August 1-11

The back to school hoopla has come and gone.

Now that summer is over, things are much easier. VBS ended it all, and now it's a nice little relaxer time for me. Joy took off on vacation again, to Colorado for a week... and I'm still stuck at work.

I want to work somewhere just long enough to enjoy the benefits of long, frequent vacations. It seems like everyone on staff here goes on a week-long vacation about every month. That might be an exaggeration, but it's actually not far off from the truth.

My work load has decreased, but I have kept myself busy. Making things better around here isn't easy to do when there is no budget ($$$) to work with. I have some ideas for making things easier, technology-wise, for the children's ministry. I want to build a little soundbooth for our main room. We use a little push-in cart to haul in the soundboard, projector, computer, monitors... etc... and it feels like I'm one of two people who know how to operate such a simple sound system. I'll make the soundbooth with instructions and all. It'll be a nice little upgrade. The only problem... money. We just don't have it. It's insane that a 1200 average attendance Sunday doesn't seem to have a dime to spare. It's a little frustrating that we've had to cut the budget twice already since I've been here. Insanity, I tell you! Regardless, I'm hoping to make it work.

The Sunday morning curriculum we've started is called "Pier Pressure"... made by the people working with Craig Jutila over at Empowering Kids. It seems like this curriculum is a little shallow and quickly put together. It's disappointing, based on the previous stuff we used (Pair O' Bulls). The kids are NOT reacting well with this 4-week Pier Pressure series. It'll be over soon...

Wednesday nights ARE going to start, despite the budget cut. Joy decided the only thing she could cut was the Wednesday night programming for the kids, but Bill scraped up some money out of some other budget... so it's back on! ...the only thing, we gotta find something to do. I'm thinking Fruits of the Spirit? We'll see. I'll run it by Joy when she gets back.

Things are headed into the fall, and it's a nice transition from the hectic summer. Also, the 11th is the official end to my internship, as required by MCC, so yeah. It's nice to not have to keep track of that... and keep track of the journal. :)

The end of the summer, beginning of fall... it's been crazy, but I'm glad to move onto something new and different, because I've never done anything outside of the insane summer internships. It'll be nice to see how things continue to go, after the summer, from the administrative point-of-view. Tip o' de cap. Adios.