Unfortunately, I have been a bit scatterbrained the last few weeks, and have forgotten to take my camera to the recent Awana events at church. Our slide show at the end of the year will be missing KICKOFF pictures, but hopefully no one will notice!
Thankfully, our Awana year is off to a great start, so the time I have to spend on it during the week will go from more than 10 hours (!!!!!) to maybe an hour or two a week (with the exception of theme night week once a month and store night one week every other month!!!). I can also get rid of a lot of stuff I had been storing at my house until the club year started, so we can almost completely open the front door now without hitting anything (I do still have to keep some stuff at home!)
We had our Awana kick off last week, and it was not as amazing as I had hoped. Don't get me wrong, it was great because we had a really good turnout for the first night and the most of the kids came back tonight for our first regular-schedule club meeting, so I assume they enjoyed themselves. There were just a few annoying snags that I didn't foresee - such as the consequences of the drought we are in. The grass was SO dry it popped the balloons the game director had planned several games around when they touched the ground. Game time was not as exciting, since a lot of the games just didn't work. On top of that, it was really hot - 95+, and the kids didn't want to stay out for games. Unfortunately, we don't have an indoor game space, so they just had to "suck it up" and finish their time until we were ready for the dinner.
As I said though, of the 32 that came for the kick off, 26 came back tonight for our first real Awana club meeting of the year. SO they must not have thought it was as bad as I did. I guess I will say it was marginal, and start thinking of a better plan for next year.
The kids loved the new take home bags - they get a couple of neat toys (Oriental trading company!) and I get to send home all the papers that always seem to get lost between church and home with dates, rules, etc.
Everything went really smoothly tonight, although, as always, I saw ways I can improve my part in things for next week. We have a really great team of leaders, and I can see we are going to have a great year. A lot of kids have actually already finished their entrance books and are starting on their handbooks! When leading the leader prayer meeting and dedicating the night to God tonight, I could just see that we are going to impact these kids in a positive way, and plant the seed towards their eventual relationship with Jesus as their Lord. It is humbling to have a part of that. I just want to do my best to please God and make it as easy on Him to do the watering and fertilizing as I can.
We traveled to Cary yesterday for the annual ministry conference. The host church, Colonial Baptist, was SO big, a few in my group (me included) actually got lost in the building trying to find one of the classes. We eventually found our way around, so no harm done, but it definitely made me appreciate my little church with its 12 classrooms and 2 building campus (200 person sanctuary and fellowship hall!). We had 7 people in our group, so we didn't quite make the 70% needed to earn a plaque, but it was a really good group, and I think we all got some ideas for ways to improve our methods. We were encouraged and reminded that our mission is to reach boys and girls with the gospel of Christ and train them to serve Him. We were reminded how important it is to reach a person while they are young with that gospel. I think we all came away energized and ready to get started with our kids. We also had a lot of fun on the ride there in back - with Jason driving way too fast, riding in that shaky bumpy church van. We were definitely NOT one of those church groups you see moseying down the highway, taking their time about things. We had fun and learned a lot - it's going to be a great year!
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