Summer and Summer Adventure: Temple of the Lost Gems

Summer has been fairly uneventful. I went to community camp for 2 days, and that was fun. I got to hang out with Justin in Leavenworth, drinking coffee, trying on hats, walking around like a typical American college teen (coffee in hand hand, playing with my phone’s GPS in the other), played some mini golf with Drew, the works. I hung out with Geoff, Greg, Jacob, and Anthony too. It was fun to hang out with some of the church for a few days and go white water rafting. On Saturday morning my parents and I headed back home.

Most of the rest of the summer has been spent working in my dad’s office, which has been kinda fun, and taking two classes online, which haven’t been as much fun, but hey, when you go to Biola and do Torrey it isn’t fair competition for other classes. I mean what other school is like Biola and what curriculum is like Torrey? I must be in one of the most unique situations in all of education. PTL!

Oh, and how can I forget all my SOS students that I have been emailing? Here’s a shout out to you guys! I look forward to meeting you guys soon!

So I’m just trying to fill space to get past this photo so i can put more pictures in without it looking too cluttered…..Yah, I’m so pro at blogging. That’s why I have 57 posts.

Ok, we’ve finally arrived! VBS, now known as Summer Adventure so we can advertise in schools, was The Temple of Gems this year. We went through five of Jesus’ parables (sower, prodigal son, unmerciful servant, the talents, and the good Samaritan). The gems were the phrases of the day (Jesus is the Word, Repentance, Forgiveness, Service, and Love). I led a group of fourth graders with a fantastic team of leaders, hand picked to lead with me. Each one of them played a significant role in this ministry.

My leaders were Andrew (my assistant teachers), Naomi, Tyler S, and Tyler O. Tyler O and I did VBS together last year and one of Andrew’s best friends, Matt S, was my assistant last year. I’ve known Tyler S for a long time and Naomi came on my team as the peace of mind female (every team needs both genders to keep it sane). All of them did great and I was so blessed to work with them. On Sunday we started decorating around 3:30 pm, after I had a long talk/ catch up / philosophy and theology discussion with Geoff. Megan S helped me make the background around the white board and a bunch of vines before my helpers came. It took us several hours to decorate, and my family even came at the end and helped alot. I ended up leaving church at 9pm and still had to look at the curriculum for the next day.

The entire week was a bunch of fun, although tiring. We would start off in our room then head down for worship and the drama. After that we would come back our room and I would teach the lesson and play a game that ‘tied into the lesson’. The office people below our room LOVED me for those games (they didn’t mind, and I didn’t get any complaints, but I was told they could hear us). After the game they would stay in the room for crafts, then head down to games, followed by snack, the story of Brother Andrew (told by Mrs. Tucker, bless her heart), and then to the sanctuary to learn the stomp. It was a pretty busy week because each day I would go home and do a few hours of accounting homework along with getting ready for the next day. I was already behind in sleep because of Sunday, and I never managed to catch up. Monday and Tuesday were hard days for me and I almost didn’t even want to go, but the Lord gave me strength through the spiritual warfare and 4 kids came to Christ in my class out of 6 non believers (and this was only on Wednesday that I asked!) PTL! One of the other two was almost ready and the other may or may not be ready yet.

My class, made up of some of the sweetest kids you could ever meet. Bless their hearts.

One thing I have to say about our classroom, we had a cave with a golden chalice at the end of it full of those clear rock/ pebble things. For each verse a kid memorized, they got to go into the cave and pick out one gem! The kids LOVED it (and the teachers who visited loved it too). My Tylers extended the cave on Thursday so it was HUGE! We put a lantern in the end to it lit up the cave so it looked like it came out of a movie or something. Kudos to my leaders!

This is the length of the cave on the inside. It was about 15 feet deep, made out of two tiers of chairs and a card table at the end.

This is the golden chalice that the kids got their gems from

After all the kids left (with big sugar highs if I might add) my helpers stayed behind and I gave them each a stone thing to remember this week and the impact that they had in the kids’ lives. We took a few hours to clean up (the dance parties may have slowed us down a little). I took Tyler S to his grandparents’ house and we had a nice talk on the way.

Although VBS was over, my weekend was just beginning. As soon as I got home I checked the internet and found out that my SOS crew leader, Anna, was landing soon at SeaTac! I drove on over and picked her up and we hung out at Westfield mall for a few hours while we waited for her friend to land. We had dinner and then watched Knight and Day, which was great! We headed back over to the airport and picked up her friend, then I dropped them off at Queen Ann in Seattle and drove home, only to discover that Anna had left her wallet in my car! She ended up coming over to my house the next day to pick it up, but it’s always a scary thing to lose your wallet.

Today, Saturday, I got up at 8:30 and headed over the the church (again) to meet up with people to go to the zoo. It ended up being a small group (Becky and Jenny W, Steve and Karen T, and me), but we had a ton of fun. We all rode over together to Woodland Park Zoo and spent over 4 hours walking around looking at all the animals that God created. When we first got there Steve and Karen used the facilities, so the rest of us watched the penguins. Well, let me tell you, they missed out. There were two penguins on a ledge that started squawking at each other. One was dominating the other, so another penguin came to help the weaker one. Well, the big guy got one of his friends to come over and they started hitting each other (while this was going on, a crowd of penguins was gathering below them and watching). Eventually the big penguin and his friend threw the hero over the cliff and chased him into the water and they had an under water battle. They swam like torpedoes and they went to another part and I don’t know what happened in the end. i guess the hero got away.

The penguin on the far left was the hero, the one with the blue was being picked on by the one on the right. The crowd of penguins below watch the fight and one of the fighters got pushed off that ledge.

We saw alot of other animals too, like elephants, lions, orangutan that liked to stare at us, gorillas that pounded on the windows, spiders, Way too many birds, snakes, dragons, and more. Becky’s friend met up with us there and she led us because we had no idea where we were going the entire time. It was a great day at the zoo (and a great day for the zoo cause the sun came out).

After an exciting week I just took a long nap. I woke up and realized that it was too late of a nap and I wouldn’t be able to go to bed till late, so I wrote this blog. Praise the Lord for VBS, sweet kids, great leaders, seeing my crew leader, going to the zoo, and enjoying his creation, including the creation of sleep!