What an exciting weekend this was!
Community Group
It all started Friday night when our community group had an excellent discussion about some major issues of the day. It’s hard to deal with them all well in a short amount of time, but one thing I have found is that a lot of Christians today take for granted what they have been told is right. They assume that their teachers, pastors, etc., have it right and don’t bother to check. That’s why I love these types of discussions. I think about the Bereans in the book of Acts: “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
My prayer for my community group definitely aligns with Paul’s in Phillippians1:9-11 – “…that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
Awana Flyer Distribution Prep – Family Time
Then on Saturday, my excitement began a little closer to home. We had planned to distribute some nice Awana postcards to a neighbourhood close to the church where we run Awana on Sunday nights. We announced last week at club that we would like to have kids come out to help the leaders. I discovered I had about 9 or 10 leaders coming, so I divided up the area into groups of 100 addresses and mapped them out. However, there was one other thing that needed doing – the postcards all talked about club launch in September, 2008. We needed to put updated information on them all. We printed out hundreds of labels and enlisted the boys to help. Our three oldest were troopers – in fact, the youngest was the most motivated! Aydan worked with me and did very exacting work, making sure the stickers didn’t hang over the edge or obscure any text. We worked together as a family and put stickers on over 1000 postcards in a little more than an hour. What a blessing to do God’s work with my whole family!
Awana Postcard Distribution
Once that was done, it was off to the area to organize our teams and get them to work. I set aside an hour window, because the weather was chilly and I knew the kids would lose momentum if we kept them out too long. I set the meetup time a half hour before we would begin because I knew that there would be stragglers who would show up late (it is inevitable). So at 2pm the teams dispersed! I took Lyndan (our 5 year old) and Aydan (our 4 year old) and they each dropped off 50 postcards – that is nearly one per minute! They ran up to each door – they were moving so fast!
When we got back to the starting point, most of the teams were back so we had some drinks and chips and celebrated all the kids’ hard work. We gave all the kids who came bonus points for their team at club. That was Saturday.
Sunday Morning
Then there was Sunday! This post is getting long, but there is so much to talk about. Sunday morning was daylight savings, so I only had one person in my morning membership class, but it was a great discussion about some of the distinctives of the Grace Brethren and why I am with them now.
The worship time had a little sad news as we learned that a family would be leaving us. They will be sorely missed, but difficult times lead to difficult decisions, and I know that God’s plans are always better than ours. The worship time was particularly good – probably because my heart was in the right place for once. For some reason I am challenged to truly worship God on Sunday mornings through singing. Worshipping in my car with the stereo and the iPod come easily – but worshipping in large groups tends to distract me for some reason. That wasn’t the case yesterday.
Awana Clubs
Then of course came Sunday night. Awana. We announced next weekend would have no club as Spring Break for the public schools kicks in this Friday. We also began the process of replacing out Cubbies director. She has served us so well and with such a great heart this year, it is very hard to see her go. At the same time I was excited to ask another young lady who has been with us since September to step into that role. She has had a huge heart for the kids at club, and has been consistent, responsible, and dedicated to her task, so I knew she would be a great fit if she accepted. She did! Just having that opportunity to say such things to someone made my day.
Thanks for sticking with this long post. I hope you can praise God as much as I have been for working as he has the last 72 hours!
Tags: awana, Community Group, Discernment, Worship
