BONUS POSTING 1

PERSONAL: Had my last visit with the doctor regarding my shoulder. It appears a calcium building up collided with a bone, made a popping connection and strained some muscles. Everything is fine. However, because of the arthritis building up on my left side it may occur again.

It is unlikely that you will have as much interest in some of the reproductions of the pieces from the AYF Valley News that I have, but I provides a glimpse in the the mind of the late 60's Christian Canadian teen. Since I have so many Canadian followers you may recognize some names. There is a district superintendent and his wife, a pastor of a large BC church, and a larger number of extremely cool people. This posting is primarily reprints, spelling errors and all and enough of them to make people think I typed them. I didn't.

This first piece is the beginning of a weekly creative writing project by Lance Atton. Lance was president of our Sunday school group. He wrote these stories weaving in the names of teens in the group. This is his first story and includes a character based on a famous Canadian superintendent. This column first appeared in issues 9, January 15, 1971.

 Also from issue 9 was the very popular "Did You Know" Bonnie Peters is the younger sister of a now deceased DS. I spent a great deal of time with Bob in his youth and was honored to have his first son have my name as his middle name. I'm not sure why anyone would do this to a poor kid, but it was a privilege I still appreciate.

The news report is a sample of life in out youth group and the strange things that made out little paper. The kids read it, the adults read it and it even got mailed to people who moved away. We begun the paper the use the gifts and abilities of Dorothy and Lance in particular. Lance had a real creative flair and Dorothy was just straight out funny. Eventually Jan Abramoff began the Jan Flanders advice column. As I recall, all the letters to her were made up.

As you can see, we had a very liberal policy on what was news. But we printed what kids reported on one another and even what some of their parents submitted. This was a very fun phase of our ministry. It was probably a good thing I left the church so all the paper workers could get some rest.