I Kid U Not, we had a GREAT TIME!

Last weekend was the Kidology University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and it was a HUGE success! Here are just some highlight pictures…. it is in no way complete, and please no one get your feelings hurt if there is no picture of you. :) I just want to get some up due to the flood of emails pouring in demanding pictures!! This should satisfy both of the them. This was our second year doing Kid U Wisconsin. The staff at the Appleton Alliance Church are amazing and were the secret to our success! (along with the beautiful and sweet Kid U Conference Coordinator, Sara!) The secret to staying awake and alert after three hour drive, late night pizza party (the pizza guy got in a car accident and kept us up for an hour and a half waiting, and arrived just as we were about to finally cancel the order… at least it was free!), Creativity Blitz on Friday Night, and alllllll day Saturday, then looooooong drive home and gettin’ ready for church on Sunday morning! Whew! What a weekend! (but I’d do it all over again!) Friday evening Preconference Creativity Blitz was a ROCKIN’ GOOD TIME! The Appleton J.A.M. team…

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Pastor Karl Challenges NFL Defensive Tackle!

We had Tommie Harris (Chicago Bears #91 Defensive Tackle) and Keith Belton (Bears #44) at our Awana Club last Tuesday evening. Both are believers and Tommie was our guest to share his testimony with the clubbers and to answer their varied and random questions about football and whatever else was on their mind. He did a great job and the kids really loved meeting and hearing from these cool dudes, who are a part of the FIRST PLACE CHICAGO BEARS right now. (Do I hear Super Bowl??) Tommie talked about his faith, his good upbringing, and how he tries to live his faith in a sport that often confronts him with situations that are not Christian. He said that a lot of players say they are a Christian but the evidence is in how they actually live off the field. Of course, the kids wanted to know about injuries and he shared again about his thumb bone poking out of the skin much to the delight of the kids. :) But I decided we needed to shake things up a bit, and save Tommie from the same questions being asked over and over, so I came up at the end,…

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Seein’ Double?

Tonight was “TWINS NIGHT” at our Awana Club. Many of you may not know that I have a twin brother, Kurt, but since it was ‘twins night’ I invited him to come to Awana. We wore matching shirts to add to the fun. The only problem was, that throughout the night, we never got to meet. I kept looking for him, visiting all the rooms over and over, and reportedly, Kurt did the same. The kids could tell us apart because, of course, I was drinkin’ Dew whereas Kurt had a McDonald’s Coke, and Kurt wears glasses. (Claimed he is the smarter of the pair.) Because we never were in the same room at the same time, the clubbers started to accuse me of pretending to have a twin brother! (can you believe that!?) So at the end of the night, when I finally found him, we posed for a picture with our Commander’s daughter to prove we both were there! Here is me, Natalie, and Kurt on Twins Night at Awana. He may be smarter, but he definitely isn’t the good lookin’ one.

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Knight Night at Awana

Last Tuesday was Royalty Knight, er, Night, at our Awana club! I had fun dressing as Sir. Drinkdewalot. (second counsin to Sir Lancelot, who I explained was a wimp) I told my story “The Day the King Unlocked the Gate” to each club (to be posted with book and powerpoint later on Kidology – too busy today) – and then Knighted the clubbers as Jr. Knights to go into all the world telling others about the King of Kings, King Jesus. I thought I might take home a new maiden as a wife, so I proposed…but when she refused…. I showed how knights got wives in the olden’ days. :) Pick one and take her home! :) (Fear not, the fair maiden escaped!) It was a fun evening, or should I say, it was a Royal Blast!

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HAY! that was fun!

As discussed on Kidology this summer, this fall I have started a ministry experiment in ‘partnering with parents’ – by forming an ‘opt-in’ ministry at church called VIP, which stands for Very Intentional Parenting – based on the concept that for genuine ‘partnering’ with parents, the children’s pastor and parents much first come an agreement on what ‘partnering’ looks likes and means, and then start doing it. Without going into all that here (you can read the link above), I wanted to post some pictures and info about our first VIP Ministry event this past Sunday – we got rained out the week before, but had a fantastic time! Much of this is a ‘reprint’ of what I posted on the ‘top secret’ VIP Blog available only to my VIP Families – it is where we post VIP ministry info and parenting tips, and other info just for these partnering families. Our first VIP Family Event was a HUGE success! Maybe one week late due to rain, but this past Sunday was perfect weather and we had a wonderful time! We had 59 people at this event! Everyone had a great time playing, visiting, eating, hay-riding, singing, laughing, and enjoying…

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