Summer is officially here!

For as many summers as I've lived in Missoula I'm been involved with what used to be called VBS, Vacation Bible School.  Our church puts it on every year and it has since been renamed SAW, Summer Adventure Week.  I haven't been able to get in the habit of calling it SAW because to me that just doesn't sound right.  VBS it is, I'm afraid.

This week is Vacation Bible School up at Missoula Alliance Church.  Hundreds and hundreds of kids pack into the sanctuary everyday, eager and ready to expend all of the energy they kept bottled up during the school year.  These kids are CRAZY!  It's exciting to see and frankly I can't blame them because even now, as a twenty-six year old, I get a little giddy during the first few days of June as I remember how it felt to be a kid to have the whole summer free to do anything and everything except school.  Ahhh, to be a kid again.  As per usual, I am helping out this year which means my life this week is also complete madness.  The feat of getting my kids properly dressed, fed, diapered, and out the door before 8:20 in the morning is ginormous in and of itself.  And that's just the easy part.

My "job" this year is Event Coordinator.  This is my second year doing it and I still don't quite know what all it entails.  I help plan games for the kids to play with the goal being to help each child memorize a certain bible verse.  I help set up drama sets and shuffle kids where they need to be.  All in all it's a pretty simple job.  Even though I'm kind of tethered to one spot the entire week, the perk to that is I get to see ALL the kids at one time or another.  In previous years I've been a Guide and I personally think being a Guide is the best job of all.  My husband is always a Guide.  Guides "supervise" a predetermined group of children for the whole week, which means they basically get to be a kid themselves and get to participate in everything that the kids do.  Lucky.

This year, though, I was also asked to be a speaker who shares the gospel with these kids each and every day.  At first glance I thought it would be fun.  I enjoy speaking in front of people and having a job that would challenge me was really exciting to me.  "Bring it on," I thought.  More days passed and I began to remember the people who did the same job last year and the year before and the year before.  I began to panic knowing that whatever I said had the power to make a child deny the love of Jesus.  What if I said something wrong and this child was forever convinced that there was no God?  My words were the difference between Heaven and Hell.  (Poof!)  That was my dream cloud breaking over my head.  I was being a bit dramatic and it took me awhile, and the words from my husband, to remind me that, yes, my words were important but it was ultimately the Holy Spirit that would bring a child to Christ.  God is more powerful than a word or any sentence that could ever come out of my mouth.  So, I calmed down and slowly started to prepare some ideas for my talk.

But then June 11th happened.  The Friday before the start of VBS.  I was in no mood to proclaim the love of Jesus to anyone, not even to myself.  I didn't feel the love of Jesus and to be honest I was really angry with God.  One reason I don't mind speaking in front of people is because I'm usually passionate about whatever I'm speaking about, but I knew that if I were to get up in front of those kids on Monday morning, it would be blatantly obvious that this God I was supposed to be talking about wasn't as grand as everyone made Him out to be.  I called the director of VBS, who thankfully lives right across the street from us and who is a very good friend to our family, and I told her the thoughts running through my head.  She understood completely and I could tell she could feel my pain.  She cried with me and urged me to do whatever I needed.  I left her house that morning almost certain I wouldn't be speaking to those kids come Monday morning.

Yesterday was Monday and by a power not from myself, I got up in front of those kids and told them about the love of Jesus.  I'm not exactly sure what happened but it just felt like the right thing to do.  I walked into the church that morning with tears bottled up in my eyes.  I was sad.  Sad because I never got to see my baby's face or kiss their tiny toes, but also sad because for a second I had doubted Jesus' love for me.  I'm not sure if anything I've said over the past couple of days will stick with any of the kids but I know the Holy Spirit will do the job even if I can't.