Today was the last day of Summer Xtreme, and as always it is a bittersweet sort of moment. There is this deafening roar of silence that fills our ears when everyone is gone. Everyone tours the place to clean up this or that, but the kids and the noise and activity are gone. Fortunately, the memories live on. And the photographs help out too! Here is one of my favorites:
After service today, Madison and all the other tribes went off to Stars and Strikes, where they had a great time, of course. There was pizza for everyone, and of course bowling!
Madison had a great time with her friends today. They've really grown together and become good friends - there was a neat moment where each one would go up to bowl, and the entire group behind her would stand and cheer, jumping up and down, making lots of supportive noise.
But like with anything here on earth, all good things must come to an end. And soon Summer Xtreme 2013 was in the books. Pretty much everyone puts it at the top, as we're now at a place where we can start comparing them from year to year. In the beginning, they all sort of blended together, growing somewhat along the way, but largely similar. The past few years, we've developed themes for the events, and this year's theme of "Tribes" was very successful. The cartoons showing different characters were amazing, as were the videos that featured character actors dressed up as the various tribe members. The "rejected" tribe videos were hilarious - and the messages about the tribes were good too. In fact, we'll be teaching those messages until August: Daddy wrote out twelve tribe messages to keep us going for a few months.
In the end, the dismissal process was the fastest it's been, and one remarkable story of the week would have to be the weather. Despite the dire forecasts, we were able to do everything we wanted, completely unhindered by the weather. Thanks be to God for that one. I know a lot of us were praying desperate prayers about this, because the rain chance was about 90% on one day that we needed to be outside. And yet, we managed to do our thing.
A rainbow hung over the church as we left today. I'm usually good about catching something like that on camera, but just couldn't do it today. Many times in my life, a rainbow shows up at the end of something big that has just gone well. Of course, it's the sign of a covenant between God and us. It's a reminder that He was watching over us this week, keeping us in His favor as we worked our hardest to make a lasting impact in these children's lives.
After service today, Madison and all the other tribes went off to Stars and Strikes, where they had a great time, of course. There was pizza for everyone, and of course bowling!
Madison had a great time with her friends today. They've really grown together and become good friends - there was a neat moment where each one would go up to bowl, and the entire group behind her would stand and cheer, jumping up and down, making lots of supportive noise.
But like with anything here on earth, all good things must come to an end. And soon Summer Xtreme 2013 was in the books. Pretty much everyone puts it at the top, as we're now at a place where we can start comparing them from year to year. In the beginning, they all sort of blended together, growing somewhat along the way, but largely similar. The past few years, we've developed themes for the events, and this year's theme of "Tribes" was very successful. The cartoons showing different characters were amazing, as were the videos that featured character actors dressed up as the various tribe members. The "rejected" tribe videos were hilarious - and the messages about the tribes were good too. In fact, we'll be teaching those messages until August: Daddy wrote out twelve tribe messages to keep us going for a few months.
In the end, the dismissal process was the fastest it's been, and one remarkable story of the week would have to be the weather. Despite the dire forecasts, we were able to do everything we wanted, completely unhindered by the weather. Thanks be to God for that one. I know a lot of us were praying desperate prayers about this, because the rain chance was about 90% on one day that we needed to be outside. And yet, we managed to do our thing.
A rainbow hung over the church as we left today. I'm usually good about catching something like that on camera, but just couldn't do it today. Many times in my life, a rainbow shows up at the end of something big that has just gone well. Of course, it's the sign of a covenant between God and us. It's a reminder that He was watching over us this week, keeping us in His favor as we worked our hardest to make a lasting impact in these children's lives.
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