Vacation Bible School 2010

This week was Vacation Bible School at The Bridge Church! In past years I haven't been able to volunteer at VBSses because they were in the daytime, but we did an evening program this year (Tuesday/Thursday/Friday), so Cathy and I both signed on to help. And, of course, Mikey signed up to participate. (Hannah is still a couple years too young, sadly.) Boy, did we have a great time!

Initially, Cathy just signed up to bring some homemade snacks one day. We were going to work in the "food shop" where the kids were going to get their snacks. Children's Pastor Pete came over to me at the training session the Friday night before, though, and asked me if I would help out in the games room instead, and I said that would be fun. But then he had another idea.

This VBS was Egyptian-themed, and one part of it was going to be a nightly visit with "Joseph" who would tell a piece of his life story every night. They had someone ready to do it for Thursday and Friday, but on Tuesday he couldn't make it. Pete asked me if I would play Joseph on Tuesday, and then be understudy to the other Joseph the other two nights in case something happened to him. I said sure! I've done the tiniest bit of acting, and Cathy and I have actually taught children's classes once or twice before, so I'm not scared of a roomful of kids. It sounded like fun!

So on Friday night, I received a script for about a 10-12 minute monologue to deliver as Joseph in prison. I memorized a lot of it, using the script, some index cards, and listening to myself reading the whole thing into my MP3 player, and so I knew it well enough to muddle through. I was ready when day 1 of VBS came around!

I'd say we had in the neighborhood of 20-25 kids total at VBS every night. I wound up playing Joseph Tuesday, and then the main Joseph had car trouble on Thursday so I was Joseph again (2 days to memorize that script), then for the sake of continuity, I got to do it again Friday night (one day to memorize that part)! It's a really fun script; there are a lot of times when the kids get to comment on the story, or they get to get up and do something. It's very participatory. (Favorite kid-participation line: the kids are pretending to be the cows from Pharaoh's dream, and I say, "I don't know where YOU're from, but here in Egypt, the cows make these loud MOOing sounds!") One night I even got to wear a "bald cap" and surprise the kids when I whipped off my headdress and had a shaved head! (the skull cap was NOT very convincing... but it was funny!) The kids came through in three groups, and every group was different. Kids really keep you on your toes, too... you can't be too married to the script, because sure enough someone's going to say something and you'll have to respond to it! You have to think on your feet! I recorded myself several times on my MP3 player and I wish I could go back and erase some "um"s, but overall I felt happy with my work. I really believe God was working with me, because that was a LOT of material to memorize in a short period of time.

Cathy was able to come Thursday and Friday night; Tuesday she had other plans and couldn't make it, but after hearing me and Mikey talking so excitedly about it, I think she was pumped! On Thursday she wound up being a servant girl in the palace where Joseph was, keeping us cool with a palm frond. (Funny palm-frond moment: Cathy had started to get interested in the story, or was looking at the kids or something, and forgot to keep fanning. One of the kids said: "It's getting hot in here!" I could see Cathy not fanning from the corner of my eye, so without looking directly at her, I pointed at her over my shoulder and said, "My air conditioner is broken down!") On Friday she fanned for a little bit, but then one of the adult "family leaders" had an emergency and had to leave, so she went with that family group for the rest of the night. She had made a snack called "palace bread" for snack time on Friday, and I'm not sure she was happy with how it came out, but I did notice that there were zero leftovers at the end of the night, so it must have gone over well!

Every night there was some music at the beginning and end, with LOTS of hand motions and DANCING! Our final dance on the last night was particularly BIG and BOISTEROUS and LOUD! There's a part in the song where it says "Your [God's] love has brought us together..." and all the kids are holding hands in a circle, and they all come together in the middle. That night they RAN together! For a minute I thought they were going to bash heads! OUCH! (They didn't.) After that they had a brief lesson with their "family leaders" and then they got to go do activities... hieroglyphics, face painting, "shaving" (with olive oil), making an Egyptian collar, making an Egyptian head band, painting a canopic vessel (one of those "King Tut" coffin things), playing games, making bricks out of mud, having snacks, and visiting with Joseph. After that they had another brief lesson with their families, and then the closing music for the day. You could tell by the looks on their faces and they way they acted that the kids were having a blast!

Every day they were there the kids got coins with the memory verse and theme of the day on them to take home and keep. Mikey really enjoyed writing on the hieroglyphic wall (brown butcher paper on the wall in the hallway). He says they wrote an advertisement for the "barber shop" on the wall, and then he drew a triforce (from the Zelda video games on Nintendo!) He had a lot of fun making his Egyptian collar. But his favorite part was making the mud bricks. Boys like stuff that is MESSY!

When I asked Mikey his favorite part about VBS, though, he surprised me. His favorite part was actually the lesson times. Not only the Joseph story that I was acting out as a mini-drama, but also the little lessons the family groups talked over with each other at the beginning and end of the day. It's pretty high praise for the curriculum when a child thinks of mentioning the Bible lesson before he thinks to mention playing in the mud!

