SandBlast 11

So going into this past weekend I didn't really know what to expect. I did things ranging from ordering pizza and delivering it to the production team to making sure 1000+ students had plenty of water so they wouldn't dehydrate in the 90 degree weather. I stayed up till 5:30 driving around on a golf cart making sure kids didn't sneak out and woke up at 7:00 to reset the auditorium seating chart for the day. It was a lot of fun and was exhausting. There were times were nothing needed to be done and I could worship and listen to the message and times where I was running around drenched in sweat. It was cool being able to serve in this way. From about 12:30-2:00 I walked around my dorm making sure that all of the students were accounted for. If kids were being to loud I would knock on there door and spend about 5min+ talking with them seeing how there weekend was kinda building repor then ask them to take there volume down a notch. Before I left I would tell them that they are awesome. I found it to work really well and It was a cool way to meet the students. The only down fall was that my rounds took from 12:30-2:00 as appose to the 15-25min rounds the other dorms experienced. My mindset is more geared toward building relationships and memories. I have been to camp and I know that "ta wee ours uf da nite" are where some of the best conversations happen. I was lax with them going to bed but strict with them being quite and staying in there rooms. I do understand the reasoning for them having a lights out and I see the effects of them staying up late. I see students sleeping during the sessions and see students showing up to the nurse during competition time feeling terrible then finding out that they only slept a few hours last night. But I feel that the students make memories, build real friendships, and experience an environment that allows them to dive deep into challenging questions. In other words, It's time well spent.
All of the things I got to do were physical and hands on, the only time I felt kinda annoyed was when I tried to nap and was asked to help. I stood around with nothing to do but about 30 min later I had something to do. It was a great experience getting to see some of the things that happen behind the scenes. And last night I got more sleep than I did all weekend.

Home Videos and Intro to Sandblast

Our video went really well last week and the kids really enjoyed it a lot, I posted it on facebook. The kids were all engaged and laughed throughout the video. I also referenced back to the video when I was teaching too. In the video I pied Eric every time he said something discouraging. This weekend is about telling the truth so we are going to shoot the video tomorrow. The theme will be every time you lie you get a bucket of water dumped on you. We are going to have a situation where something gets broken, a ball gets thrown into a window and lands on someone's dinner, and someone lies about doing their homework/chores and is playing outside.
I also have sandblast this weekend too. Sandblast is the high school fri-mon summer retreat. There are going to be over 1300 high school students from all of the willow campuses. I wanted to go and be a small group leader but they didn't need any help and even said that they had emergency people on call incase of cancelation. So I asked where I could help out at and they needed more people to help run operations. Then she said something like "would you mind staying up late walking around campus?" And I all I want to do is serve so I told her I wouldn't mind. So, this may be a long weekend. I have to be at the church at 6:15 am on friday ready to go and I'm excited to see how God moves this weekend.

My first Teach

So it was kinda stressful at first to think about memorizing my lesson. I though that I should memorize it word for word but and that was really hard. I learned that as long as I knew the key ideas and not transition until I hit those then I would be alright. The kids seemed really attentive and I think part of it was that they never herd me teach from stage before. Another thing that was cool was that after church sunday night I sat down with Kerri and Eric and we talked about the content and delivery. We changed some of the content so the kids would understand a little better. I used a different transition sentence and took out a whole section and replaced it with a new one. So the first service on Sunday was a lot different than Saturday and after I taught I sat down with Jeff and we did kind of the same thing and for the next service I added some more things. I reread through a verse to change the move and transition into a more reflective part of the lesson and I fleshed out a situation so the kids would relate to it more. Overall I was really pleased with my lessons. I started off by giving everything to God and trusting him, I felt very prepared and memorized up. It was cool being able to improve the teach as the weekend progressed. The size of Willow causes them to evaluate a lot. There are a lot of resources that move around and without reviews those resources can be used poorly.

4th of July!

One thing that is cool about willow is that instead of backing down from holiday weekends and being fine with low attendance they do something really cool so you miss out if your gone. For example on memorial weekend Rebecca St. James led worship and this past weekend David Crowder led an all worship service and the auditorium was packed out. It was difficult in some grades to get volunteers; in one room they only had 4 volunteers and about 100 kids. Last week I started to get ready for my teach next weekend and I'll continue to prepare for it this week, memorizing, practicing and revising. And the high school retreat is the next weekend. Students from all of the willow campuses coming; over 1200 students. I talked with someone in Impact and they said that they had plenty of small group leaders for the weekend so I'm going to be doing operational things, probably like staying up all night walking around campus or something. I also finished up my book review last week but didn't quite get to the verbatim.

