SERVE - Day 3 - Sunday

It's 11:55 pm and once again the church is quiet.  It has been a very interesting day.  Lots of good and some not so good stuff happened today.  

After getting a couple of hours sleep, I awoke and went home to take a long wanted shower and pick up my daughter for church.  After returning it was time to breakfast.  Below are more pictures and explanations of the day.  

Many of the mentors and participants got SOME sleep last night.  Some awoke and needed a coffee or tea to get their juices flowing.  I tried the coffee this morning.  Evert made it.  BOY was it STRONG.  Only 1/4 cup was like drinking a whole cup.  WOW!   JUST the jolt I needed.  Rachel and John are smiling and Sara was journalling.  

Rey was all smiles this morning.  HE must have gotten some good sleep last night.  

Scrabble so early in the morning?  I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone concentrate on making words. 

Some took in last night's blog entry.  

The kitchen crew taking a rest before beginning clean up.  

After breakfast, it was time for church.  Our youth praise band lead the praise and worship for our "co-missioning" service this morning. 

It was wonderful to see so many out for this special service.  The church was pretty much full, which is not something that happens often during the summer.  Lots of guests from other church came too.  Thanks for your support.  

As always, some of our participants joined in with our praise band in playing their instruments.  

Shellie delivered the message for the service.  Here she is showing us a penny which she gave to each of us as a reminder that individually we are worth something, but collectively we are also worth much more and together we can accomplish many things.  We all received a penny as we left the sanctuary. 

During the service we had a prayer and share time.  Tamara took down  all the requests.  

After prayer time it was time to "co-mission" the SERVE team.  Participants, Mentors and the congregation all commissioned each other for service this week.  

Here is the team making promises to each other and to God, placing their hand on their hearts.  

At the end of the service, we sang the song "My friends, may you grow in grace..." holding hands together.  It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful service.  God was present and working.  I will not soon forget the visual of the congregation holding hands high in the air and singing that song together.  

After the service we had fellowship time in the fellowship hall.  You could barely move in the fellowship hall.  It was neat to see.  

Just before lunch I wanted to take a group picture.  Here's the first attempt at it.  Who is that handsome man laying on the ground anyway?  : ) 

Here is a better group shot.  

A mother/daughter combination in the kitchen.  I'm continually amazed at who and how many volunteers come out for this SERVE each year.  So many people work in the background to help make this SERVE happen.  You don't know the 1/2 of it, and I know that some would rather not be mentioned, so I won't.  : )   

Some of the group waiting for Lunch to be served.  

Sara and Hannah, always smiling.  

Joel and Greg hanging out and contemplating what would be for lunch.  

Finally it was time for lunch. Sloppy Joe's and salad.   Yummy.  

A couple of people are camera shy.  

Kyle gives the food a thumbs up.  

Chris would too, but he's too busy actually stuffing his face.  

Hmmm, Joanna with all her friends again.  I'm going to have to sit with her for a meal now.  

Hey, Megan.  Your family certainly didn't teach you good manners.  

After lunch it was time to travel downtown for an Ottawa River boat cruise. Here is Kyle ready to go in the van.  

The group of 4 sweating it out walking to the dock.  

We arrived at the boat JUST in time.  A LONG line of blue shirts.  

Once on the boat everyone settled in and enjoyed the ride.  It was kind of hot, but sometimes a breeze of the river would make things a bit more comfortable.  

We saw many interesting sights.  Here is the back of parliament hill.  

Janine is on the phone, I think.  She looks shocked.  Maybe it was because she heard the soccer score and didn't like the end result. 

You can't see the heat, but it was hot on the boat.  The group made the best of it though.  

Everyone tried to stay hydrated.  Chris caught me doing just that.....I'm not swelling up or anything.  My mouth is full of water.  

The exciting part of the tour was getting up close and personal with the Rideau River falls.  

Looks neat eh!

Rachel and John were hamming it up, killing some down time on the boat.  Interesting facial expressions.  

We all discovered one of John's many talents.  Sorry all, but it just happens to be making farting noises with his elbows.  Apparently he can fart out a classical tune.   It sounded quite good actually. 

After one and a half hours we were off the boat and ready to take our first showers of the week. 

Our blue shirts made our group noticeable and some people asked us about what we were doing in Ottawa.  A great time to share with the world our secret mission.  

Now I just happened to have the camera in my hand, and clicked a picture as I was walking by Esther, and this was the result.  I don't know why Esther looked so shocked.  I didn't even know I was taking the picture.  

We all returned home from showers feeling (|and smelling) much better.   Supper was served and once again it was delicious.  

During dinner small footprints began appearing in the church.  They were for our small group time.  

Oh, it's just Bea and Grace being creative again.  

Our small group time was cut a bit short this evening, and we had to readjust our evening a bit.  

The reason for the rearranging of things was that when we returned home from our cruise, we discovered that someone had entered the building during our absence (there were people in the kitchen and watching the soccer game) gone downstairs and ransacked everyone's belongings.  It ended up that some money, some ipods, and some phones were taken.  Here I am filling in a police report, with the officer waiting for me to complete it.  

That makes the third time this year that I've had to deal with issues of stealing.   I felt pretty bad for those who were affected by this event.  Some of the participants were pretty upset.  We will replace the $$ that was stolen, but unfortunately, I think the other items are lost for good.  It sure created a buzz in the group, and delayed us in the evening time.  We eventually got on track again, and I'm am being more conscious of locking the door of the church.

   

In some ways it's a bit ironic that our theme is secret agent stuff, and we are having police officers coming in to talk to us about police related things.  Not really the way I wanted that to be an object lesson for us all.  

 

Once the hub bub of the events passed, Rey took his place at the sanctuary door to begin the process of allowing everyone to come in for worship time.  

Oh, I just happened to see Casey hanging out and happy, so I had to get a shot of her for the blog.  Isn't she CUTE!!!!

Once again everyone had to present their passbook and badge to Rey to make sure they were allowed to enter "Headquarters".

Praise and worship was lead by Natasha and company once again.  Sara and Rebecca once again enjoyed expressing themselves in worship with the praise group.  

John loved the drum.  

Shellie did another GREAT talk for us.  

Once again I was the guinipig (? Spelling)   (I always seem to be) with Kyle for a demonstration of what is in our hearts.  Kyle is holding a large stethoscope and Shellie is plunging a needle into my heart, hoping to extract things about me from it.  It HURT real bad!!!

Here is Charlotte following some instructions from Shellie.  She followed them to a T.  

After service time it was time for our evening activities.  Sports.....

Or ty dying  (? Spelling)   t-shirts.....

Or watching a movie. 

At 9:15 it was time for a snack, and then it was time to put the participants to bed so the mentors could have a time of meeting together to share things about our day.  Tonight's meeting was a very productive one, addressing some important issues that needed addressing regarding relationships and choices.  LOTS of growth happening here, and that is neat to see, even when growth is painful at times.   

And so ends our Sunday at SERVE.  A good day, but also a day in which we were exposed to sin in a very real way.  We have now been commissioned, and tomorrow we begin working at different places in Ottawa.  \

Please continue to pray for us.  Pray that those who stole from us would be convicted of their act and somehow come back and offer to write a very terrible wrong.  Pray for those participants and mentors directly affected because their stuff was stolen or gone through.  Pray for us as we continue to build relationships with each other and head into a day of work.  We are getting tired, and it's starting to show.  BUT, God is good, all the time. 

Until my next posting tomorrow, may God grant you His peace.