Not to sound down, but I sure am glad that this week of camp has ended – it has been quite an ordeal!  Not to say that it hasn’t been profitable – the preaching was direct and strong (Ben Klaus – some of you long-time CJ staff may remember him as a counselor) and there were some students who desired to please God.  But both schools who came have very open enrollment policies – and therefore, high percentages of unsaved students.  One school’s student body was very much a city crowd – unused to rules and unwilling to respond in many cases – very steeped in the inner-city counter-culture.  The other school has a large number of foreign students – a number from Poland, some Hispanics and quite a lot of Korean students.  They have a difficult time with English (compounded in some cases by an unwillingness to learn) and didn’t understand preaching or competitive activities very much.  Behavior control was quite an ordeal – there was literally no time we were allowed to let down our supervision.  The week was very taxing on our staff here.  It is from the Lord’s hand – we grew and were forced to trust Him more.  And He may very well have big plans for these students.  One of the young men from Korea is a 21-year-old escapee from North Korea – he escaped once, got saved, went back to witness to his family, got thrown in jail, escaped again and came to America – his goal is to get a GED and try to go to Maranatha in a couple years.  What a powerful tool he could be in the Lord’s hand!

The week came with more than its fair share of interesting stories.  I can’t really call them amusing, because most of them are about camper misbehavior.  But amusing or not, here they are…

Monday – it seems so long ago – did they come in the morning or afternoon?  I better look at my schedule…  Oh yes, one school arrived around 10.30am and the other a little after noon.  Let the fun begin…  The inner city crowd arrived first – we got them situated in cabins.  Boy, was I optimistic!!  These kids seemed so needy – they could all get saved this week!  The foreign group arrived later and we got them settled as well – off to orientation!  Mr. Scott was with his wife at a doctor’s appointment – so I did orientation – told them not to break stuff, not to date this week, obey all teachers and staff, go to the island in a counter-clockwise direction inside the no-wake buoys and all that good stuff.  Little did I know how many deaf ears my words fell upon…  That afternoon we played Spoke Tackle – we ended the game when two spokes nearly started a fist-fight.

Monday evening – first service w/Pastor Ben Klaus – he preached the gospel to them.  After the service, you could hear the racket from the deck for quite a distance.  They were having fun apparently…  Oh yes, before the service, Mr. Appel called me to let me know that there were some girls headed to the Catacombs with mischievous looks – so I went in and found at least 8 students in there (mixed group).  I told them that it wasn’t open now (the only reason they had gotten in was because someone had broken the board with the bolt right off of the front door) and that it was NEVER open for mixed groups anyway.  “But we’re just in here with all our friends” was the reply I got – as they came out in pairs from different directions…  I shouldn’t jump to conclusions – they were probably having prayer meetings…  I spent part of the evening re-attaching that board – not with screws this time, but with bolts.  Any camper who breaks it loose now is quite a beast.

Tuesday morning – not too eventful.  They’re in 2 chapel services and the breakfast dishes were light for me in the dishroom.  Which was good – I needed the time to do the last-minute Sword in the Stone re-set scramble.  Oh yes – bagel safety lesson: “Always split your bagels before you toast them.”  I demonstrate and place my bagel into the toaster.  That means that my bagel is ready to go before any campers can mob the bagel bar – I shoulda thought of that weeks ago!

Tuesday afternoon – Big Ball Dominoes.  Remember, the foreign students can’t (or, won’t) understand instructions.  Kids keep standing behind the dominoes and getting smushed when they get bowled over by the big ball – you’d think that the survival instinct would get them to stand someplace else – guess not, though.  Teachers say, “A lot of kids seem to get hurt.”  Stephen replies, “Well, we’ve been playing this game every week for about a month now and not had hardly any injuries – of course, we’ve never had this many kids ignoring directions all at one time.”  Teachers are unable to refute his stellar logic.  We end the game early when it appears that a fist-fight is about to break out…

Tuesday evening – um, kind of uneventful, if I recall correctly (although I don’t recall much from that far back…).  Our dilemma for the day was that a camper took the key out of one of our skid-loaders and we haven’t seen it since.