The final night after singing "Lord, You Are Mighty To Save" we had an altar call for anyone who wanted to receive Jesus into their hearts - nobody responded, but I'm pretty sure they were all kids from our church so I'd say that wasn't entirely unexpected. Pastor Pete did invite them to come up for prayer if they had something they wanted to ask God for, and several did come up. Pete had asked me and Cathy to be ready to come up and help pray for the children, so we did that. I think Cathy has a burden now for one of the kids who was in her family group - he came up for prayer and she prayed with him. I prayed for a little girl. We didn't actually ask them what they needed prayer for; Pastor Pete prayed a sort of blanket prayer, and we were led by the Holy Spirit as to what to pray for the kids individually while he was praying for all of them.

I think VBS was a SMASHING success. I don't think they even had a VBS program at The Bridge last year; the children's ministry wasn't fully organized yet at that time. For a first VBS at a small church, I'd say it was an amazing success. It would have been a great effort even at a much larger church. We had TONS of adult volunteers who all had wonderful attitudes (and who looked great dressed up as Egyptians!) the whole time, and there were almost as many volunteers from the youth group as from the adults. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am so impressed with the teenagers from The Bridge Church. They always seem ready to jump in and help with things; they always have a good attitude; they are kind to the children (even when it's not VBS); and I'll tell ya... they're just a good-looking bunch! Over the three days I don't ever remember seeing any children who looked unhappy or bored, or who left and didn't come back the next day. It was great fun! We're pooped, though... last night I couldn't get wound down until after midnight, and I slept until nine this morning. I'm in the habit of getting up to get ready for work every morning at 6, and sleeping past 7 is amazing for me. I was worn out! But it was TOTALLY worth it!



I took some snapshots on Sunday afternoon as we were setting up; another church had loaned us some set pieces from their VBS using the same curriculum, and let me tell you... they were IMPRESSIVE. Take a look at the pictures at this link!

2 Crazy Months

Wow! I took a look at the contents of our camera today, and was amazed at all the pictures I needed to upload! If you like looking at my family pictures, set aside some time to check them out!

If you've been reading this blog, you already know we've lost a lot of loved ones recently. We lost two grandpas and one aunt/sis-in-law. In the middle of all of that, we managed to have a nice Mother's Day. But wait... there's more!

When we were in Shreveport for Grandpa Mickey's funeral, Hannah got her first haircut:



Cathy had a birthday, and so did Michael:


Bonus picture of Hannah eating a piece of my birthday cake:



At The Bridge Church, we had our first-ever church picnic, which Hannah and Mikey LOVED:

   

The next Sunday as we were leaving church, Hannah said, "I want to go to the picnic!" I guess she had had fun!! We had to break it to her that the picnic only happens once a year or so, not every week. :)

Today was the "Taste of Summer" event at the Blue Bell ice cream plant in Broken Arrow. You plunk down five dollars a person, and you get to eat all the ice cream you can handle! There are also games and inflatables for the kids (Mikey and Hannah tried out almost all of them), self-guided tours of that plant (which Hannah and Mikey LOVED), fire trucks, a "fire safety house", a trailer with information about recycling, and even some live music. Cathy was planning on entering the ice cream eating contest, but she didn't get in on that this year. :) We had a blast! Don't believe me? Here are all the pictures, or take a gander at these samples:

     

Yesterday evening we were in Bixby to eat dinner, and we ran across the coolest playground ever! It's at the Bentley Sports Complex. I couldn't BELIEVE how tall one of their slides is. It must be at least three stories high! Here's the picture from their site (I didn't have the camera or I would have taken one myself):

We love you, Theresa.

Yesterday morning, Cathy called me at work. "We need to get up to the hospital to see Theresa," she said. Theresa Angel is Cathy's brother's wife; Cathy and she actually knew each other at church a few years before she met his brother, and we didn't even all make the connection until later. In recent months Cathy and Theresa had started to become even closer friends than they had been before, and Theresa had declared that she intended to treat our children like the grandma they lost three years ago would treat them if she were still with us. Theresa had liver disease, diagnosed many years ago, and she's been on a liver transplant waiting list for over a year and a half. Early Monday morning she had gone into the emergency room with bruises all over her body, and Tuesday mid-morning Cathy's brother, Theresa's husband Kevin, had called her and told her to come quickly.

We didn't get there quickly enough. When we got to St. Francis Hospital, Cathy spent a few minutes talking to someone at a nurse's station, and then she came back to where I was (I was trying to keep the kids entertained while we were waiting), Cathy said simply, "She's gone." She pointed at the ceiling. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You mean, gone gone?" I asked. Theresa had died mere minutes before we arrived.

