One of the walls in the building we use on Sunday nights is covered in chalkboard paint. This...has been one of the longest lasting drawings to date.

Haiti has been up on our entry wall for over a month and a half.

I feel like that ought to tell you something about our kids.

Shoeboxes!

So, NaNoWriMo is managing to turn me into the world's worst blogger for the month of November, but, Operation Christmas Child really did happen this year. We had a trickle in sort of a week, a fairly busy Sunday with several churches that brought in hundreds of boxes each, and then a Monday that never stopped moving.

Something like 5,000 boxes came in between 9am and 7pm yesterday.

Luckily, they were mainly in shipping cartons already, and we had some very amicable church staff who were willing to let us add a little physical labor to their day!

The news came down, as did an entire preschool full of children. My fourth and fifth graders came down to pray over the boxes on Sunday morning. At least three different high school clusters came to bake cookies and pray and haul shipping cartons. More volunteers than I could keep track of came down and made the activity center their temporary home. People donated enough "loose stuff" to build dozens and dozens of boxes.  Someone built us a snowman who was carrying a box of his very own. We fit twenty-two boxes into shipping cartons and then regretted it the moment it came time to heave them into the truck. And, we got thoroughly sick of the shoebox videos running on repeat.

11,410 boxes ended up leaving here by the time it was all said and done, which put us at just about seven hundred over last year's collection. Whoot!

And, now, we have a day or two to breathe - and sleep - before Thanksgiving and then Nutcracker. 

Telling Their Stories

A short, locally made video on teen homelessness. These are normal teenagers facing a situation that ought to be abnormal. This isn't a big city. This is Eastern Washington. These are our kids. Honor their stories by taking a few minutes to watch.

Scavenger Hunt

This week was a "fun night" for the High School youth group. They drove around town taking pictures for a digital scavenger hunt. Well, most of them drove. One group stayed behind to do a mini hunt at the church.

Seeing as one has to be twenty-five to drive during church sponsored events, and yours truly is something a little closer to twenty-two, I got to hang out with the on campus group.

This, is what happens when you tell nine high schoolers to find the largest doors in the church and pretend to be gorillas. Have I mentioned that I love these kids?

One of these girls did Focus Month this summer. One of them was in a sociology class that I taught. 

Earlier in the night, I was talking with a freshman guy who I used to babysit, laughing about the things that we used to do - tree forts and lightsaber fights, spinning in circles until he was "flying" and letting him hang on my forearm so that it looked like he was being strangled.

One of these girls was in my cabin her fifth grade year of camp.

I've been around some of them since they were too young to rightfully remember that I was there. 

What constantly amazes me, though, is the little tiny details, the goofy moments, that these kids do remember. They remember songs that I taught them, reading me stories that they wrote for class, running relay races during Sunday School, and taking fake mug shots for Mother's Day gifts. They remember all sorts of things.

Hopefully, as we add new memories, the one thing that will shine the brightest is Christ in me and the hope of His eternal glory. Because, without that, none of the rest of it really matters.

Learning Our Way

Do you ever have things that you ought to be able to explain, but you can't? Things that happened in sequence, but don't store in your brain that way? Things that were more an exchange of expressions and emotions than they were of words and actions?

Some weeks, that is what teaching Sunday school feels like. I could tell you what we did, but that wouldn't begin to explain what actually happened.

I could tell you about twirling my girls around during music, but I don't know that I could describe the hesitant smiles. I could tell you about tugging one of my boys down to the floor, but I don't think that I could explain the stance that was waiting, begging me to do it, or the tense body that melted down close and leaned back against my knee.

I would probably skip over the moments where I asked one of the girls to grab a pen or to move our box, and you would never know the pride that straightened her shoulders or the way that she focused in the rest of the hour, rather than being flighty and all over the place. I could tell you that we sat in a circle and shared our name and favorite thing that we did that week, but that doesn't begin to paint the picture of the kids who say, “nothing,” knowing that I will tease them about it, or the smile that relaxes their entire being when I do so, just like we've practiced it for weeks on end. I could tell you that they each read me the verse, but I can't tell you the triumph in their voice as my eyes and ears are focused in on just them, or the amazing quiet as they waited in line.

I could tell you that we played sardines, but that doesn't explain the scraggly line of children weaving through the parking lot, as intent as a shepherd looking for lost sheep, or the grin when we finally found “it” waiting like a monkey in the tree – a tree that he knew to hide in because he and I had talked about it in passing three weeks ago, and he remembered. I can't explain how her got a little taller with the knowledge that that I knew that he had remembered – because it meant that I remembered too.

I can't explain the sense that, as they worked to get someone else in the tree after him, it didn't matter that they were nearly strangers or could have been competing. I can't trap family and cooperation in black and white type.

I could tell you how I brought the rest of my small group inside and then left them to go get the two who had managed to stay back in the tree, but that doesn't encompass how right it was to find a pair of brand new friends perched, just waiting, because they knew that I would always come for them - not running off or getting in trouble, but just being with each other because they could.

It doesn't explain the sense of running back across the campus with just the two of them, as if they had forgotten that our family wasn't really one of blood, forgotten that we were at church, forgotten that they were learning.

I could tell you that we watched a video, or that I spent half the time with my head craning back and forth, counting to thirteen to make sure that they were all there, but that doesn't explain the fact that some of my kids listened a thousand times better because of it, that, if I was hypervigilant, they could be less so.

I can't capture three boys stretched out on their backs, perfectly recounting to me the Bible story, because they had been tugged to the ground, had hidden in a tree, had run late through the parking lot, and they were finally centered enough to learn.

I can't explain a dozen hands tapping my arms, wanting to try the memory verse that is somehow exciting rather than boring, or the questions that spring from lips as they try to understand the intricacies of the story. “How...?” “Why...?” “Wouldn't...?”

I could tell you what we did, but that wouldn't begin to explain what God did through it.