Wednesday morning – bagel safety lesson #2: “Remember, kids, don’t put cream cheese (or butter, or jelly, or anything else) on your bagel before you toast it.”  Yes – that was necessary!  They did that on Tuesday.  Again, I demonstrate by splitting a bagel and putting it into the toaster with NO cream cheese.  A girl raises her smart-alecky little hand and asks, “Did you wash your hands?”  I reply, “Yes – but I’m going to eat that one myself!”  Again – no waiting at the bagel bar.  During breakfast announcements, I get the campers’ attention by telling them about the night game and how great it is – and then I make it conditional: “If we’re going to play the game, we need to see a day of good behavior.  I need that key returned, you need to follow instructions and behave much better, and don’t leave trash all over the place.  Oh, and if we have behavior problems during the game, we’ll stop it right there and go to bed early.”  This results in a day of noticeably better behavior.  Certainly not angels, but at least we could end Baton Tag on time with no fistfights!

Wednesday afternoon – Baton Tag – those who understand the rules play and have a great time.  It is quite a struggle to get all of them to play and get involved.  During Gen-Rec, we have horse rides scheduled.  We’re not quite ready for trail rides, but someone announced them and all the campers wanted them.  So last minute, I get Mr. Todd to cover Sky Glide brake for me and I go help w/rides.  Well, Mr. Scott is there, and he goes on the first 2 rides – oh, almost forgot – Western Boy bucked Abe off.  We decided not to use him that afternoon – Western Boy, that is – we kept Abe. :) I go along on the 3rd ride – I haven’t ridden for at least 8 years, but it wasn’t any trouble at all – Prince behaved just fine for me and it was a good ride.  Abe and I are probably going to ride tomorrow afternoon for a while – I’m looking forward to getting more comfortable on the horses and being able to help in that arena when I can.  After that I do brake for guys’ Sky Glide.  Couple big guys – I got my work-out.

Wednesday night – I keep them in suspense about the night game right through the evening service.  When I paused between hymns for announcements, I announced, “and we still need that key back.”  Then I get 3 camper hands in the air.  “Oh good,” I think, “They have information for me.”  No, they don’t.  One guy says, “My money’s missing.”  Another guy says, “Someone took all my shirts.”  A girl says, “We’re playing that game tonight, right?”  I say, “Not till I know about the keys.”  Grumble runs through the crowd – I say, “Hey, I told you that this morning – you’ve had all day to solve the problem.”  And we go on with more songs.  We on Program Staff are getting everything ready and making sure that we can run the game.  I talk with Scott during the service, we discuss the story that came out that one boy – we’ll call him “Charles” (since that’s his name) – played around in the skid-loader threw the key back at the seat of the machine – losing the key.  The administrator has talked to the boy and gotten a confession, so we decide that’s good enough to play the night game.  All is readiness – including Valerie being a substitute counselor for a teacher who is too old to play the game.  Some campers, as you might have imagined, have a VERY difficult time holding their cabin rope the entire time.  I made sure that Stephen announced during the rules that bandits (Abe and I) are also refs and that our word is rule.  I got quite a kick out of catching some camper away from their rope, getting between them and their cabin and spraying that camper continuously while calling “Where’s your rope? Where’s your rope?” as the camper runs the opposite direction and can’t figure out why he still has my full and undivided attention while the rest of his cabin laughs.  I am going to REALLY miss the night game when school camp is over!

Thursday morning – I had a sneaking suspicion that after behaving so well on Wednesday (relatively speaking), Thursday would see the release of all that pent-up naughtiness.  I was right.  By lunch-time, we had a camper with a badly broken wrist in the emergency room.  He’s fine now.  On a side note, while he was in the hospital, after about 4 morphine shots for the pain, he told his principal, “Now I’m actually having fun at school camp!”  Poor kid.

