Monday, January 21, 2008
Random Things from the Weekend
It was yet another crazy weekend. I started it off with a slumber party with some of our teen girls on Friday night. Then, Saturday was outreach in the Arctic cold weather. Our outreach adventure included a run-in with another driver. I'm at a stoplight in the turning lane (in the church van) when another lady is not paying attention and decides to turn on the street a little too late to make it into her designated lane. She proceeds to become irate with me because I am in the correct lane and apparently how dare I drive properly so we all watch as she's yelling at me through her window. She keeps driving closer to the van, then when we're not moving, acts like she backs up and comes at the van from another angle. I'm sitting there going, are you stupid lady? This van is way bigger than your little car. Besides, if you hit the van hard enough to mess it up really bad, maybe we'll get a new one. I've been looking for a good reason to convince the church we need a new van, go ahead and hit us! The youth pastor is sitting in the seat behind me kindly motioning the lady to go on around and she finally does. A few months ago, the lady probably would have scared the wits out of me, but we have a lot more boldness going into this neighborhood now.
After outreach, I tackled helping a family out with a birthday party at Dave & Busters. Now, why a mother who freaks out over everything with her kids would take them to such a place, I will never understand. She was having a nervous breakdown the whole time we were there, going there's no security here, someone could just walk in and take one of these kids and we'd never know it. Now, lady, why didn't you take your kid to Chuck-e-Cheese instead?
Sunday morning came way too early. I went to pick up a few of the kids. The van rides are always an interesting time. We've had fights break out. We have kids crying over "your mama/papa" jokes (these though have led us to understand the lives of the kids, as the kids will "joke" about their parent being in jail or whatever...information comes out then that we might not otherwise learn). We've had them singing every song under the sun (we're really working on teaching them church songs, but they prefer rap stuff!). The part that always makes us laugh the most is when they see the "po-po" (the police). All of a sudden, you will hear a kid say, "It's the po-po." and every head in the van ducks down to hide! (We've had to teach them in SS that the police are your friends.)
On this particular Sunday morning, "Jordan Jr." did not want to go to his SS class and no amount of talking to him would convince him, so we had to take him home early. In the van, he was kicking and hollering and gave the finger to one of our teens. Next week, he will be a little angel, but for this week, his horns were showing.
The rest of the kids were very well behaved. Little "Tiff Jr." was talking about her Christmas presents to one of the kids and mentioned that she had gotten a Bible. (She won the hearts of everyone when she asked for a Bible for Christmas, and our children's pastor's family had her name so they made sure she got one.) She went on to say that she had been reading her Bible every day. Little things like that make it worth it all.
Sunday afternoon was spent baby-sitting and then back to church that night and a youth staff meeting afterwards. Youth staff meetings are one of those things that you love and hate, but this one was fun and we accomplished a lot. Youth week is coming up in a couple of weeks so there's a lot to get done. Our youth staff is very unique and quite full of unusual characters. We're a very close group so we're cracking jokes the whole time and the poor youth pastor has to keep reigning in the troops to keep us focused. We manage to get the job done though.
Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail!
After outreach, I tackled helping a family out with a birthday party at Dave & Busters. Now, why a mother who freaks out over everything with her kids would take them to such a place, I will never understand. She was having a nervous breakdown the whole time we were there, going there's no security here, someone could just walk in and take one of these kids and we'd never know it. Now, lady, why didn't you take your kid to Chuck-e-Cheese instead?
Sunday morning came way too early. I went to pick up a few of the kids. The van rides are always an interesting time. We've had fights break out. We have kids crying over "your mama/papa" jokes (these though have led us to understand the lives of the kids, as the kids will "joke" about their parent being in jail or whatever...information comes out then that we might not otherwise learn). We've had them singing every song under the sun (we're really working on teaching them church songs, but they prefer rap stuff!). The part that always makes us laugh the most is when they see the "po-po" (the police). All of a sudden, you will hear a kid say, "It's the po-po." and every head in the van ducks down to hide! (We've had to teach them in SS that the police are your friends.)
On this particular Sunday morning, "Jordan Jr." did not want to go to his SS class and no amount of talking to him would convince him, so we had to take him home early. In the van, he was kicking and hollering and gave the finger to one of our teens. Next week, he will be a little angel, but for this week, his horns were showing.
The rest of the kids were very well behaved. Little "Tiff Jr." was talking about her Christmas presents to one of the kids and mentioned that she had gotten a Bible. (She won the hearts of everyone when she asked for a Bible for Christmas, and our children's pastor's family had her name so they made sure she got one.) She went on to say that she had been reading her Bible every day. Little things like that make it worth it all.
Sunday afternoon was spent baby-sitting and then back to church that night and a youth staff meeting afterwards. Youth staff meetings are one of those things that you love and hate, but this one was fun and we accomplished a lot. Youth week is coming up in a couple of weeks so there's a lot to get done. Our youth staff is very unique and quite full of unusual characters. We're a very close group so we're cracking jokes the whole time and the poor youth pastor has to keep reigning in the troops to keep us focused. We manage to get the job done though.
Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail!
# posted by 99 Blogger @ 10:00 PM 
