Friday Night BBQ

Friday we had a little BBQ in the park near our house. It was nice to have a majority of our friends surrounding us for on last hurrah. We tried to play some games but turns out that the ground is too hard to drive in the stakes for either volleyball or horseshoes, but we did get a good game of Frisbee 500 in using John's glow in the dark Frisbee.

Safari Dinner

Inge and Elri

The Group

Emily and Katie

Yesterday Mike and I participated in the church youth group Safari Dinner (progressive dinner). We started at 4:00 with appetizers at Inge and Elri's house where I discovered a great new easy appetizer, bacon covered cherries (don't say anything 'till you try it!). Then Emily hosted us for the main course and Scott and family hosted dessert. We concluded the night with the movie "Firewall" starring Harrison Ford. Mike and I had a blast. It would be hard to find a better group of kids.

Billy Idol

Billy Idol

Mike and I joined up with Nate and Jen to watch Billy Idol do his thing at the Del Mar Race Track. The best part of the concert was the people watching. I definitely didn't fit in with that crowd. I would have had to don everything black I owned in order to blend. After his famous "White Wedding" we took off for food at Tio Leo's.


Thanks to Nathan for getting the close-up of Billy. Nathan risked life, limb and his health pushing through the "happy" crowd.

Wedding Shower

This past Saturday I, along with Leanne and Heidi, hosted a wedding shower for Kat. It turned out so beautifully. I spent the better part of the week preparing the house and still there was so much left to do on Saturday morning! Thanks to Mike and his brother Jared tables, umbrellas, their stands, and chairs got set-up super quick. Mike made some executive decisions and started decorating the tables a bit they looked great. Meanwhile, Heidi is wrestling with the chocolate dessert in the kitchen. The recipe was 6x'ed and thus it was 6x as hard to prepare. At one point the kitchen was swimming in chocolate...figuratively of course. Amazingly everything was looking sharp by 9:45. At 10:00 the party got started with brunch. Heidi presented the devotional at 10:45 and then Kat opened her presents while the guests looked on. What a wonderful day!

Wanted to let everyone know that Jon was a great help afterwards loading and unloading the heavy stuff. Thanks Jon!!

Mark Your Calendars!!

It's official as of today; the movers are packing us on August the 28th-29th! That doesn't mean that we will be heading out of town right away but it does mean that we will be stuffless for the next few weeks until we get orders and start the long drive back across the country. Thanks to Jon and Jess we will have a comfy bed and clean bathrooms 'till we go.

Pictures from V.B.S.

Vacation Bible School

During the week of July 24- 28 I was teaching kindergarteners the truths of the scriptures at North City's VBS. Sounds so easy when you say it like that!!
I, along with Katie Tullsen, volunteered to teacher one of the kindergarten classes for the whole week. We started out with 13 kids and ended with 12, no there was no "accident"... just... behavior troubles... yes, that's it. Our curriculum covered some tough subjects for most 5 year olds but I think we got through to them.
We started out the week talking about God's creation. That's an easy one. We just needed a few pictures of animals and a picture of a man and a woman. Pretty easy to communicate that God spoke and the earth was created.
The next day was a tiny bit more challenging, The Fall. Most kids understand disobedience so it was easy for them to understand why Adam and Eve we cast out of the Garden of Eden.
Wednesday presented a challenge for more than one reason. Middle of the weak exhaustion hit pretty hard and the heat was just plain oppressive (yes I know it's SD but I'm telling the truth here). It took a little creativity and "here are the rules in this classroom" speech but we got off to a better start than we had any other morning. The lesson used the story of Abraham and the covenant God made with him about his descendants to demonstrate God's overall character and covenant relationship with us, His people. The kids took to it pretty well but in the end I think the will remember Karen the Camel (pin the tale on...) and the desert animals in sand.
The last two days were by far the most difficult to teach in my opinion. We taught salvation on Thursday and Glory on Friday. For me the idea of salvation is so complex that I really had a hard time communicating the basic ideas and answering their complex questions with comprehensible answers. My favorite memory was made on Friday. We were talking about heaven and what it would be like. Everyone was pretty good at telling me what would happen in heaven but the ran into trouble when I asked them to draw me a picture. One little guy just did a lot of random color on the page, or so I thought. Turns out the gold represented the streets, the other colors the jewels, and the red blob in the center was Jesus; red because of the blood he shed for us.
By the end of the week I had learned as much if not more than the kids had. It was a wonderful teaching experience and a blessing to see the children grow in the knowledge of Christ and His holy word.