Thursday afternoon – sometime on Thursday, several fancy plates in the Coffee Shop got broken – about $90 worth.  In the afternoon, we played Checkmate.  Oh wow, did I learn a lesson!  That game was confusing enough with “professional” counselors and ordinary campers.  With half the group not listening, half the group not understanding, and half the group neither listening nor understanding, the game was chaotic, to say the least.  But the silver lining on that cloud: they were too confused to start any fist-fights!  After the game, Abe took some kids out to the woods for paintball, bless his heart!  They all came back early when several of them got mad at each other for shooting each other (duh, why do you go paintballing?  I must have missed something…) and they took off their masks and were shooting each other.  So… they all came home early.  The program record for this camp will say “Never ever take these kids paintballing again.”  Or some facsimile thereof.

Thursday night – as I led singing in the service, I thought I detected a better spirit in the group than previous nights.  I paused on a few occasions to call their attention to some phrase or verse that really highlighted God’s incredible goodness or their incredible need.  They were attentive and respectful.  No records of mass conversions, but I hope and pray that the seeds planted and watered this week will someday prove fruitful as God gives increase in these students’ lives.

Also Thursday night – my dad was driving in the area and stopped by to visit – that was a fun surprise – wish he could have stayed longer, but it was close to 9pm and he was still 2 1/2 to 3 hours away from home.

Late Thursday night – after lights out and quiet, the guys in the cabins were not quiet.  It sounded like several were running around and perhaps wrestling as well.  I was up reading (it’s about 11pm by now) and on several occasions, considered putting my book down for a minute and going outside to holler at ‘em.  All of a sudden a very loud teacher’s voice rings out – “What are you kids doing??  Get back in the room right now!  Get back here!”  That took care of the “campers outside” issue.  I was told later that he continued to tell the campers that they were doing wrong once he got them back into the cabin as well.

Friday morning – can we go one morning with no craziness?  Nope, ‘fraid not.  As they were loading their vans and getting ready to go, one of the teachers looks out and sees his school’s 15-passenger driving out of the parking lot – with the trailer.  He yells, “Hey, who is that?  Tell him to stop!  What’s he doing?”  Sure enough, it was a student behind the wheel.  Then the student proceeds to back the van up – and he’s obviously got no experience backing up a trailer!  The teacher calls out, “No, no!  Tell him to STOP!!” and then watches the van & trailer moving toward some other vehicles and mutters, “oh no.”  The student stopped (thankfully!) and returned the keys to his teacher.  He’s probably looking at a few demerits when he gets home…

Whew, they’ve left and it’s all over for now!!  We don’t have a retreat this weekend – which is good – we’re gonna need our rest time!  Please pray for all of us staff as we serve here – that we would seek the Lord’s strength and serve in dependence on Him each moment.  Pray that we won’t take our eyes off of our spiritual goals and purpose – even for a second!  Pray that we will labor with patience, diligence and skill.

You may have heard about Miss Tina’s cancer – the results from Monday’s biopsy came back and the doctors want to perform surgery to remove the spots on her lower eyelid and on her arm on October 9.  That’s all I really know – I think that displays of your concern, care and prayerful love would be greatly appreciated at the Hatchett house.

We’re looking forward to next week – we’ll have Woodcrest Baptist Academy from the north side of Minneapolis here – I’ve been told that they’re a pretty good group to work with.  After last week, this will be a relief and joy for us here, I think.  They’ll be arriving between 3 and 3.30 on Monday afternoon and staying through lunch on Friday.

Well, I better head back to my room to rustle up some grub – have a great weekend!

Yes, it’s time for another “Mr. James Camp Joy Update” brought to you by Mr. James.  This week we had North Love (Rockford, IL) Christian School – a little over 100 students.  They’re an energetic bunch, to say the least!  Despite a 6:30am Rise and Shine every day, they haven’t slowed down or quieted down much at all!  We’ll have to try 5:30am next year… as long as some one else is early man!!  They’ve had good testimonies during the services and the preaching has been direct.  Although this has been a somewhat rowdy school in the past, it is encouraging to see evidence of God’s work in the hearts of some of the campers!  Their ThursPM campfire was over 2 hours of good testimonies and would have probably gone longer if it hadn’t been for the late hour!

