April 28-June 15 Plans

Date	Lesson	Lesson Theme
April 27	12 men went to spy out Canaan	Trust
May 4	Complaining in the desert/Snake on a stick	Thankfulness
May 11	Balaam and the Donkey	Obeying God
May 18	Rahab and the Two Spies	God can use anyone
May 25	Crossing the Jordan/ 12 stones	Remembering what God has done
June 1	Walls of Jericho	God's Power
June 8	Samson	Keeping Your Promises
June 15	Ruth	Willingness to Serve

 

Tuesday, April 20

We had a unique evening. We had an equal number of kids and helpers - 25 of each. It made for a great child/adult ratio (actually, some of the helpers are teens); we just had each kid find a helper. There were two reasons for this; one was that we had fewer children than we usually have been having; we've been averaging over 30. The second reason is that we've been pushing for extra helpers to come out because our college students have finished their term and most of them will be gone shortly. So it allowed us to do a little bit of orientation with the new helpers that came out. It was all good.

April 13

This was our first day back hosting The Party after Easter break. I was thinking that we'd likely have fewer kids because it had been pouring rain for much of the day. Actually, we had over 30 kids again (31 I think) and sufficient helpers. Ruth was sick, so I did the story telling - which gave me a great deal of appreciation for the fine job she does. Rose stepped up to the plate and handled the snacks (usually my station). Snack was decorating cookies, so it was a little more challenging than normal but she also did a great job. We had quite a few new faces this week, which is also encouraging.

Please pray for this ministry as quite a few of our regular helpers are college students and now that the college is ending for the term, we will really miss their assistance and support.

March 30

I didn't make The Party this week. I had gone home sick from school in the afternoon and really wasn't feeling up to going. I felt a little guilty as this is the first time I've missed since I've started helping with it in the fall - but not that guilty as I really wasn't well. I gave my van keys to the girls downstairs who help with The Party as well, and went to bed. (They needed my van because all of the snack stuff: cups, plates, serviettes, juice jug, etc. are in the back of my van.)

Anyway, apparently there were 32 kids at The Party and things went fairly smoothly. That's three weeks in a row that we've had over 30 children. Prior to this, we've been averaging around 20 kids, so that's a big jump. We'll now have a week off because of Easter Break and will start again after the break.

Report on Last Night

We had 39 children last night (and 17 helpers)! That's a lot of bodies! It was perhaps, more helpers than we need, but because we never know how many helpers we're going to need, we'd always like to have more helpers than less helpers. We can always use more help. Things went as smoothly as you can expect with 56 people there. Snack was pizza and hotdogs. All the pizza went (as could be expected?) and nearly all of the hotdogs. I think there was less than a dozen hotdogs left over. The pizza's donated once a month from Dominos - thanks Dominos. Mrs. Jacobs donated the hotdogs. It was 10 boxes of pizza I think (medium) - that's a lot of pizza to be donated! I think maybe 4 dozen hotdogs? A fair bit of food in any case.

February-March Plans

Date	Lesson	Memory Verse
Feb 9	God is our Peace Judges 6:1-24 Gideon	Psalm 46:1
Feb 16	God is our Peace Mark 9:17-26 and Luke 13:10-17 Jesus heals woman crippled for 18 years and boy possessed by a demon Contrast with synagogue ruler who didn't like the healing.	Romans 5:1
Feb 23	God is our Healer Exodus 15:22-26;32 God promises to heal the Israelites if they obey Him. Bitter water is changed.	Psalm 103:2-3
March 2	God is our Healer Matthew 9:1-8 Paralyzed man brought to Jesus by friends	Psalm 147:3
March 9	God is our Righteousness Exodus 20:1-20 10 Commandments	I John 1:9
March 16	God is our Righteousness Matthew 7:13-14 & John 14:6 Narrow and Wide Paths	John 14:6
March 23	God is Always There Matthew 28 How Jesus' friends and disciples reacted to His death and resurrection	Job 34:21
March 30	God is our Good Shepherd Psalm 23 How does God take care of our every need	Psalm 23:1

Growth

For the past two weeks we've had 21 kids attending. (Maybe more - last week we had three students attend who came really late, so they may not have been signed in). This week we had three new kids that had never attended before. That's also encouraging.

Things have been going fairly well. We've had sufficient helpers, and that's what really makes a difference. Thanks so much for everyone who has helped. We honestly couldn't do it without you.

We've had a planning meeting for this summer when we're going to do a VBS for the same group of kids in July. The group from Dallas sent up seven people on a planning trip to work with us, as they're hoping to send up as many as 100 people to help with some of the things we're hoping to do this summer. That was very encouraging.