Lamentations 3:31-33

For the LORD will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

Occasionally in the course of my job I come across cute stories. I was doing a review for Helzberg and found this one:

Title

Am I the Duck for You?

Text

The day was like no other. A beautiful Saturday in June without a cloud in the sky! My boyfriend Anthony casually asked me if I wanted to have a picnic in Central Park. Of course I said yes, not knowing what he had in mind!
When we arrived at the park, Anthony suggested that we rent a boat. We had never done that before, so I was excited to give it a try! We rowed out in the lake, enjoying the view of the tall buildings with the lush foliage at their base. Anthony rowed closer to one of the banks of the lake, where two ducks (male and female) were sitting. I made a comment that ducks mate for life and that was when Anthony asked, "am I the duck for you?" I laughed and said yes!! He then got down on one knee (in the boat) and asked me if I would marry him. I was so overcome by joy that I started to cry!! Needless to say, Anthony slipped the ring on my finger as I said yes over and over! I could not believe how exquisite the ring was. It sparkled so much that it cast a milion stars on the side of the boat! This moment was beyond special and everyday when I look at my beautiful ring, I am reminded of that day... and of course, ducks!

The Dark Knight

Okay so we (Savanna, Micah, Luke & I) went to see The Dark Knight with Bradley, Barron, Hannah and some friends. Let me just say that was a really good movie. I went into it a little hesitantly considering all the warnings I'd received about how dark the movie was (although I thought to myself what can you expect from a movie with dark in the title??) and was pleasantly surprised. As it seems to be with all middle movies (I'm assuming this one is a trilogy) it does have it's downers and sad moments (I don't want to give anything away). I think that is almost inherent in the nature of middle movies. I read something one time about the Star Wars movies that I thought pretty much summed it up. The middle movie is like the middle OF a movie--it's where everything is building in intensity to the triumphant ending. Sometimes middle movies end with everyone in despair, other times it's just some major cliffhanger but the POINT of it is to make you want to come back to see the next one. I felt the ending of this movie was both of those rolled into one.

So is it dark? Certainly. I have to say though that I did not feel it was oppressively so. It WAS extremely intense which I guess may have Generally speaking super hero movies have reaaally baaad villains and I didn't feel the Joker seemed any more evil than any other villain in any other movie. I guess after Heath Ledger's death and all of the people insisting how he committed suicide because of the evilness and all that, it just didn't seem that bad. Hopefully this won't offend any friends who did think the movie was just extremely dark but I personally found it to be a great movie and will definitely look forward to the next one.

Music

I am so very excited because Mr. Socolofsky has made his Sunday School lessons on music available on the internet! These lessons were the best I have ever heard on music. It was a very balanced approach and very thorough. I would highly encourage you to take a peek here.

Part 2 of CI still in progress. :)

Houston CI, part 2

Okay I promised and I did hear some of you did enjoy my first installment so here is the second. Sorry for the delay!!

Well on Friday morning I was not really feeling excited about how my part of large group was going. Things just weren't flowing and didn't feel right and the kids were very chatty. After one particularly rough large group was over though it was like a big DUH. Ben said, "Megan we haven't been praying before we come out for large group." HELLO, earth to Megan!!! I also decided to get Mrs. Lawless & Mrs. Fessenden in on it and gave them a schedule of our large group assured me they would be praying during those times. What a dramatic difference!! I have always believed it but now more than ever I am firmly convinced prayer is most of the work. The weekend was so packed I don't know that I could even post all the pictures but I will see if I can't get one picture from each skit and I will try to put them in the right order.


This was the Authority skit with the parachutist (our parents are our parachutes).


This one is the God's Omelette where David (unsucessfully) tries to keep all of God's commandments (you break one you break them all).


So...hahaha...this was the Pocket Watch story which I always remember being horribly sad. Somehow they made it funny?? And still got the point across. Who knew!!



We had a game time which went over quite well!! This is dodgeball -- teachers versus kids. Hah.

Hockenstock! This one is about different kinds of lies (for Responsibility).


Job...

The Rose (Love)



The frisbee chasing dog.


The Muddy Glove illustration done in a skit. This was a first for me to see as well and it turned out absolutely hysterical (okay so they were all super funny!)

Parent Presentation!