Amusing Stories from the Week:

Monday afternoon – they arrive just on the tail end of some rain.  So these energetic campers make a “bucket brigade” line down the sidewalk and pass all the luggage along to the girls who are waiting under the awning at the lodge.  They sure finished quick!

Tuesday afternoon – they have an interscholastic soccer game against a Christian school from M’waukee.  North Love has their Varsity team playing, the other school has every guy in their high school on the team.  Final score: 15-0… (Or something like that…)

Tuesday PM – I’m in the bookstore and I pick up the Winnie the Pooh jack-in-the-box and walk around showing the students.  For some reason, they all jump and get startled when Pooh pops his fuzzy little head out the top.  But anywho, the funny part is that I (jokingly) told one boy that he could buy it and go around scaring all his friends.  He asks, “how much is it?”  I told him $24.95.  And then he actually starts thinking about it – and he decides to buy it!  I’ve been playing with that thing since I first worked here in 2005 and I NEVER expected it to sell.  Next time, I’m going to set up the “Noah’s Ark PlaySet” on the floor and see if I get any takers.

Wednesday afternoon – it comes to our attention that we need to have some sort of Fun Time ready for the weekend family retreat Friday – and we start brainstorming.  So far, James & Todd (King & I), Stephen (Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder), maybe Abe & Stephen with some goofy banana smashing on forehead skit, maybe James & a guy and Val & Clare Grimes with some Squatty-Body routines.  And hopefully a whole lotta laughter!  We attempted to convince Rebecca Greenlee to be Valerie’s arms for Squatty-Body but she refused, claiming she would be sooooo embarrassed.  But then on Thursday, we find out that we only need 15 min of skits, so just King & I and Hello Mudder for now…

Thursday afternoon – we attempt a new game (the brain child of Mr. James).  10 foot tall dominoes in a circle on the soccer field, red & blue campers trying to knock down their own pieces, when they do, their “squires” get as many tin cans as there are points on the domino, the “squires” use tin cans (large ones), duct tape, cardboard, and markers to construct and decorate a suit of armor for one of their teachers – the winners will be judged on points, design, and race results!  Hopefully this brain child doesn’t turn out handicapped…  Well, that’s what I had thought about doing, except I found out last minute that the cans were only open on one end – not very easy to get your arm through.  So we just played Big Ball Dominoes.  The students all complained it was dumb (before it started) then played like enthusiastic banshees once the game got rolling.  Kids these days.

Also Thursday afternoon – I got an email – an ad from a pen company I had to order ink from once.  I flipped through their site and came across a fountain pen carved out of jade.  Very intricate and beautiful.  Guess the price?  $1000?  Higher.  $15,000?  No, higher!  $100,000?  No, try $250,000 – a quarter of a million!!!  Zoinks!  That costs more than any of the houses that most of us grew up in!  Anyway, random but interesting.

Friday afternoon – the campers cleaned out their cabins (including taking sheets off of beds in the deluxe rooms) but somehow housekeeping didn’t get up to the deluxe rooms above the lake bathhouse – oops!  So as they are filling with weekend family retreat campers (their preacher in particular), Rebecca runs up with an armful of linens and I with a bathroom bucket to get them ready – nothing like a couple hours after the last minute!

Friday evening – Jennifer Scates arrives.  Valerie is elated.

Friday night – service begins w/men’s group.  Not bad – but afterwards, I notice that at the heel where the sole of my shoe is separating, it’s getting worse.  By the time I go up to play a euphonium solo, I’ve got an audibly flopping shoe.  When I come down, I’ve got a loudly flapping shoe.  So before the men’s group sings again, I go to the sound booth, find a roll of masking tape, make little tape loops and stick them into the split.  Abraham is watching from across the chapel and he finds this quite humorous, so humorous that he laughs out loud, eliciting a SHHHHH from Mr. Scott.  It held fine and I was able to quietly walk to the platform and back.  Before bed, I super-glued it together.

