You may have noticed I didn't write anything last week. I had a reason. I was going "To the Edge."
That was the theme for this year's Vacation Bible School at church. I've helped the last several years and was put in charge of the third grade this year. It was a little different than the last couple, when second and third grades were combined. We averaged about 20 with the two classes and about 10 in third grade this year.
Now, those of you who know me know that teaching is not my forte. I never wanted to be a teacher, never played school with my dolls, never dreamed of changing the lives of young people with my words of wisdom. Teaching is not for me. But, I taught the Bible story two days this week. I always get nervous teaching Bible stories because I don't want to get something wrong. Tuesday's story was the woman at the well in Samaria, which has some interesting details. Thursday's was Jesus and Peter walking on water, also a story with interesting details. I think I did OK. The other adults in the room didn't try to throw me out for teaching heresy, so that was good.
I also got to teach the verse a couple days, which is not as stressful. What I usually do is make a poster of some kind with the verse on it and either cover up words as the kids recite it or try to do something that hides phrases or words to help the kids learn. I've done that for the past several years, so it's not as nerve-wracking. And sometimes you can find something that's fun to look at, as well. I think my favorite was a couple years ago when we had insects as the theme. I had a poster of a picnic and ants to cover up the words. I thought it was a good idea.
VBS was a good week overall. The attendance average was up from last year, we had seven kids make professions of salvation and the rain stayed away on Friday for the carnival. There were some glitches and kids who weren't really happy to be there, but that happens every year. You just pray that God will work on those kids anyway and they'll learn something by osmosis if they're not actively participating in the class activities.
It was an extra challenging week for me. Not only was VBS on the schedule, but we were putting our Fourth of July preview book together at the Independent, as well. Ordinarily that wouldn't be an issue, but we're short a person after the editor was let go a couple weeks ago. The nice thing about the preview book is that it's magazine size so the pages are small compared to what we're used to. And that means it takes about two minutes to lay one out. When I walked out the door Thursday afternoon about 5:15, our part of the book was done. All the pages were laid out, printed out and ready for the ad reps to look over on Friday. Once everything was OKed, the pages were PDFed and put on the site where the printer could get to them. It was supposed to print on Monday, so we really rocked to get everything done. Kudos to the staff on that!
So now things are back to "normal," whatever that means. I'm covering Legion baseball games (last night and tonight, in fact) and have had several all-star games on the schedule. It's just nice to come home after work and not have to go somewhere. I can just sit in the air-conditioning and relax. By the time school rolls around, though, I'll be tired of that and ready to have some more games to go to. I know, I'm never satisfied.
