Fayetteville

We went down to Fayetteville this past weekend with some of the members of our Missional Family to explore the idea of Business as Missions.  The wonderful people from New Heights Church  have done some great things through  BAM, and it was wonderful to get the chance to learn from them.  They gave us a whole weekend so we could learn from them, big thanks for that.  It was also a lot of fun to get to hang out with some of my favorite people for a whole weekend.

Girl's Afternoon!

This year at Kids' Club we started a system called Party Points.  The different groups could earn points for participation, good behavior and following directions.  The girls of Group 3 earned the party, beating out Group 2 by 1 point.  We went swimming at David's parents house, painted nails and ate snacks.  Big thanks to Holly for organizing the party and the group leaders for coming out to help! 

Party in the Park!

Last Sunday we had our end of trimester party at the Wyandotte County Lake Park.  We had a great time and about 250ish people in attendance (we went through 300 plates, so that is our best guess).  Everyone had a great time honoring our kids, teens and ESL students, as well as thanking our volunteers for a great trimester.  The adults then heard the story of the Paralytic from Luke 5, while the kids got to play water games.  It was a wonderful afternoon!

So proud of her....

One of our seventh grade girls was inducted in to Kauffman Scholars this past weekend.  If you aren't from Kansas City the Kauffman family is kind of a big deal.  If you know baseball they are the people behind Kauffman Stadium where they Royals play.  Mr. Kauffman decided that the best investment for his money would be in young people, thus Kauffman Scholars was born.  Students from 2 of the inner city districts, who meet the income requirements are invited to apply at the end of 6th grade.  It is a 3 month long process that involves an application (that was more complicated than my application for grad school), a placement test (4 hours long, on a Saturday) and a family interview.  If they make it through all of those things they might be selected for the program.   It is such a big deal because they provide social and academic support for the participants from the start of 7th grade to the completion of COLLEGE!  They also pay for any college expenses not covered by scholarships or grants so the students graduate from college debt free!  I was able to walk with this student and her family though the entire application process, and was beyond thrilled when she got the letter saying she got in.  It was such a blessing to get to celebrate with her and her mom after the induction! 

58 new backpacks....

Last night at Kids' Club we had the privilege of handing out 58 backpacks to the Bhutanese kids and teens, I mentioned it in my previous post (you can read about it here).  I thought I would give you some pictures of the fun that we had! A big thank you to Girl Scout Kate and our friends at Christ Community Church who though two separate supply drives were able to provide the backpacks for ALL of the kids and teens involved with Mission Adelante.

they grow up so fast...

We have been doing Kids' Club for 4 trimesters now, which is just about a year and a third.  It feels as if we have been a part of this community for so much longer.  Last night was our last Kids' Club of the trimester, which is always a bittersweet time.  This time was even worse than the others because it is the last Tuesday that our groups would be together in their current arrangement.  The Kids' Club kids are divided into 4 groups for most of their activities.  For the most part their groups have stayed the same since the beginning of Kids' Club, but as the new school year starts they are getting changed up for the first time ever.  We are also sending a handful of our sixth graders up to Teens' Club starting in the fall.  It is exciting and sad to see them move on and continue their learning about God's love for them.  I am so thankful for the great kids I get to spend time with every week. 

I also don't have words to describe the amazing group of mentors that lead and love-on these kids every week.  I know they were all bummed too see the trimester end, and super sad about the groups changing up for the fall.  They all do such an amazing job of showing Jesus to these kids every week. 

It looks as if we are going to have around 5 or 6 Kids' Club groups for the fall trimester.  If you or anyone you know would be interested in committing 12 weeks to come down to KCK and love on these kids on Tuesday nights we would love to have you.  For more information check out www.missionadelante.org/volunteer.

Shhhh...

I am so excited for Kids' Club tonight!  No, not because it is the last one of the trimester (that kind of makes me sad), but because we get to surpise all of the kids with new backpacks filled with school supplies! The backpacks were provided by Kate, a local Girl Scout working on her Gold Award, who also took a group to day camp earlier this summer and Christ Community Church.  They collected enough school supplies and bags for all of the Bhutanese and Latino kids and most of the teenagers!  A big thank you for all who helped, come back in the next few days to see pictures of the fun suprise!

5-Day Club

We had a great week last week with a group for Child Evangelism Fellowship.  They came to my house every afternoon and put on a VBS for kids from the neighborhood.  We had to move the party inside because of the hot weather, but everyone still had a blast.  The group did an amazing job presenting the message to the kids in a fun and memorable way, it was a very fruitful time.  Feel free to email me if you want to hear more about this great group and the wonderful things that happened last week!