Focus Group: Day Two

Look! We multiplied! (There was actually another girl there as well who was absent from the picture.)

There was much more brainstorming and refining of ideas and concepts, and, of course, many moments of total and utter distraction. The "Focus" part of them name might be slightly misleading. But, hey, whatever works.

We stuck eight people around a table in the community center meant for four, pulled out the markers, and put more ideas down on the "thinking paper." Some of them were real ideas - doing yard work or car washing as a fundraiser, putting together a walk to raise awareness about clean water access, etc - and some of them were slightly less realistic - "smashing things," "commercial: about BABIES."

But, we do appear to have a least one administratively minded person in the group, because she took our every-which-way mass of colors, words, and pictures and consolidated it down into a bullet pointed list. The rest of us...well...we just circle and underline the things we think are important. The more color surrounds something, the more we think it should happen.

And, happen it will, at least some of it. This Thursday, we'll meet again to start the move from planning to action.

Focus - Day One

Wednesday afternoon, a few of us got together to brainstorm for the summer, and... to get thoroughly distracted a dozen times along the way.

Oh! Shiny!

We learned that, in a pinch, coffee straws work to spread peanut butter; these guys have kept a mental log of every person who is homeless in their parts of Tri-town and where they tend to hang out; they care about clean water, malaria prevention, and hunger; they want to put on a 30 Hour Famine; and, they legitimately want to be involved with people who are homeless.

We're meeting again on Monday to make some of their ideas come to life.

Now, we just need to find an easy way to explain it all when they're trying to invite friends!

That Thing on the Rock

Well, it is once again summer - I kind of figured after three years of summer classes that I had used up the last of my summers in high school; apparently this is not the case. Summer means aerobics childcare, Haiti, middle school camp, a middle school ministry trip to Pasco, and, at the prompting of a few kids... more Focus Month.

No snazzy website this year, but we are doing, "that thing on the rock," as one of the boys refers to it.

We'll be meeting up next Thursday and seeing what God has in store for this summer.

Last year they used chalk art for AIDS awareness, domestic minor trafficking awareness, and famine awareness; built cardboard "cages" and made fact signs for a fundraiser; held said fundraiser during a free movie night in the park to send a care package to domestic minor sex trafficking victims; figured out how to donate food at the food bank; built a website; held a yard sale; made and hung posters; made and sold bracelets and other crafts to raise money for a well in Zambia; watched at least one documentary; researched and researched some more; yard saled and donated the findings to the pregnancy center; got on the news; and handed out information at the church picnic.

In between, we sat on the rock, wandered the farmer's market, picnicked in the park, got icees from B*rger King, talked about all sorts of things, sword fought with markers, brainstormed repeatedly, and basically spent an awful lot of time just sitting around and doing life.

Looking back, it felt calm and slow (although rather addictive) and largely like something that occurred on the top of a climbing rock in the middle of a park - and, perhaps, inside of the community center. Somehow, though, God used that calm and slow to do more than most people would ever imagine doing in a single summer.

And, it must have been addictive, because they all want to do it again!

Next Stop

This is the next place that we are taking the SOLD exhibit. We'll be in Sunnyside in July, partnering with Sunnyside's Promise.

We are very excited! Our little exhibit is growing up and leaving town. *sniff*

Fundraiser

Talk about a full day. The high schoolers showed up at the church at 7:30am to finish prepping brownies and ice cream, stood up front during first service, listened to the sermon, booked it across the church to get to their stations in the space of a single prayer, served dozens of people at each station, went back into service to stand up front second hour, served dozens more people at each station, and cleaned up to be out of there by 1:30pm.

(Somewhere in there I checked my fifth graders into middle school Sunday school, got to look at next year's fourth and fifth grade curriculum, and slipped into Summer Sunday school for about twenty five minutes.)

The Bridgetown kids went home, and the Haiti kids scattered to get food.

(We went to my cousin's birthday party.)

By 3:00pm the Haiti team was back at the church for cross cultural training with the Warm Springs team and a team of adults going to Rwanda. We trained nearly nonstop from 3:00 - 7:30pm. They fought to stay awake and take in information that they really wanted to hear - or knew that they would have really wanted to hear, if it weren't Sunday afternoon, when their bodies thought they were supposed to be napping.

But, they got a second wind eventually, and, by the time the final session rolled around and the senior pastor got up to talk about spiritual warfare, they were all ears.

The first several sessions were things that they need to know, but that many of them don't realize yet that they need to know, or haven't been on any sort of cross-cultural trip to even have any concept of why they might possibly need to know. (Seriously, I got a degree in this stuff. These trainings are well and thoroughly put together. At this rate, we might just start our own missions college.) The spiritual warfare stuff, though, they understand.

Several of the kids told me afterwards that the final teaching made fighting to stay awake so, so worth it.

Which, is good. This isn't an easy trip. Physically it isn't bad - although uncomfortable for kids who have never been out of the States - but, the emotional, mental, and spiritual energy it requires takes a toll. And it's not the sort of thing you just forget about once you come home! They'll need the information they were just given, the returning kids maybe even more than the first timers.

After all of that... half of them ran straight across the parking lot to jump in on the last thirty minutes of youth group, where one of them prayed to commission the new class of freshmen guys and another played on the worship team.

And then, they went home to do homework and get ready for school the next day.

All in all, a nice calm relaxing Sabbath. Or not.

