Friday VBS

Friday was the last day of the VBS in Stillwater. We had scheduled it for the evening so that the parents could be there but unfortunately, many of the kids didn't show up and so neither did the parents. It was scheduled for 6:00 so perhaps it interrupted too many suppers.

But let me go back.

In the morning, Clay, David, Nathaniel, and myself, went over to Enid to check out the YMCA and to do some flyer distribution around the neighbourhood. We arrived with 100 flyers, which split up between five guys means that each of us had about twenty, which would go pretty fast. Brad met us at the Wagners and went with us and he had spoken of going to Staples and making more copies (he had his own vehicle there as well) so we all headed out and I went down W. Maine from about Washington to Buchanan, which is about 15 blocks Nathaniel said (I don't know, but he seems to know street names a lot better). I was carefully saving my flyers since it was a very stately, elderly neighbourhood in some parts. When you see a "brand new" '85 Cadillac outside a house and the yard had lots of flowers and water fountains and a white archway outside and the porch simply has white law chairs, you kind of suspect that the people there don't have children. Anyway, I didn't run into a whole lot of people.

There were about four houses where there were children who answered the door and when I asked if their parents were home they told me no. One house I went to, just as I was about to knock the door opens slowly, then the screen door, and a tiny girl, about 4 or 5, opens the door and lets a cat outside. Then she notices me and stares mutely upward. I asked if her mother, or grandmother was home (it looked like a grandma's house) and she just said "no, she's at work." I gave her a flyer and told her we were going to be having Vacation Bible School and we hoped she would come and to tell her grandma about it. She nodded and took the flyer and went back slowly inside. All these children in the neighbourhood that just open the door without parents at home? Maybe everyone has a baby sitter that is sitting behind the door with a baseball bat, ready to pounce on me should I make some sort of attempt to kidnap. Hey, you never know!

I came across a house where there was a boy outside on the porch talking with a friend using his Nintendo DS (which is something like a PDA, it has a touch screen and you can write messages with it). I told him that I had one of those and then gave him the flyer (his mother was coming out right then) and went down the street. On the way back I came across his friend's house, he also was on the porch and I gave him a flyer as well and told him that I though his DS looked really, really nice (it was one of the latest versions that I'd not seen before). He grinned and sounded like he might want to come to VBS when I told him about it. Pretty soon (as I went further on) I could hear both of the boys yelling across the street at eachother, apparently the writing or typing was too slow!

At a few more houses I had good responses. I left flyers at two places that had some evidence of children at home, but I tried to conserve my flyers since I only had a limited amount and I'd been told to come back at 12:30 (two hours from when we started) it was about 12:15 by the time I finally made it back, with about 5 flyers left. Everyone else had been there for over an hour waiting for me, which made me feel a little bad. I just figured they would go out and make more copies since Brad had his car there, but apparently he kept saying I'd be back any minute. Well, I did have a very stately, retired street and if I'd left flyers at every place they would have been gone in a wink. What made it worse was that I had the keys to the car and everyone's water was in there. Well, everyone except Nathaniel, carrying his in his backpack, who then proceeded to tell us all how it reminded him of the foolish virgins and he supposed there were three foolish virgins and only one wise one in this instance. I laughed but I'm a camel and don't bring water anyway. I stock up when I can and go without when I can't. "Well yeah, but...."

We had a good time together and visited the YMCA, where I decided that I had to stay another week to help out. I had told Bruce quite some time beforehand that I was planning on two weeks off from work, but after realizing how shorthanded they would be and how much I really wanted to stay, I filled in one of the volunteer forms and turned it in. We then went out for another hour (Brad had to leave) with our new copies of the pamphlets and headed out. This time I felt like I had much more ammo so we dropped a flyer off at every house we went to. The first five houses I had four families with children who sounded interested, and one lady who said her grandchildren definitely needed some fun next week and she was going to bring them. I held four fingers up to David across the street and grinned.

The four of us covered two streets, one on each side of the street and then David and I got another one as we came back. I didn't have too many houses where children resided after that, but I learned during the day to listen to those people I did meet who could tell me about their neighbours "well, I know the next three houses don't have children, nor anyone on that side of the block, but that small blue house four doors down does. Their the minister's kids......" etc. The elderly people often do know their neighbourhood, and I tried to take advantage of that. I was glad to see quite a few friendly people but that was probably partially because we weren't talking about religious issues but merely inviting people. I had one elderly gentleman tell me he was glad for what we were doing.

It was a warm day, humid, and with all the fast walking, I was drenched in sweat. By the time we drove back (we had dinner with the N's, which was very, very much appreciated yet again, and delicious too! I love spicy foods...) I was feeling a bit tired. But of course couldn't let the kids at VBS see that! The final night went well. David did a wonderful job with the story, pulled everything together that we'd been learning during the week, and gave a gospel presentation. I thought it was extremely well done and really appreciated it.

When the children were to go up to sing with their group leaders, I went up in the middle of the Boulders, though I felt conspicuous as the only team member up there and most definitely the oldest (and also stumbling on some of the words, grrr), but I wanted to help the boys especially to have someone they could have with them. That's what I've tried to do all week, is sit where the boys could see me and possibly have some sort of figure they can look up to that is a leader, yet one of them as well. After everything was over though, I was fairly tired and ready for bed. David, Nathaniel and I went to Sonic after we arrived back home and then all of us watched a movie called "Saints and Soldiers" (lent to us by Mr Carrol, we'd just not had a chance to watch it) until about 11:30. I thought it was a good movie and displayed several things well. As David said, it really brought home the humanity of the enemy rather than them just being mindless monsters as we are all told. They have families too and are fighting to protect them.

It's been a good week and I'm looking forward to another! This morning I am going to be working at a house with Dan Y and in the afternoon (hopefully) we'll finally be able to do some shooting on Cat Girl. Poor JD, he's been wanting to all week but we had absolutely no time. The other gentlemen on the team are going to the Cowboy Museum I believe. I'll probably have another chance at that.