And last but not least, Musical Chairs! The theme behind this one was the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

So that was the totally crazy, absolutely fun, and completely insane weekend of CI 2008. :-) I was sorry to see it end. I really wish if I was going to put all the work into it that I could do it two or three times in one year. Oh well, hopefully we'll be doing it again next year. :-)

Houston CI, part 1

Wow, where to begin on such a packed week? For me it probably began about the first week of June. Curriculum had to be ordered, staff found, teachers recruited...not anything terribly time consuming until we discovered the catch this year--the Institute was not sending all of our supplies on the big truck. We had to purchase everything ahead of time ourselves. Cue major panic! Where was the money supposed to come from? How many kids should we prepare for? What am I doing???

Of course the more I contemplated the bigger the questions seemed to be and the fewer the answers I had. Things couldn't just be "simple" this year because that would be easy. Melanie and I had quite a few Google Talk, AIM, email, and phone conversations trying to hash it all out. I remembered how busy poor Melody stayed last year in materials and that was just sorting through the boxes of supplies already sent for us.

When we had enough teachers for 12 teams sign up it was decided to halt further recruitment. That was probably plenty of teams for 100ish kids and still plenty should we have more than 100 (I was thinking optimistically of course!). Melanie and I had decided to plan for 100 kids since we'd had around 86 last year, but after pre-registration ended at 20 the numbers given us were that we should plan for 50. That made me nervous!!! Monday before the conference Hannah and I decided to go ahead and buy the craft supplies even though we hadn't yet received the money for it. I didn't think we could wait any longer. Since we were buying ahead anyway, we bought for 70 and hoped we could make it work at least the first night should we have more kids. At this point I was waffling back and forth over whether or not I had way over-prepared with the number of teachers. As I was reading through the curriculum and making teacher training notes I came across "El Shaddai" which means "All Sufficient One". It talked about faith and trusting God to give us everything we needed. It was almost as if God said to me there "You have trusted me for money, you have trusted me for food--do you not trust Me to bring you children?" Ouch!!!

On Wednesday, Sara, Hannah, and I met at the Bogners' house for some craft prep. The goal was to have all the supplies cut out and sorted but of course it took much longer than we hoped. The guess is that we spent around seven hours cutting thread, dowel rods, little boys and girls, and miscellaneous other shapes. Ben and Emily drove in at some point in the evening and helped cut as well but we still didn't finish.

Thursday we headed to the church and brought all our stuff upstairs. Since several volunteers made it there early for teacher training we put them right to work!!


The afternoon went very quickly between teacher training and preparing the rooms. The children began arriving around 6:15 and kept coming until 8:00! Before all was said and done we had 93 kids!! God is so good. :)




For all my friends who taught CI growing up I had to be sure to tell you which stories and songs we did and include a few pictures. The first night our song was "Consider the Ant" and we used the Camel for Design. Stephen was pretty hilarious as the camel and actually drank I think a 2 liter bottle of water on stage.


So that is all the pre-seminar stuff and Thursday, hopefully part 2 will come tomorrow with the rest of CI. :)

Houston Children's Institute, July 17-19

Wow what a weekend!! It was absolutely amazing, completely exhausting, and totally crazy!!! To start with I had some amazing friends helping me and have to say thank you to them first.


Hannah -- You are SO AWESOME for helping with the craft prep!! I could never have done all of that myself and probably would have given up and sat in the middle of the floor crying. I wuvs you!!



Aaress & Tim -- Fabulous work on Wisdom Walk. You really helped keep the stage crew free to prepare for large groups (or catch our breaths) and materials was able to keep everyone stocked, all because of YOU. :)


Erin -- it was so cool to have you there this year! I know you didn't have much to do officially but unofficially you were such a help since you were available to run errands, get drinks, and be in skits. I love ya girl!!!


Sara -- The pictures are fabulous and you were such a help to have around!! It was really fun being able to work with you again. :)


Melanie -- The planning ahead of time was so much easier with you to ask headquarters all the questions for me! I don't know who to talk to about anything so I would have been totally lost. Also you did a wonderful job with games. :D


Amy -- once again it was sooo much fun working with you on stage. I can't imagine doing it by myself and having you familiar with stage work really helped.


Ben -- I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am for you driving down and being our ring leader. :) You are absolutely a natural both at working on stage with the kids and keeping leaders in line haha! I hope to have the privilege of working with you again someday!!



There are so many parts to this whole weekend that I am afraid I will forget something. God really worked in so many incredible ways and I really want to try to share as many of them as possible. I am going to post in parts so that it is easier to do some now and more later. Look for part complete with pictures soon!