington, especially from the church there, that I had already been looking forward to seeing some friends from the last few years. David and Elizabeth now have their own B&B (check it out! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5925861) where we enjoyed some soul-refreshing coffee, conversation, and piano music. Dawn was around to help with VBS at Bonaparte all week long, as that has been added to her list of many churches she serves. :) Anita has an art/pastry shop downtown. There is a cool energy going on there, and it comes from the way that group cares for each other (and everyone else!) with God's love. It's church as it should be!

Checkers goes to Weldon

When I spoke at Weldon a few weeks ago, there were about fifteen people at the service. About thirteen of them stayed after to hear more about vacation Bible school. This was a very promising sign.

This church had never had a VBS that anybody could recall, and their pastor and his wife requested that MUMMs come to help them get started. The pastor and his wife had been at Kellerton when I did VBS there a few years back, so they were pretty familiar with how it all works. We really encouraged knocking on doors and going out to talk to people to let them know personally that we wanted them to come, and at our meeting the people were already brainstorming who lives in so and so's old house, they've got kids! Still, you never quite know how many to expect.

On the first night, the kids kept coming and coming. Soon there were 24 kids around that same table where volunteers had planned not long ago- they even had to hunt for more chairs. The church members had grins so big they about fell off their faces. The energy in the room that night reminded me all over again why I do what I do.

The kids were fantastic. They really got into the Superman singing grace; they loved Checkers the Cheetah; they anxiously watched the G-Force Power Meter climb all the way to the "Share" level. We had a home-made Power Meter due to some technical difficulties the first night where we had a live performance of Professor Voltz and Clipboard instead of the video. (Note to self, pull up everything on the computer first, THEN plug in the projector. Do not try to go in any other order.)

There were roughly ten volunteers who came and helped in some way or another. Everyone's favorite part was recess. The volunteers played with the kids. I want to say that again. The volunteers played with the kids. We had ages seven and seventy tossing a frisbee around and a group of boys reveling in the attention of a man playing football with them. One big community, one family, as church should be. It made my heart happy.

They took up an offering and decided to put it toward the cross on top of the church as they put on a new roof, so that anytime the kids looked up they would see it and know that they were a part of that. Pretty cool.

And it gets better. Some of the kids are interested in having Sunday school this fall. Six of them are going to JOY camp this summer. So God's doing some pretty cool stuff in Weldon, IA. I'm thankful I got to be part of it.

On this rock...

This past week brought me to Silver City. We started out with five kids, and throughout the week we gained two teenage helpers and a couple other friends for a total of nine different Navigators at our G-Force, plus four other helpers and two puppy dogs. The small turnout was perplexing to the church volunteers. There is a pretty good-sized youth group, so we need to get more creative next year and plan some activities for an older crowd instead of our normal VBS.

But of course, it's never about numbers anyway. We had a wonderful bunch of kids who LOVED the music- I think we went through ALL the songs on the CD, when I normally just use three or four. At prayer time one day, a boy requested we sing "that prayer song" that we had done the day before- "Spirit of God, empower me. Give me the strength to have faith and believe."

We wound up having some good conversations with our small group as well- including how the Bible
came into existence. The kids were understanding the stories well enough to put them in their own words- when asked what God asked Moses to do, one boy replied, "Go to the pyramids and unslave the people." I like it.

I loved this because the student added God being proud of Jesus healing Bartimaeus.

 Pastor Mike added to our church bank crafts. He told us about how Jesus told Peter that on this rock (Peter) he would build his church. He gave each child a rock to put inside their church bank to remember that Jesus builds his church on us too. Of course all this talk of building churches on rocks led to a goofy search around Silver City UMC's basement looking for the rock.... we pointed the kids to the mirror. :)



Our science activity reminded us that little things do make a big difference. As I added the food
coloring to the milk, they noticed the colors already spread and impacted each other a little. The impact was magnified ten fold by adding the dish soap- just like how God sends us out into the world to shake things up.

Change a Child's Story

This week, Cherie, Paige, and I met about how we can help the bishop's reading initiative, Change a Child's Story. We are putting together some resources and FAQs for churches who want to start an after school program involving literacy.

Here's why.

And then there were three (or, Fitting Bible School into a Ford Fiesta)

Though there were a few weeks in May I thought it may never come, summer is definitely upon us! A few days of cleaning my classroom, a few days of Annual Conference, and suddenly- poof! VBS time. Last summer, it worked really well to get Cherie started with a double week of Bible school- Vanderwilt Park and Beacon. We kept the same set up as I worked with Paige, our new summer assistant. Since there are now three of us traveling around, logistics of vehicles and materials gets a little more interesting. But Cherie thinks ahead, and I was amazed to find that all the Bibles, craft supplies, hula hoops, and a scaled-down puppet stand all fit into my car. (I guess that really shouldn't be too surprising considering the amount of stuff I cleaned out of it to get ready for summer.) We loaded it from her car to mine in under 15 minutes. Talk about a streamlined process.

So Paige and I made it out of Des Moines (despite my Family Circus cartoon style of navigation) on our way to VBS at Vanderwilt Park. The radio, oblivious to my destination, kept cheerfully reminding me that today was the hottest day of the year so far. Great.

When we got to town, I was greeted by my grandma, a wonderful woman who does not having "boring" in her vocabulary. Lately in her work at the thrift store, she had found some books with Shakespeare plays, and thus she greeted me, "How comest thou, travler?" She had already been over to the park, cleaned the restrooms, helped set up the canopy tent, and had breakfast ready for the kids. And I knew I was home.

We had 8-10 kids pretty consistently join us at the park. This is one of my favorite weeks, because we

get to enjoy the great outdoors and my church family and family family volunteers are awesome. We make our own community there in the park. It made me think of when we delivered presents to some of these same kids this Christmastime, and a little boy saw us in his doorway and said, "It's from my church!" Now several of these kids do go to a church (many get picked up on a bus from a town about an hour away, which is a whole other story), so maybe that's what he was talking about- but I definitely consider our singing, storytelling, conversations, and community there to be just as much "my church" as any steepled Sunday morning building I know.

Naturally, being outside presented some distractions- it was majorly hot for a couple days, rained for another, and somebody's pet cat came to visit us right in the middle of Moses talking to God in the burning bush, but overall, we had a great week. It worked out beautifully for us to be able to walk up to a free summer lunch site at the school, and the last day, our helper and resident Way Cool Musician Spencer took his guitar, harmonica, drum boxes, and jingling johnnies up to lunch with us so everyone could jam.

Now this was just the mornings. Evenings, Paige and I went to Beacon, where we were surrounded by fantastic helpers from their congregation. We had about 20 kids, including a really stellar 3rd/4th grade class (all boys except for one girl) who memorized the longest verse to share at the program. One family of boys said they wouldn't be there the next day because of a ball game- but the next day came, and there they were! They had decided they would rather come to VBS instead. How cool is that!

One of the helpers did woodworking and made cross necklaces for Paige and me. It's clear he really loved the kids and enjoyed being there to help. How wonderful to get to meet so many different people and hear how God is working in their lives!