And on and on

Well last weekend went well. On saturday night attendance was pretty low because they were having a baptismal service sunday after church so a lot of kids parents went to the 11:00 service on sunday.  I led a couple small groups and a rotation station for another service that was low on volunteers. The baptismal service was really cool on sunday too. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day! This past week I got to use the sweet paper slicer again for a bible verse fill in the blank for the kids during the teaching time. Also we had planned on using a bunch of funny youtube videos (that I spent a while finding) for the summer lessons, but there was a copyright meeting. Since the services are considered a public viewing we have to have permission to show the videos. Instead of emailing the person who posted the video to ask if he has the rights to the video and if we can use it we decided to make some home videos. So for the next 5-6 lessons we want to make videos. The theme will be "this is what your day would look like if you got _______ every time you ______!" Were going to go through a couple situations where someone will get pied in the face when they say something discouraging. In another video someone will get water dumped on them when they don't tell the truth and lie in a situation. I've started to get ready for my teach on the 9/10 weekednd too.

Carnival and Collide weekends

So 2 weekends ago I attended a weekend camp with middle school Collide ministry and it was sweet! I l got to lead a group of 6th grade boys for the weekend and it was a lot of fun. The weekend was all about teaching the kids that the bible is powerful and personal. We got to make leather covers for our bibles and it was really fun. The whole weekend was a blast.
Last sat/sun was our carnival weekend. All week I was getting stuff together and meeting with people. I couldn't find some one to do balloon animals so I met with a guy who showed me how to make a dog and a hummingbird. We also cleaned out the Promiseland prop loft on thursday and threw away a bunch of stuff that we were probably never going to use again. All the stuff ordered online came in on time but Kerri thought we needed more and saturday when I showed up at church there was a ton of cotton candy other candy she had picked up. The service went well, worship was fun and all the carnival stations were pretty fun. We tried to give away the glow bracelets on saturday and it was kind of tough finding a way to give them away. We ended up not giving them out on sunday because the kids were already getting bouncy balls, popsicles, cotton candy, more candy, silly bands, and ballon animals.

Into the groove, well almost

So this week has gone by really fast! I feel like I have been here for a really long time and at the same time I feel like time goes by slow. I still have meetings every day and every week I get to see more and more places in this massive facility. Today I needed to print around 300 pages and then cut them in half. They had an electronic cutting machine that was super sweet! it could cut like 200 pages like butter. And it was super safe; you had to shut a cover and hold down two buttons on either side of you making it very hard for you to get your fingers chopped off. Also I led worship this past weekend and Eric was helping out. He had planned on using my guitar but while we were practicing he had dropped it and the head broke off. So the next day I was playing his acoustic guitar and it was tough because we had to put a mic up to it and it kept picking up feedback. I've done a lot of creating graphics for the carnival service, making cards that the kids can write down who they are going to bring to carnival, and searching and purchasing prizes for the weekend, I'm pretty excited about finding 1000 bouncy balls for $60 and 100 glow bracelets for $8.
I also had a 5th grader tell me on sunday that Hamshack was one of the 4 guys in the furnace and I booked my fiancee and I's  honeymoon on monday.

Meetings meetings meetings

So my first service this weekend went well. It is cool being at Willow and seeing their attitude and mindset when it comes to ministry. This past week though I have been to a lot of meetings. One meeting I went to last friday was especially cool and helped me get a feel for how ministry is done here. The meeting was from 11-1 and the core leaders of Axis (18-30 ministry) were coming up with a plan to connect first time visitors to Axis. I could sense the urgency that everyone had and the passion for connecting people with Christ and a community of Christ followers. I also have been to a teacher meeting hearing about summer curriculum, a tech meeting talking about what is going on next sunday and what needs to happen, a Promiseland meeting discussing survey questions talking about questions like "do you think that you are recognized when you do a good job" and "do you feel like you have a say in decisions," and a monthly staff meeting hearing about the direction that willow is going in and how they are going about it.
The impression that I get from these meetings are that communication is huge, that they are very action oriented, and that everything they do is on purpose.
Its very cool being immersed in a very focused and passionate church. Im excited to serve and learn all sorts of things.

Settling in

Well i got here on a Tuesday and have been on the go pretty much ever since. Im staying with my brother and sister-in-law and between there very active lifestyle and church I have already been very busy. I was just wondering earlier today about how i can process all the things that are going on and as I started to type I realized that this is what the blog is for.

Well so they're are tons of things going on at willow it seems like and its really cool to learn and hear about how it all works. Promise land is k-5th and how its set up is there is a Children's pastor for each level (k-1, 2-3, 4-5) and a teaching pastor. The teaching pastor does curriculum and teaching stuff while the children's pastor arranges small groups, volunteers,  and the other stuff that goes on. Above the children's pastors are a head that deals with all of the cp's and above the teachers is a head that works with them and both of them report to the director of Promiseland.

One thing that I thought was cool was the screening process that I went through yesterday and today to be qualified 'safe' enough to work with the kids. I had to do some paperwork, do some online training, and read a protection manual. What was cool was that a lot of the stuff that I had herd about and learned about in my youth ministry class about legal issues were covered. A lot of it was review. "Safety is so important because if the kids don't feel safe then they won't open up and share."

I had a meeting yesterday about what I wanted to get out of my internship and me and talked out some stuff. I know that this summer is going to be crazy and I know that God is going to amazing things. I know that Im going to be challenged this summer and stretched. What I want to be able to say at the end of this summer is that I did the best I could, I was faced with hard things and God helped me beat them, and that God was glorified.