Hola! It's been a little while since I posted but I wanted to get all of conference in one post. Annual conference definitely had its upsides and its downsides. The upsides included seeing my fellow interns once again, seeing a few of my friends from SU, and all around being in community with fellow United Methodists. The downsides included listening to all of the financial reports and stuff like that. However, even those had their learning moments. When I went to the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference when I was 13, I honestly did not understand the parliamentary procedure and what they were all talking about. Now that I'm older, it was really cool to be able to follow along and understand how the conference worked. The bishop did a fantastic job at keeping order and keeping things on schedule. If anyone wants to know more about more of the business side of conference, let me know. I didn't want to get into it here because it would be way long and not all that interesting :P
Saturday was fun for two different reasons. The first was that the president of SU, the lovely Tracy, took SU people out for lunch and that was just a blast. The second was at night we had a youth and young adult delegation tailgate party in the hotel where we were staying. We ended up having a dance party, which was so much fun. The same Tracy danced and sang to "I will Survive," which was fantastic. I love being a part of the Shenandoah community.
Today was our first day of VBS. We have four main age groups and there are a little over twenty in each group so we're reaching almost one hundred kids this week, which is awesome. I'm doing music, so each of the groups came to me. They are great kids. Everyone participated and at the end of the day a lot of them said that music was their favorite part of the day, which really meant a lot to me. I was exhausted though, definitely got a workout doing all of those motions and jumping around. When I got back to my host family's house, I took a three hour nap, it was glorious. We have four more days of VBS so let's hoping I don't collapse by the end of it.
On Sunday, I'm leading the Call to Worship, the Opening Prayer, and helping serve Communion. Then it's just one more week until I preach! I'll be sure to keep everyone posted on how the rest of VBS goes. Until then....
Nice post, keep up with those naps, they are glorious!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are having so much fun and definitely connecting with those around you! Keep up the posts!
ReplyDeleteAlso, maybe you can share some tips with me on how to get kids motivated in VBS. In my church, it was sometimes hard to get them all excited for music. I'm sure your passion and personality really helps though!
For music in VBS, I first started them out stretching. We did the normal stuff like stretch up high, touch your toes, twist your body, jumping jacks, shake it all out....the list goes on. I found that that got the kids up and moving before the music even started so they weren't as hesitant to join in. Also, I was very loud and over the top...so that kind of helped. Once the kids started learning the songs, I would give them the choice (by raise of hands) of what they wanted to sing, but in an either/or fashion so it didn't get out of hand. I would also let a kid come up with me and lead a song, it gave the kids leadership where they normally wouldn't.
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