Sub-sistence

Well, this being the last weekend before Christmas it is time to start talking about what’s been going on in Christ’s house, eh?  At least the particular earthly house of His that I visit on a regular basis- I can’t speak for any of the thousands and thousands of other ones around the world.  Aside from advent, which began at the beginning of the month, the real show began last weekend.  At the, er, other branch of this house that I attend.  That is to say, the worship service including the choir was on tour with two stops.  I did not take part in the choir last weekend as I am also involved in children’s ministry and I needed to be at my usual place.  That was okay because although the other church is larger, the stage is smaller so not all the members of the choir would fit.

Since I wasn’t there I’ll just skip ahead to this weekend.  We sang three choir pieces, all of which had to be memorized, and five worship songs, which the entire congregation sings.  One of the songs was from a previous year so I more or less had it memorized already, meaning only two songs for me to work on for the last month.  One of the interesting things to note about this choir is the altos seriously outnumber the sopranos and the tenors outnumber the basses.  The women of course outnumber the men.  Now I couldn’t do anything about the altos vs. the sopranos, but as a lyric baritone (tenor II) I dutifully stepped down to the bass part.  This wasn’t at all unfamiliar territory since I had sung baritone in choir for years before my tenor range opened up.  The choir songs were The Night that Christ was Born, a strange up-tempo rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Light of the World.  Now I said that we did one of these songs before so I knew it (the first one I listed), but really we did two of them before.  The other one though had a very different choir part so the choir part (most choir songs we do are solos/duets with choir background) was new.  I lasted for the Saturday night service and the first Sunday service.  After that my voice started going- the upper range.  I just don’t have the endurance I should.  I should exercise my vocal muscles more.  Well, I should exercise all my muscles more, but that’s going a bit off topic here…

Following two of the choir performances I rushed to serve in the 4th/5th grade room, where I made it for the lesson and small group time (the important part).  While past years have often meant a video during this weekend and cookies, we had a real lesson this year instead of the video (still had cookies at the end- yum).  It was on patience.  Zechariah and Elizabeth had to wait several decades for a child before God finally gave them one.  The Bible says they were “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” and so their childlessness wasn’t due to sin in one of their lives.  Eventually, God gave them the son they had waited for all of their lives into their sixties.  Naturally since it was customary to name the son after the father he would have had his father’s name, only Zechariah the Baptist isn’t a name we know.  Rather, God had them name their son John of course.  In fact, these were the first words out of Zechariah’s mouth after God allowed him to speak again (his disbelief over having a child at his age earned him the inability to speak until John was born- good thing he wasn’t in a choir, at least that we know of! ).  So in small groups then we talked about how patient they, as 10- and 11-year-olds, tended to be.  They got to rate themselves and talk about what kinds of things makes them impatient.  Waiting for big gifts like video game systems topped the list, but there were other things like healing.  Two of my kids are actually going through cancer in ther families- an uncle and a mom.  Big ouch on the mom.  If anyone wants to add these two to their prayer lists their names are Daniel (mom) and Matt (uncle- currently not responding well to treatment I understand).  This while my pastor and associate pastor are both being treated for prostate cancer…

Christmas part 2 coming later following Christmas Eve service.

Well, teaching in Sunday school that is.  Unlike last time I taught a month ago, I felt I did pretty well this time.  I was able to do 1½ lessons this weekend.  The ½ comes from last night, when I taught only half of the lesson.  Why?  Well, there was a shortage of leaders due to many taking the night off for this or that reason.  In fact, one who had off rearranged his schedule so he could be there after all.  Anyway, it was decided that we would spend most of the night with the younger kids (1st-3rd) as a result and not have small groups.  In the end, we did wind up with enough help from last-minute volunteers to do our normal thing, but the wheels were already in motion.  I really don’t think 4th/5th grades got much out of the younger lesson, but fortunately we had time at the end to do the intended lesson, well half of it anyway.  It was an important lesson so we had to fit it in.  I taught them the Romans Road to salvation.  This is a series of four key verses from the book of Romans.  Here’s where I get lazy now and cut-n-paste from another site.  You may notice that there are five verses here (6:23a and 6:23b are one), but Romans 10:13 is covered by 10:9-10 so as a “repeat” it doesn’t count: 

It was a blessing to get to teach this to not one, but two groups of kids this weekend.  Today by the way was a normal day- we played kickball, had worship, lesson, and small groups just as normal.  They even got to make “salvation” bracelets to remind them of the message.  Only last night was weird.  I am happy to say that I will have another chance to teach in two weeks- I normally only get one lesson per month.  So, another blog entry about teaching then.  In the meantime, more of the movies, retrogaming, and whatever. 

Well, mostly.  Anyway, I have returned and apparently the site I thought would link to my HPX page never did so (EDIT: there was a post there- I just missed it and so apparently did everyone else!), so there are no comments there.  In the last couple of days I have caught up on much of the internet news I read, though I still have several days of newspapers to read.  I really should give those up completely and just go to the paper’s website for the local news, and comics.com for the comics.  I was a little disappointed B.C. finally ended a few weeks ago and was replaced with a pretty bad comic about a sheep and a dog- Deflocked I believe is the title.  Of course B.C. had to go since its writer passed on a few months ago.  I will meet him once I go home myself, along with other figures like C.S. Lewis and of course the many faithful in the Bible.  Not for a long time though, God willing.

The cabin I had was quite young and in some cases difficult.  There were two who were prone to distraction and I feel the small group time I had with them following lessons was not where it could have been.  Mine was the only cabin in fact who did not even make it to the final flag raising on Saturday morning, still cleaning the cabin.  We took over an hour to get ready, and even then I still had to go back and finish following breakfast.  But enough of the bad.  No one likes to read about that.

Every year there is something new at the camp.  The first year I was there they were finishing up the lodge where we have meals and lessons.  They had a big tent set up outside instead that year.  The second year the lodge was finished and they had a new instructional- rock climbing.  There is a small room on the bottom floor of the lodge with a rock climbing wall that extends to the roof two floors up.  That replaced disc  golf as an instructional.  More importantly, the lodge was air conditioned, and so were the cabins!  Ahh…  The third year I was there they added a zip line.  It is fun to go down it, but unfortunately after one got to the bottom there was a long hike around a lake to get back to the top.  They also added an amphitheater for outdoor worship.  This year’s addition was small, but it aided the zip line immensely.  A bridge over that lake.  No more long hike around the lake to get back.  Next year, who knows for sure, but there are plans for a baseball field and zip line improvements in the future.

The zip line was the general favorite part of camp for the kids in my cabin, but canteen time (where they could buy food and drinks, as well as have (guided) free time came in a close second.  The day was quite organized and there was much to do, including lessons, worship, small group, games, instructionals, meals, etc.  This could also be somewhat stressful as getting the kids to where they needed to be in a timely fashion when they all had needs like going to the bathroom (constantly!) and changing clothes wasn’t easy.

In the end it was nice to hear their thoughts on what they learned and enjoyed when handing out their dog tags at the end of the week.  My team was air force, so I “promoted” them from cadets to airmen.  Too bad I didn’t have wings to give them, but I did use some of my stimulus check (which I will receive soon) on t-shirts for my cabin.  I still have one left too.  Maybe I’ll take a picture of it and post it.  In fact, I will have to post some of the pictures I took at camp.  It should be relatively safe as I will not be identifying them, or the name of the camp (or my church for that matter ).  Besides, too few people actually read this thing anyway.  Look for those soon- I have well over 300 pictures and 90 videos to sort through to find some good ones.  Well, I have some more catching up to do- like reading my friend’s blogs.