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.