June 12th - The Out of School Bash
This was an event to go down in history. We had a 70' slip-n-slide, ultimate frisbee, extreme soccer, extreme volleyball, FREE paintball with Tippman 98 Pros and our own supersweet paintball course that felt like Vietnam in the movies (Rambo or Chuck Norris?). We had airbrush tatoos (which were a huge hit), cotton candy, tons of food and drinks, and so many raffle prizes that everyone recieved 1-2 gifts. After 4 hours of strait games, tatoos, and food we had a worship service and devotional where 3 young people gave their hearts to the Lord. God did great things at the Bash.
Story: The worship set was planned to be 3 songs followed by the devotional. Towards the end of the first song the power for the mics went out and needed 15 minutes to kick in again. I had left to get my bible and when I returned the worship team was jamming but voiceless. Jacqui just smiled and pointed to the mic. Anyway, we did the devotional while the mics were rebounding and it all worked out great.
Funny story: Our event was to feature extreme soccer and volleyball. The word extreme was derived from the notion that we were going to play with a 40" rubber ball, just a smigin smaller than the one used at camp. I had spend the week trying track one down and get it here in time. Our soccer goals were fence posts with foam wrapped around the top for safety and asthetic value. We got everyone on the field, were designating teams and with the arrival of one additional player (Adam Dugdale), he impulsed to give the ball a good kick. The ball with grace and flair responded to his kick and soared into the air ricocheting off of the top of the fence post and in mid air transformed from a sphere into a disc. It flopped to the ground with a Texas size hole in the side and resolved that its calling was not to be used for our games. It was hilarious. This left our soccer playing to find its "extremeness" in our enjoyment and not necissarily in our 40" ball.
June 13th - AHYEAH
A-Team
The previous challenge was to promote the Out of School Bash and boy did they. Many of the youth posted fliers at their jobs and public places, several made facebook events, and almost all of them handed out mini fliers. One youth in particular walked his neighborhood going door to door and covered 4 streets completely on his own initiative. The new challenge was one to motivate them to crack open their bibles and also to show their faith to friends. The new one was to post a different scripture verse in their facebook status everyday 5 days a week. The one girl that didn't have a facebook chose to put a different scripture verse on her crutches each day (You rock Jordyn!).
AHYEAH
Many of the youth are scrambling to get their paperwork in from camp and the curve ball for many of them is to have a notary sign it. Knowing that we had a notary in the church I told them that they could just get their paperwork to me and they could come back on a certain Sunday with their parents and we'd have him there for that. This was that Sunday. Great idea, stinky results. Of the 20+ youth that were looking forward to this, maybe 8 remembered to bring parents and take advantage. :(
Anyway, the service on the other hand was touch by God. We started out with typical worship which seemed a little dry. The youth seemed bored and distracted. I felt impressed to lay out a challenge for them, and exhorted them to get into gear to give back to our Lord for all that He's done. That God is searching for people that will give their all to Him and be unashamed. We continued worship a little longer and the whole atmosphere changed. Youth started to praise and worship and pour their hearts out. As we were about to wrap it up, Nat came and requested that we pray over Dave and Erica for their trip to Belize which was the following day. ALL of the youth gathered around them and prayed for them, then we felt led to pray over their feet. The word of God says, "Beautiful are the feet of those who carry the gospel." Two or three at a time until every youth at AHYEAH had come and prayed over their feet. It was super powerful and God did amazing things not only in the hearts of our youth but in Dave and Erica, our missionaries who would be in a different country in the next 12 hours.
Youth: 31; Visitors: 1; Leaders: 5
To get the group discount we needed to bring 25 people. We showed up with 9. We didn't get the discount. But that is the only negitave of the day.
We had so much fun. We were there for about 10 minutes (time enough to go down one slide), and the storm came in. Whistles went off everywhere and everyone was escorted out of the pools and slides. After talking to a lifeguard, I learned that we weren't being kicked out but asked simply to find shelter under a cabanna (sp). So having forgotton that their purpose for going to the park was to get wet, crowds of people left the park in a hurry. We waited for about 30 minutes and watched the cats and dogs fall. Finally, after chin-up competitions, making faces at the security cameras, and losing (and reposessing) our frisbee from over a security fence, we emerged out under the exhausted sky. We virtually had the park to ourselves. There were no lines at the slides, it was not overly crowded in the wave pool, we were free. We played, and slid, and splashed, and sunned all day until 6 when they actually closed and kicked us out. Twas a good day.
Testamony (6.18.10)
I just couldn't wait till the next blog entry to give God praise. Several things that most people aren't aware of about camp are the extra expenses that I'm trying to cover with the youth budget to make going to camp affordable for the youth. Camp is actually $280 per person; I'm giving the youth the price of $199 so they can go. Flamingoing is helping a with this (thank you Abiding Harvest church family!), but there are still extra expenses such as tons of water and gatorades to keep them hydrated in the triple digit heat, snacks to give them energy, dinner on the way home, and renting a 15 passenger van for 5 days. I actually just rented the van yesterday, a real chunk of money (can someone say "ouch").
Another topic, same story: The Out of School Bash was an expensive event to make it the quality that it was. The biggest draw of the event (our 'prize pearl' so to speak) was our FREE Paintball. For this we hired Eagle Creek Paintball to come down and set up right here on campus. (I've got to give them props. The typical paintball company rents out standard Tippman 98 Custom paintball guns (decent), but Eagle Creek brought Tippman 98 Pros (high end!); the same typical paintball companies give you masks that give you about 120 degrees of sight and fogs the first time you breath heavy, but Eagle Creek gave us non-fogging 170 degree sight masks. They also cleaned up our course for us and screened off the whole thing so that everyone around the course was safe. High quality people.) They quoted us a price, and although it was 75% of the budget we set for the event, we accepted because of the draw that it would have.
Alright, putting the two together. I just recieved the invoice for their services and they cut us a huge deal, only 2/3rds of our agreed upon price! In fact, the money their saving us is 30 dollars more than the price of the van that I rented yesterday!!! When i called to thank them, they THANKED ME for the publicity! God just paid for our rental van to camp!!! We serve an awesome God! Glorrrrrrry!!!
June 30th - Putt Putt Night
It was a fantastic event. We had 23 come out and All Star Sports gave us a pretty nice group discount. After a swell game of miniature golf we all went out to eat at Coney Island where we had some great fellowship and lots of laughs.
