The Last Week Begins!

Wow, I can't believe that it's already my last week of teaching! It's been such a great summer, and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have as great of a job as I do! :-)

Our first club this week is a VBS at Laurel Baptist. This is a big enough VBS that the kids rotate around and so I have to teach whatever I'm teaching about 3 times. I've done the missionary story both times, and it's a lot of fun to do it this way. I get to adapt it..make it scarier for the older ones, tone it down for the littler ones...and get better at it each time. :-)

Our next two clubs are no-hostess ones in housing developments, which I went into with a little skepticism and a lot of prayer because of my past experience with the club in Sumas that was similar. (We had no kids.) We got to our first club, and I found out that a friend from Revive, the Christian Club I was involved with at Whatcom, lives there. My team and I walked all around the development and passed out more invitations. There wasn't much positive response, so we went back to the playground. One boy showed up a couple of minutes later, invitation in hand. We began club with just him, and had a total of eight children over the hour and fifteen minutes of club. Two girls left because one said it was boring and the other had to go with her, but the others all enjoyed it. Today when we arrived, they were waiting expectantly and excitedly to meet us. One girl said she had been watching all day for us! There are some issues at the club though. A little Russian girl came after we had started, and the other kids didn't want to include her because "she was mean." We never saw any signs of it! She was as meek as you could imagine, but the other kids were somewhat mean to her! I think there's some animosity between her family and another family there, because some of the kids said that everyone in her family was mean. Pray that we can bring healing to this neighborhood and that their relationships will improve. Becky gave a miniature "sermon" on 1 Corinthians 13 during the Bible lesson, but I'm not sure how much the kids retained.

Our second club is on Texas Street...probably one of the neediest neighborhoods in Bellingham! Truthfully, I was a little scared when I heard the location, but God has protected us, and all we've gotten so far is some strange looks...no verbal or physical attacks. :-) We handed out invitations again, and one boy responded well. He came to where we had set up club, but left when he found out that his older brother was unwilling to stay with him. No more kids came, so we set our departure time for 3:45, because we all needed to use the restroom (me worst of all). At 3:42, three kids showed up! We were kind of dying by this time [:-)], but we gave them a short club anyway. The little boy cam back with a friend and his little sister. The sister didn't stay, but both boys did. Today only the first boy came back, then when Becky began the Bible lesson, he ran away to "talk to his mom." We sat there for a couple of minutes, until he came back. A little bit later, three friends joined him! Praise God for growing both our clubs today...and for growing our faith through these various trials!