Pastor Tim Barton left Canby to
return to school. I went to work on his Masters degree. That left the youth
group without a leader and being a parent of a young teenager, I really wanted
her to have a youth group. Diana Wrigglesworth, another parent, and I worked together to keep
the program running. It was an opportunity to practice what I preached.
It was a bigger challenge that I
expected. I started writing a series of letters about working with youth that
circulated letters between myself, Len Kageler at North Seattle and De Hicks in
Spokane. I wish I still had those as they were funny and encouraging. I was
learning from two of the best our district had.
One of the strangest meetings we
had was a “boring party.” We did nothing but sit around. Everyone was to act
bored and the grad prize was an all expense paid trip to Boring, Oregon – about
30 miles of so from Canby. If a person laughed or smiled they were out of the
competition. We ate boring food – maybe water and crackers, I’m not sure. We played
a few slow and dull games. Julie Beko won. Diane and I took her to Boring to
have her photo taken at the Boring, OR welcome sign. It was boring.
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| Tubing |
We had a winter retreat at a cool
place with a nice tubing hill on site. Don Esau, a young guy studying to be a
lawyer joined Diane and I by then and he with several parent came along to help
for the weekend. We had a great group of kids and plenty of fun until a large
group piled on a tube ride (against instructions) that cause one girl to get a
separated shoulder. That was a problem. We were not close to a hospital. That
pretty well drained the joy. Fortunately it was near the end of our time
together.
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| Lunch prep |
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| Lunch |
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| Meal Clean-up |
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| Tubing hill. The black blobs are people caring their tubes back up the hill. |
3 comments:
I LOVED the boring party! I was a complete failure at not smiling or laughing and lost early, but it was fun. (Which sounds wrong to say about something so boring.)I remember the tubing trip, too.
I also clearly remember one week when you told our group that we could not invite friends for a few weeks--during those weeks you took us to task for the way we, as a group, were behaving. It was one of the first times I understood the reality of needing to be in the world, but not of it. I appreciated AYF and the balance of study and fun.
I don't remember your last comment at all. Must have been bad. I do remember two boys driving me crazy. Chad came in one door trying to find Brian and when he didn't see him, he left. Meantime, Brain came in another door and could not find Chad so he left. I'm sorry, but I could not help but to laugh. They were like this every week.
For some reason I am thinking it was gossip and it might have been something else as well. I don't remember being directly involved (haha--way to pass the blame!), but I remember after your talk "we should be better than this."
Yes, Chad & Brian were indeed like that all the time. I had forgotten, but your description rings true!!
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