Monday

What a busy last few weeks we've had here. Mike's folks came to visit two weeks ago. They stayed in Plainfield and were planning on watching Mark and Julie's younger two while the rest of their family went to Ohio to work at a special needs camp for the week. As it turned out, Julie came down with strep throat! So just Mark and Ben went to the camp, and Gene and Kathy took their girls for the daytimes. They came to play here at camp with our girls, so that gave Julie a chance to rest up, and it gave me a chance to finish up last minute details for VBS the following week. We swam, ate at the dining hall, played at the sandbox and playgrounds, fed the fish, and rode around on the golf cart. We had a great time.

Then the week took a turn for the worse. We got a call Wednesday evening that Mike's grandpa (Kathy's dad) had died. Gene and Kathy rushed back to Iowa. We followed on Friday morning. We noticed we had a tire going bad, so we bought two new tires on our way through Macomb, IL, and had them put on in La Harpe. We spent the night with Mom and Dad, and left Saturday around noon to go to Iowa to be with the family. Mike's grandpa will be missed immensely. He and Mike had a common interest in tractors and mechanical things, and Mike really looked up to him. He always had a dream to spend a couple of weeks in at their place helping his grandpa restore his old John Deere "B". It's thing unfinished that make it difficult, but we know that we will see him again soon.

We came back a day late for VBS at our church. I was the director again this year. We had a great VBS, 230 different kids came through the door, with our biggest day being 210! That's a record, last year's highest day was 160. And we had around 80 helpers, half of them youth! The Lord was definitely glorified through the week. I think the kids really got the message, and didn't just try to win silly prizes. We supported the local school system as our "mission" this year. They have a program that provides school supplies to kids who need them. The kids raised $2222.00 for them, and they wrote notes to put in the back packs that told about Jesus. They also completed three other service projects and commited to do one more during the summer. Now that it's over, I feel like the summer is just beginning. I want to do all the summer things we've been putting off because of VBS planning like going to parks, having friends over, going to the zoo, or whatever.

Wish I had some pics to post, maybe later!