Prayer retreat almost here...

Well, tomorrow starts our retreat. We are very excited about it. We can't wait to see all the folks who are coming and will miss everyone else very much.

We started our Tweeners program last night, it went very well. God is soooo good!

Vacation was wonderful. We had lots of fun and made many memories.

Lela's arm and hand is still very painful and numb. She is coping with it with prayers and occasional pain meds. Complete healing would be wonderful. :-)

Scott is on his new team and is working hard. His meeting with his last team leader went very well. Ian told him that he had more knowledge than those who had been there for the full 2 years, all he needed was just experience. What a compliment.

Matthew has joined the drama team at church and the Y-US team. That is youth using sticks. Very cool to watch. He has also been told that he is going to be one of the main people for the youth's web page/video-grapher designer. They are willing to teach him and he is very excited. During our kick off last night we had Ian from MMS and Matthew go up in the open cock-pit bi-wing and fly over the church while dropping bombs (bags of flour) onto marked targets while the kids were behind the barricade areas. Our theme was military and we played a siren that sounded like a raid and told them to take cover, that we were being bombed. Matthew had a blast and one time came within 7 feet of hitting dad's motorcycle in the parking lot. :-) He also had the video camera with him and was filming it from the air. I was snapping away from below.

The newspaper was there doing a story on our kick off and said he was very impressed by the top notch production of activities that we set up. He was expecting something very dull. He also, at the end, asked for my photos since his photographer never showed up to take any. I was so not expecting that. He talked to Scott about the plane dropping and tied in MMS and interviewed me as a parent and as a leader. He asked if I had any other kids here besides Nathaniel (Nathaniel was in my group of 5 & 6th graders) since he chose to walk the stages with our group, I told him yes, Jeremiah was in the younger group and that Matthew was the one dropping the flour bombs and Shaughn was the bass player and also one of the leader sargents. We were all decked out in camo and everyone thought we looked very much the part. It was fun to see the entire family taking a major part in the occasion.

Thank you for your prayers so far and ask that you continue to hold this ministry up. We had 43 kids last night, they tell us we will have more when school starts next week. That was great.

Scott has one more week of vacation from MMS that we have to decide when and where we are to take it. Please pray for us as we have no idea.

Thank you all so much. God bless and remember: YOU are the apple of the Lord's eye!!
Lela and boyz~