Friday night – Mr. Todd & I do The King & I again.  Sorry, no video to post anywhere online this time…  We wore costumes (baggy pleated old-fashioned shirts and bloomer-type breeches w/long socks), and the socks that Mr. Todd gave me were sticky.  It was weird.

Saturday morning – I had loaded everything I needed for the CJ display at the Farmtastic into our new nice black van.  At 6.40am when I’m ready to go, it won’t start – dead battery.  No problem, right?  I’ll just use the white Neon.  Well, in order to do that, I need a key.  The key is nowhere to be found.  2 phone calls and a lot of searching later, I locate a spare key and off I go.  My fingers were frozen (we had frost this morning) and I was 30 minutes behind where I wanted to be.  But I survived :)

Saturday morning – at Farmtastic, I get to spend time w/Brian, Sarah & Jamie – mini CJ 2007 reunion.  It was fun.  Jamie was in charge of this game where kids can race remote controlled cars around a wood track and she let Brian and I play which was cool but then Brian’s controller was controlling 2 cars on the same frequency and mine only had one and we pretty much crashed and then all the batteries went dead before lunch but then the recharged them so that Jamie wouldn’t be bored anymore.  We also had donuts.  But that was before cars.  Then we watched some week-in-review DVDs from Teen 2 & 3.  Good old memories :)

Saturday all day – kids would come up to me and recognize me.  I could see this look in their eyes and I remembered their faces from somewhere so I’d just say, “Hey, you came to camp, didn’t you?”  And they’d feel special cuz I “remembered” them (which I kinda did…).  Sometimes I would guess at their names, as in… “Hey, there MikeMattJohnBillTomNate – stop me when I hit the right one.”  And they’d say, “No, it’s Cody” or whatever.  This one kid comes up and I remember his face from this summer so out of the blue I say, “Hey Terrence!”  And his name was really Terrence – wild!  Then there were these other kids I recognized and I thought it was from camp, but it turns out that they go to school where I used to go and that my mom is their math teacher.  It was a fun day :)

Saturday afternoon – on the way home, I missed my exit on the expressway and so I took the next one because I knew what road it would put me on.  Then I was gonna stop in Delavan for dinner but I turned the wrong way and ended up on another freeway and then the exit I needed was closed!  So I went to the next one and it put me by a restaurant and a couple stores I needed to stop at.  Then I got back to camp.  All’s well that ends well.

Speaking of ending well, it’s about time for this email to end!  [Hey, no saying "Amen" - I heard that!] Please pray for next week’s school camp – combined group from Brentwood Baptist & Lake County.  Both schools have open enrollment and use their schools and this camp week for evangelism.  We will have quite a number of unsaved students from MANY different backgrounds – probably Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics and a number of other religions.  Pray for salvation of many of these young people!  Pray also for our staff here – September is a very tiring month – we have school camps of up to 120 – as many as a mid-sized teen week – with only full-time staff and volunteers.  We are fighting exhaustion – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  Pray that we would lean on the Lord and work in His grace, that He would sustain us and strengthen us to excel in His service!

Thanks for your prayers!

Whew! One week of school camp down, 3.5 to go! Marquette Manor just left yesterday – a good group, they enjoyed the activities, were well-behaved, had a good preacher and a good week. It was busy, though! Wow – 2 competitive activities Tuesday, 3 on Wednesday (and skit time!), mealtime trivia quizzes once a day, the Sword in the Stone (an activity – series of 10 “quests” that eventually lead the campers to retrieve the ginormous FunTime sword from its secret location) all week – wowee! And then dishroom every morning (for me – the others were in at lunch & dinner) for a couple hours, and bathrooms in the evening and trying to get a hold of administrators for the next weeks of camp – I slept well at night!!

