Summer Missions...

We have a few missions opportunities taking place this summer that our youth are involved in.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have some of our girls involved in CEF Backyard Bible Clubs. In addition to this group, we will have a big group from CBC going to Utah at the end of July to help with some practical needs of Ron Thompson's ministry. A few of our youth will be going on this trip.

We also have two individuals going on missions trips. Samantha Seven, who graduated last year, just returned from Guatemala. She spent a little over two weeks in Guatemala with a friend of hers. They were helping a missionary friend there with some practical needs. We look forward to hearing about her trip.

Brad Mulligan is on a missions trip right now through the Awana Missionary in Training program. He will be leaving tomorrow night to go to Romania for a few weeks. There they will have the opportunity to teach children and share the gospel with them.

Please pray for all of these opportunities this summer for these different groups and individuals. It is great to see our young people involved with serving the Lord through missions opportunities.

CEF Backyard Bible Clubs...

We have a few girls in our group involved with Child Evangelism Fellowship this summer. They will be involved with Backyard Bible Clubs. These are great opportunities to share the gospel with kids and see them come to Christ or grow in their relationship with Him.

Melinda will once again be teaching these clubs and leading them after spending two weeks in CEF "boot camp". Kathleen, Elisa, Katie, and Liz will be Jr. helpers and will be telling the missionary story. These girls have chosen to spend some of their summer serving the Lord through CEF. Please be praying for each of these girls this summer.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to attend a club that Melinda and Kathleen were doing. They did a great job.

Jr. High Swim Party

Hey Jr. Highers, don't forget about the swim/pool party at the Schmidt's home tomorrow night, July 1st. We will meet at 4 pm at the Schmidts and be finished around 8 pm.

We will also have some outside of the pool games and we will have dinner there. Hope you can come. And hopefully the weather will cooperate with us. See you there.

Worldview Night...

Tonight is our monthly Sr. High/Jr. High Worldview Night. Parents are also invited to attend.

Tonight we will begin a new video series by Ravi Zacharias, an internationally well known Christian apologists whom God has gifted in a miraculous way to defend the Christian faith. Many times he makes hard questions seem so simple, and he shows the consequences that take place when you take a thought to its logical conclusion.

The video series is entitled, "Deliver Us From Evil; Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture". This series is made up of 13 sessions. We will view 4 sessions tonight, 4 next month, and the final 5 in September. Although this is an older video series (1997), it still contains a lot of applicable discussion for today. I think the Lord can use this series in a great way as we continue to focus on this subject of worldviews.

After the video sessions we will probably play a few games and have some snacks. Hope you can make it and make sure you don't check your brain at the door. Your definitely going to need it tonight!

Jr. High VBS...

Last week was VBS. And this year we decided to do something a little different. We decided to do a "special" VBS for our Jr. High group (6th-8th) grade.

While we still had singing, crafts, games, verses, and Bible lessons; they were a little more tailored to the Jr. High mind and a little bit olderish.

So we had a great week. Mr. Wick and Mr. DeVries did a great job leading us in songs every morning. We had a great opportunity to bring visitors to fill up our 3 gallon water pot in order to earn a pizza party on Friday (by the way, over half of it was full after Monday). We also raised just over $40 for the orphanage in Russia. And adding that to what the rest of the VBS groups brought in, we will be able to give a gift of close to $300 to them. Praise the Lord.

And we had more friends come than I expected (by the way, Becca won the prize for bringing the most friends). One day we had 20 Jr. Highers crammed into our youth room. It was great.

Each day we memorized verses focused on a different aspect of our lessons. Throughout the week we focused on God's love.

Monday - God's love is giving. - we saw this in the fact that He sent Jesus Christ into this world as a baby to pay the price for our sins.

Tuesday - God's love is kind. - we saw this in the way Jesus dealt with Jairus, whose daughter was very sick and then died, and the way He dealt with the lady with a bleeding problem she had for 12 years.

Wednesday - God's love is caring - we saw this in the way Jesus dealt with the Samaritan woman.

Thursday - God's love is forgiving - Jesus forgave Zacchaeus

Friday - God's love is forever - Jesus is alive today after being raised from the dead

We had some good Bible study time and some good questions throughout the time.

Thanks also to Mrs. Sadler and Mrs. Schmidt who cam up with some great crafts for us. And Mr. Rios and Jakob who had some good games for us (we won't mention anything about water balloons). We also had a couple of hunts. On Thursday we had a treasure hunt around the church property. There were 16 clues that had to be solved to find the treasure. Congrats to Kathleen, Elisa, Josh, and Alonte on finding the treasure. And then on Friday we had a photo scavenger hunt where we travelled around Aurora and had to take pictures of signs that had anything to do with our theme SonTreasure Island. The kids did a great job with that. Congrats to Alonte, Amonte, Brandon, Elisa, and Liz on barely winning that hunt.

So thanks to all who came and brought friends and thanks to all who helped (especially Mr. and Mrs. DeVries and Mr. Wick). Maybe we can do it again next year.