We were crushed. We went up to the floor where the family was and spent some time with them, then we went downstairs to the lobby to wait with Kevin for his son David. Meanwhile the word was getting out, and my mom, who is a friend of Cathy's family in addition to being related by marriage, came up to give Kevin a hug of condolence and to take my kids off our hands and to McDonald's. Cathy and I stayed a little longer, and then after making sure Kevin was taken care of (his son was going home with him), we got in the car to leave; there was no reason to hang around the hospital any more. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to just drive?" I asked Cathy. She didn't know what she wanted to do, so I selected the "just drive" option.

These days it's really hard to drive around Tulsa without going somewhere that holds painful memories. Cathy's dad passed away not quite two weeks ago, so parts of town that are associated in our minds with him are still very much an open wound. And now parts of town that we associate with Theresa can be added to that list. To make it worse, there is so much street work going on in Tulsa right now that it can be a struggle to drive anywhere (don't get me wrong... the streets need it! But it's hard on motorists). I wound up heading out to Peoria and then down to Riverside, then I took Riverside out past Jenks to where it curves and becomes 131st Street. I knew that stretch would give me a chance to "just drive" for a few minutes without dodging any construction barrels, facing any stop lights or signs, or fighting any traffic. My brother's wife Candi called Cathy on her cell phone, and they chatted for a few minutes, which was good for Cathy.

I didn't talk much. I felt numb. In addition to the death of Cathy's dad two weeks ago, we dealt with the death of my grandpa a month and a half before that. I've been strong and brave through all of those losses (and don't even make me mention the loss of Cathy's mother... grandmother... cousin... aunt... these all occurred within the past 4 or 5 years) ...but it starts to wear on you. I felt tired. I felt like a boxer must feel in the seventh or eighth round of a fight where he's getting the snot pounded out of him. It's not the first blow that gets you, or the second, or even the third, but when you start piling them up on top of each other, especially in such rapid succession... it's enough to wear the strongest man out.

We got to 131st and Memorial, and I turned left. Our church, The Bridge in Bixby, was just up at 121st and Memorial, and I thought there might be a chance that someone was there. Sure enough, Pastors Orlando and Kim were there, and Associate Pastor David, and they knew already (Orlando and Kim were friends with Theresa from her Grace Fellowship days, and Orlando had even performed in Kevin & Theresa's wedding). We walked in, and we were immediately covered with love and compassion. It was like someone putting a warm, comfy blanket on you when you're freezing cold; I think they helped to steady us both just by being themselves and loving us. They asked us what had happened and we filled in some of the blanks for them, and then they prayed for us and for our children, that we would be strengthened and that particularly Mikey wouldn't become fearful since all of those people he is close to have been going away all of a sudden. Orlando seemed startled to see me so distracted and a bit teary; I guess I generally control the way I act so well that people don't often see me getting truly emotional. So they don't know what a crybaby I truly am sometimes. :) Anyway, after receiving a couple of CDs of recent messages from Kim, we left there feeling quite a bit better.

We weren't far from Kevin's house in south Broken Arrow by this time, and since Kim had asked us to give one of the CDs to Kevin, we decided to go on out to his house and deliver it right away. When we got there, Kevin's car wasn't in the driveway, but we were surprised to see our great friend John Teeples walk around from the back. John and his wife Sheri have a lawn service, and they had been cutting Kevin & Theresa's grass. We got out of the car and told John the news; he was so shocked he dropped his weed eater. We walked around the back and shared it with Sheri also, then we all stayed put for a few minutes and talked about Theresa, and then just about "stuff" for a bit. It was so helpful, so therapeutic, to have real, true friends to help us get our feet back rooted in reality again. The whole experience had been so surreal that we needed someone to help ground us. Kevin got home and Cathy gave him the CDs, and then we said good-bye to John and Sheri and left, again feeling MUCH better after receiving the love and caring of friends.


Theresa was a WONDERFUL lady. She was amazing. Many of the people who knew her who are on Facebook commented on her beautiful singing voice, but for me, that was almost the least of the wonderful things about her. She had a huge personality; she could fill a room with joy or compassion or whatever else was appropriate to the situation. She had the biggest laugh; not loud and obnoxious, but full and hilarious, welcoming you in on the joke even if you had just walked in and had no idea what was going on. She genuinely cared about people; not just family members, but pretty much anyone who came into her circle of influence. I can't imagine Theresa ever excluding people from her life because of social class, race, appearance, language. She enjoyed life, family, and friends. When Linda and then Don died, Theresa was so concerned that we all were there emotionally for each other; this time we have to remember to be there for each other without her prompting (fortunately, apparently she trained us well!) Her daughters are all beautiful young ladies, and though they may or may not believe what I'm saying if they read this, I can see in each of them echoes of their mother's classiness. They're not just attractive physically, although they are that; they are all also top-quality women with high standards for themselves and respect for others. Theresa used to brag about them so much to us behind their backs! She loved them and her husband so much. We started missing her the second she was gone.

Here's her obituary in the Tulsa World.

Kevin & Theresa in 2007, visiting us in the hospital after Hannah was born