Today was a great day! WOW! “This Old Church” (a new series here on PastorKarl.com) got into full swing! Our high school ministry is having an ‘at home retreat’ this week, meaning they are using their Spring Break to serve around home, instead of going somewhere. So I was given around twenty teens for today - the day we kicked off our preschool remodeling project.

You know the old saying, “Too many cooks in the kitchen?” Well, at times it felt like “too many teens in the hallway” but boy oh boy did they get a lot done!

We got everything off all the walls where the painting will be done. Good thing the senior pastor is outta town!

It’s fun to work with teens that I had in Kids Church when they were little kids. I did a little diggin’ on my laptop and managed to find a few. See if you can tell which of the girls above this is: (now painting the same wall!)

OR TRY THIS ONE:

AND which of these guys grew up from this little boy:

Too hard? OK, I’ll give ya an easier one:

Which of the people in the above picture is this GUY:

Still too hard? OK, fine. I’ll give ya an even easier one: (they don’t get any easier than this)

Which girl in the above picture is this???

But they weren’t the only ones who came to help… here is a few of the others, all to prove that given a good cause, teens CAN be caught workin’ hard! (most of them anyway)

Taping UNDER the drinking fountain, now THAT is dedication!

Another neat thing to see, is that a bunch of these big cool teens used to be on my KC Krew (serving in Kids Church) and still haven’t lost their heart to serve God. The boy above is Chip, and here he is with his KC Krew puppet, who he named Chipper:

Chip and Chipper!

And it was great to meet some teens from the youth group that I’d never met before. But what do teenagers do after hours of hard work….???

Watch VeggieTales! I guess they aren’t so grown up after all. Which is a good thing, because I was getting a little emotional here looking at these old pictures and seeing how they’ve grown up so fast! I’m so glad I got to be a part of their spiritual heritage and that they still love God enough to come back and serve in His House…. even once they became cool ‘big’ kids.

Always remember, “God made you special, and He loves you very much.”