Some amusing stories from the week:

Monday afternoon – me and Valerie and Rebecca Greenlee and Abe go to the Kettle Moraine Baptist Church Labor Day picnic. There was a merry-go-round – haven’t seen one of those for years (Camp so needs a merry-go-round), so I hop right away, and some kids and Valerie and we’re spinning all around. And I found out that my equilibrium is no longer as good at merry-go-rounds as it was when I was 10 or 12. I was wooozy! Then Abe & I played football with some of the guys, then lunch where there were these homemade pickles that really tingled on my tongue – wonder how old they were… Kinda reminded me of the Andy Griffith show where Aunt Bea made the “kerosene pickles” and Andy & Barney called them… And then soccer, and then Wal-Mart. What exciting day! I also bought eggs at the grocery store – took them home and went to get a couple out to make an omelet for dinner – never had this happen before, but I managed to stick my thumb right through the top of an egg and break the top off right there in the carton! And I thought dome shapes were very strong architecture..

Tuesday am – there is more seaweed on our lakeshore than I could shake a stick at! At staff meeting, Scott says “everybody down there to help.” I went to get the tractor and some more rakes, and when I got to the lakefront, I discovered that “everybody” is code for James & Todd. So he and I rolled up our pant legs and waded in. No kidding, there was serious pile on the shore already, then floating seaweed for 8-10 feet out into the swim area. Pretty soon, Abe & Mr. Appel got back from Waukesha and jumped in to help. We filled the trailer at least twice.  I’m not sure why I typed that. It certainly wasn’t amusing at the time! Oh well…

Tuesday afternoon – Mr. Appel tells me to go up to the lodge and make sure that the kids aren’t taping things onto the dining hall walls (we just painted those wall this spring). I did – and found out that no, they weren’t taping things to the walls – they had ALREADY taped things to the walls and were now taping streamers to the ceiling. Oh well, ya win some, ya don’t win some.

Wednesday am – it’s breakfast and Mr. James wants a bagel. As he approaches the bagel burner, he notices a smell – the odor of burning bagel. He discovers that a camper (bless his fuzzy little heart) has placed a bagel into the toaster without splitting it! The toaster has been turned off by now, and Mr. James proceeds to stick a knife into the toaster (very carefully, of course, so as not to get zapped to pieces…) when the Marquette youth pastor runs up warning me about how I’m going to get electrocuted. He runs to the wall to unplug the bagelburner, right as Miss Rachel arrives with a long wood-handled kitchen knife that would not conduct a charge. So I dig out a charred chunk of blackened-bagel bliss and start the machine up again. I grab myself a bagel, split it, and put it in. I return to the toaster a minute later to discover that my bagel is gone!! “Oh where is my bagel?” :) Apparently our brilliant bagel burning buddy thought to his fuzzy little self, “Oh, how nice, Mr. James pulled my burntness out of the toaster AND started a fresh replacement bagel for me!” So, I started another bagel. Yum.

Wednesday pm – they have their own little skits for Fun Time, but they wanted us to do one too. I’ve been waiting for a fax (for two weeks!) from a pastor who did this funny skit about a bunch of students who get hurt on a school trip. Turns out, he called the office a week ago, left a message with “a young lady who answered the phone” (both Valerie and Rebecca deny taking this call…) to say that he couldn’t find the skit book it was in. So what do I do? Go through our old skit file, find a couple funny ones, and then WHAM-ZAP!! I have a brainstorm – the funniest skit of the summer – and I’ve been dying to try it forever! So I run down to dinner: “Mr. Stephen – you want to do The King and I tonight?” He kinda chuckles (as not “not really…”) and tells me that Todd did that skit years ago. So with one propless practice of Act 1 only, Todd and I perform The King and I.  The video is HERE.

