This week the HyVee grocery store was opened and that's pretty exciting. It's a high end store with some extras that the other stores don't have. They are very close to three other grocery stores, so we'll see if they all stay in business through all of this.
Last week we ended our Camp E.D.G.E. Vacation Bible School (Experiencing and Discovering God Everywhere). A great success as we ministered to 109 different children. This was probably the highest attended VBS that we've ever had since we've been here. Here are a few of our decorations.
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
We also spent alot of time making backgrounds for each of the stories. They looked SO good, but I don't have them on my camera. However, John Mark spent a long time doing videos of each night and some of the backgrounds can be seen there.
click here for VBS videos
There's a video from each night on the website....if you're really bored and want to watch them all.
Our offering was to raise $$ for a member of our congregation to go to a Work and Witness trip to Thailand. She's in her mid-twenties and really appreciated the donation. She also learned "speed stacking" and did that in front of the kids. She will be doing that for the children in Thailand as well. We needed $2000 to send her and got $1800. Also did girls against the boys as usual. The boys lost so they had to be dunked in a dunking booth.
"Sparx" the fox gets dunked
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Pastor gets dunked
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This last weekend JM and I celebrated our 20th Anniversary by going to Council Grove (45 minutes south of here) and spending the night in a cottage. Here are a few pictures from our weekend...
The Cottage House
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Our cottage
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When you go in the door you see this little sitting room
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Our little kitchenette that had a refrigerator filled with juices, sparkling apple juice, pudding, yogurt etc..
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Also, had that bowl of fruit shown on the small table, along with several really good muffins...
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Lovely note and rose with a poster of historical Council Grove (a place along the Santa Fe Trail, for those who don't know)
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Nice big whirlpool tub
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Back out in the sitting room
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The view outside our door...we went over to the porch and played a board game. It was nice to actually play a game with someone not yelling "I quit!" or "That's not fair."
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JM setting up the game
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The wind blowing my hair as we pose for a timed photo
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On the way home from Council Grove, we stopped in Alta Vista. This is a tiny town with not much happening, but we just drove through it anyway. We noticed the south sides of all the buildings looked like bullets had hit them. Also, many boarded up windows. We finally stopped to ask someone what happened and they told us a hail storm from June 15th had done all the damage. The man held out his hand to JM and showed him how large the hail stones were and they were larger than softballs. The man said he'd never seen anything like it in his life (he was about 60). June 15 was the same storm we had where I kept fearing a tornado. I was at someone's house for a Bible study, JM was in Iowa, Sam was at his girlfriend's , and Autumn was at home by herself. The electricity at the Bible study went out and it was so bad I couldn't get to my car. I had called Autumn and she said she'd just made tea and wanted to watch the storm. I told her to go downstairs and stay there. I had never seen the trees bend so far as that storm. Finally, and hour later I returned home. And an hour later from that time, I was able to go get Sam, as there had been trees down between our house and the g-friend's house. Anyway, here are some pictures from the hail storm damage in Alta Vista...
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
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I am not exaggerating when I say 90% of the buildings in town looked like this!
Boarded up church windows...
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| From New Album 8/16/09 3:38 PM |
School starts Wednesday, so I'll be updating more. But for now, that's the last week or two.
1 comment:
I really love the vbs backgrounds. You guys really went all out. I bet that you hated taking it all down! Makes you wonder if all the church should be more decorated than they are. I mean it's so much more cheerful.
I'd love to go to a bed and breakfast. It would be so neat. That's one looks so nice.
Julie
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