Brownie Baking

This my friends, is how you bake thirty-two triple batches of fair trade brownies for a ministry trip fundraiser in record speed.

Our Haiti team joined together with the Bridgetown team to sell brownies and ice-cream after church this Sunday to help fund our respective trips.

Twenty high schoolers carved two and a half hours out of their Saturday - the first Saturday after school got out, for some of them - and showed up at 9:00 in the morning to mix and bake and sort and clean. And, they did a great job of it!

Although, apparently, it takes approximately ten people to wash the dishes afterwards at a sink with one spray nozzle. *bottom picture*

And, yes. We used fair trade cocoa in the brownies. The youth pastor ordered a giant box of it online, just for this fundraiser. The brownies are a tradition. The fair trade cocoa is new this year. We may not have this anti-human trafficking thing down yet, but, as a church, we are slowly getting there.

'Graduation'

For Sunday School this week, we "graduated"our fifth graders out of the children's wing. Next week, they'll be off to the fellowship hall to join in with middle school Sunday school. Some of the kids are ridiculously excited about it. Most of mine...not so much.

I'm more than sure that they will sort through the transition and figure out that it is not as terrifying as they think it is, but, for this week, they were not the world's happiest campers. (Actually, I've never had a small group less excited about moving up to the next grade.)

All morning, one of my boys hovered within inches of my hand and asked me, "If we don't do x, will we not be able to move up?" "If we lose at y, will we flunk fifth grade Sunday school and have to stay here?" "What  if I just come and hide behind the chairs every week?" "If I do z, will I have to stay with you?"

Seriously, kiddo, you're supposed to want to leave, not want to stay. He tried x, y, and z, and still ended up with a graduation certificate - much to his disappointment - which he immediately proceeded to poke, crumple, rip, and crease to death, anything to make it disappear. If you don't have a diploma, you haven't really graduated, right?

I could have gotten annoyed by the fact that he was 'destroying' something 'special' that he had just been given, but, if God has drilled anything into my head through these kids it is that: behaviors are communication. Behaviors are communication. Behaviors are communication.

In fifth grade boy land, there are no appropriate (cool) words for, "I feel safe here, and I know that you love us. And, I'm scared to start trusting all over with a new leader." So, we poke our paper until Jessica moves close enough to take the pencil out of our hand and then stays there, close enough that, if we really needed to, we could hold onto her - not that we ever would. And, that's okay.

(One of the girls attempted to follow suit in the paper department, but without quite the same level of angst. She saved most of her button pushing - literally pushing buttons on the copy machine that is-not-to-be-touched - until the very final seconds of group, one last check to make sure that I really loved them and wasn't just counting down the seconds until they were gone.)

Another of my boys has been in my small group for kindergarten, fourth, and fifth grade. (Two of my boys, actually, but only one was here this week.) He's always been one of my quietest kids - although he's begun to develop a sarcastic side over the last six months or so - and has never once verbalized any hint of fear or sadness about the transition. Nothing.

Everything we did today was large group, but I caught his gaze at one point, having just answered another set of, "If we get this wrong, do we flunk?" from Boy A. Those dark, quiet eyes that I am always trying to get a smile out of, were filled up with tears. 

Not one of them escaped. But, in three years, those were the only tears I have ever seen. 

Nothing quite like making an eleven-year-old boy cry to make you feel like a jerk. :/

I must have answered a dozen questions of, "Why can't you be our leader next year too?" from the kids (mainly girls) who had the words - partially - to communicate with. In between, they all continued the habit that has been growing over the last month or so of, "Do you remember when....?"

"Do you remember when we made sling shots and shot bark?"
"Do you remember when I cut my finger on that grass?"
"Do you remember when M*t** wore the man skirt?"
"Do you remember when we had a donut fight?"
"Do you remember when we prayed under the table?"
"Do you remember when...?"

I almost think they could have told you something that we did each individual Sunday for the past two years!

There's no guarantee in teaching Sunday School of what the kids will or will not remember (although we went over Spiritual Gifts enough this year that they ought to remember it!) but I do know that:
A. They knew they were loved.
B. They knew that the person who loved them thought that Jesus was pretty awesome.

The rest, really, has to be between them and God.

Run For Rice

As a general rule, my family runs when something is chasing us or we are chasing something - typically a small child. The apparent exception to the rule, is that we will also run when the race fees go straight to an organization working to combat the minor sex trade in Cambodia.

There were seven graduation parties and a graduation ceremony to attend within the next ten hours, so technically we jogged briskly - and only for a mile - before we took off for other things, but, still, we 'ran'.

My aunt and uncle were part of the event as well. Can you tell which of the two brothers is a runner and which is not?

And, then... we began the graduation party circuit. I've done quite a few years of graduation parties, but I don't think I've ever before made it to quite that many in quite that short of a time. There has to come a point, when you're seeing the same people all day at different parties, that it eventually just becomes classified as a progressive dinner!

These are some of the guys we are taking to Haiti (+1 friend). They are on the roof mid graduation party, getting ready to jump off onto the trampoline. Fairly typical for this particular crew. While they were attempting to break body parts outside, I was inside with a couple of parents who wanted to make sure that their children would come back from Haiti with all of their limbs. Can't imagine at all why that might be a concern they would have...

So long as we can avoid jumping off of any roofs in Fond Parisien, we might just be able to bring them all back in one piece. :)

The good news was that I only sat through ONE graduation ceremony all weekend, which is not half as bad as it could have been!