Thursday afternoon – a teacher comes into the Office and tells me, “We’ve found the Sword [for Sword in the Stone], only problem is, there seems to be a bike lock on it and we can’t bring it back.” Now, they’ve made quite a hike to get there, and now he has hiked back as well. I told him, “Yep, that’s on purpose – your Final Quest is a riddle that reveals the combination to that lock.” So they hiked aaaaaalll the way back (through mosquito central) got the paper with the riddle and made the whole hike again.

Friday am – I’m in the middle of breakfast dishes (w/Samuel Shelton – an amusing story all by himself!) and Miss Rachel Logan tells me that Mrs. Fuller is on the intercom for me. She was on the intercom to tell me that both lines 1 & 2 were for me! And while I pick up line 1, my cell goes off and my pocket starts vibrating. Good thing no one called me on the radio right then!

Friday pm – Freezer Frenzy (Part II) is done. Did I mention Freezer Frenzy? The compressor on our freezer went out last weekend, so we had to load ALL the frozen food into a refrigerated semi trailer till we could get it fixed. So last night, after our freezer was fixed, we put everything back in. That’s not the amusing story. This next part is. Some things got kinda thawed and so they couldn’t be served to campers so they put them out for staff to take (kinda like old milk in the jail or basics room…) and I got 7 containers of smoothie mix and some frozen soup bags. So Mr. Appel & Abe & I decide to have soup for supper. So I head back to the apartment and start preparing the soup – some Wisconsin Cheddar soup for them, Seafood Gumbo for me. Well, I get it cooked and serve it up and Mr. Appel asks, “Did you read the instructions on the bag first?” And I said, “No, why?” And he asked, “Well, does it say to add water when you cook it?” And I said (as he stirred his Wisconsin Cheddar sauce), “Let me check.” And I did, and sure enough – I shoulda added water first. Stupid package – why couldn’t it have said “Soup CONCENTRATE” or something like “HEY DUMMY! DON’T FORGET TO ADD WATER!!!” Oh well. We survived :)

Later Friday pm – so I’m enjoying this Strawberry Smoothie mix that I salvaged from Freezer Frenzy (Part II), ok? And I have this tall glass and I put a carton of milk in and the same amount of mix and the rest water and it turns out really good! Then I try just water and mix and that’s great too. Then I make a 3rd glass (yes, after I’ve consumed over 40 fluid ounces of smoothie, I’m still going for more…) And I take the first sip and YUCK!! It tastes like soap! What in the world?!?! So I ask Abe & Mr. Appel if they know why and they say they don’t. And then it hits me… my smoothie glass is sitting on the table. The strawberry soapie glass in my hand came from??? Oh no – it’s the glass I had sitting on the counter with a little hot water and a teaspoon or so of dish detergent to soak out a bit of residue I couldn’t reach. And I accidentally grabbed that glass and made my smoothie in it. So if you’re ever making your own smoothie, a teaspoon of detergent is not a good ingredient…

Well anywho, I need to write my program record for this past week, and think through things for next week: North Love (Rockford, IL) school camp. Please pray that I’ll find a 2nd ref for their soccer game on Tuesday (the secretary told me a month ago “No soccer game,” the principal told me Thursday “soccer game Tuesday at 4pm,” and on Friday he told me “oh, soccer game Tuesday at 2.30pm). Pray for the students – I’ve been told that this is one of our poorer behaved groups – which to me means a lot of students with spiritual needs. Pray for the Word to powerfully impact and change their hearts! The schedule for the coming week shouldn’t be too bad – almost the exact same things every day. But I just found out (last night) about two other activities that they want on the schedule (right after I printed them!) Also, next weekend is a retreat – pray for Friday clean-up. We’ll have from 1pm-ish to 4pm to get ready for a church retreat. Pray for me – I’ll be on the road on Saturday – Rochelle, IL for a Farmtastic with a camp display booth. And of course, please pray that Sunday will be a restful Lord’s Day – we have a large school camp coming in on Monday.

Well, thanks for making it through this entire post- give yourself an Overcomer Award :) Have a great week, thanks for your prayers!