Five day clubs

I have been busy this following week with two five day clubs. The first had three boys who were 12 and two were 14. This club was challenging but enjoyable. The second club had 12 children with ages between 3 and 12. This one was able to raise the astonishing amount of $53.53 in four days for the missionaries. The Lord blessed both these clubs as Michaela and I taught them.

Not in Existence

At one of Michaela's and Joshua's all boy five day clubs, the boys think they made up having a little sister. (Do they really tell all those outlandish tales about me?!) Anyway, that made me feel pretty unimportant. So I want them to take a picture with them today.

Over&Out

GRACE

Built Up

This title expresses my mind, body, and spirit after our vacation to Horn Creek Family Camp in Colorado. Our time together and with other families was so valuable and uplifting to me. We had a wonderful assortment of activities as well as quiet study and alone time with our our Creator. As is the subject for many is the altitude and its effect on the heart, yet Gods' grace towards us during this past week far surpasses the vastness of air in Colorado. As we left the camp and travelled on to Colorado Springs to visit Focus On The Family visitor center and then onto Golden to visit friends in the area, the sermon on Sunday reminded us what God desires for us in keeping ourselves in the Love of God;being grounded and secure in the words of Christ. Here are a few verses from the sermon: But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Jude: 1: 20,21,24,25.

Recovery Room

After jumping through a few hoops which another member of the family might elucidate on, our entire family loaded in to DW and made the eight hour drive to the Horn Creek family camp in CO. We left at five so when we crossed the border at eleven we had quite a welcome. Almost as soon as we entered CO a enormous lightning and rain storm washed down on us. We could see pretty well because of the lightning but the pounding rain kind of blurred everything. Welcome to Colorado!! We met some great families at the Lodge where we stayed and boy was the food good. Our speaker talked about how God's love should be shown through us as Christians and he used excellent illustrations to show that. Now comes the series of pictures showing what we did which you can decipher yourself. My favorite activity I will let someone else blog about

Good News, Home Alone and More

Grace had worked this year for the purpose of going to Good News Camp. She saved $80 and sent in her application only to find out that the week she could go was full and our family would be out of town the other week. We did not have a happy camper at that point. We encouraged her to give thanks in order to acknowledge that God was in control. On Sunday Michaela and Joshua left to be counselors at this camp. On Monday, some of Grace's friends left to be campers. We were proud of the fact that after a fair amount of tears initially, she help up really well. Especially since others around her were talking about the week with excited anticipation. Mid-morning on Monday we received a call from Good News Camp telling us to bring Grace. There was an opening for her because of a cancellation. I would show you a happy Grace picture but she was such a blur getting ready and leaving that you will just have to imagine the look of our happy camper after she heard the good news. This now leaves Velda and I home alone. I have a choral directors state convention Thursday through Saturday leaving Velda by herself a couple of days. Finally we painted our porch. I'm the painter in the red shirt. Velda got a great deal on some high quality paint for the deck. She got it without taking regard for the color. She would best describe it as plum. It is glossy and shows dirt immediately. In the last picture you can see a faint reflection of Grace and Velda on the porch deck. We will be providing a shoe/foot cleaning station for use before entering the porch.

How Wide

On Tuesday Michaela and I helped out a five-day club. Since I was in charge of the songs I decided to do the classic How Wide and Deep. This song brought back great memories of CYIA and when I used to sing this song in club as a participant. The kids and the teachers enjoyed the song, the only problem was Michaela and I started cracking up in the middle of the song. (It might have had something to do with how I was "accidentally" poking Michaela during the song.)

Lessons

This is actually CYIA report Part II. While at camp our dorm mom talked about being gracious. She explained some of the characteristics and even gave some examples. That devotion really stayed on my mind for a while. For those of you who know me pretty well I can be loud, obnoxious, and very blunt all at the same time. In fact some people are even scared of me(we won't say names but I have learned that some people from different cultures just don't go around hugging strangers). God was trying to tell me that graciousness was something that could definitely be worked on in my life. So during CYIA I picked someone who seemed quiet and shy and attempted to carry a conversation with them without scaring them( Shy people do tend to be scared of me). We ended up having a great conversation that lasted about twenty minutes which went very well. Now since then I've had countless failures at being gracious but you don't learn God's lessons in one day. "A gracious woman retains honor." Proverbs 11:16a

Two Porches, 1 family

Two of our summer projects are to paint our porch and a friends porch. We started our friends porch today. While I played with their children.It was very hot and tiring work, and I sweated a lot even though the only thing I did was sweep the paint chips.(the weather might've had something to do with it too, but that's not the point.) Anyway, those are two things we will be doing this summer.

Over&Out

GRACE

Beijing Olympics 2008 or The Matchmaker Returns

We have just concluded a wonderful time with my great friend Judi Boyer. We haven't seen her since our wedding nearly 19 years ago (July 28). The reason being that she spends most of her time in China working for Scope Ministries and more importantly our Father. This time her furlough worked out for us to see her. She brought us the nearly matching (except for Grace) shirts commemorating the Beijing (that's pronounced Bei-jing, not Bei-zhing Mr. Costas) Olympics. For those of you who know the story of our union, this is none other than the beloved matchmaker that lured us both into attending the same ski trip unbeknownst to the fact that the other was attending. Pretty sly Judi. Of course there are no hard feelings on either side, after all we are happily married. We toured our 90 year old house, toured the garden, saw what God has done in our lives, is doing in our lives and prayed for what we would like to see God do in our lives in the years to come.

Rising to the Challenge

Christian Youth in Action, aka CYIA, is a camp that Michaela (4 years, see her previous blog) and Joshua (3 years) have attended. Elfrieda Harder has been associated with CYIA for time in memoriam (that means a long time in the past of an indefinite nature). A loose tradition has been to serenade Elfrieda some evening with a song. The group of boys who have done it lately were not attending camp this year. 4 boys, including our Joshua, decided that the tradition must not die. I don't know who initiated this but I suspect that it wasn't Joshua. Anyway we members of the Creer family were fairly shocked at the animation that Joshua portrayed in this serenade as well as the volume while singing (he is a good singer, trust me on this I'm an expert). Joshua is a somewhat verbal and animated person at home but rarely in public (except during some sports as far as animation but not the verbal). I want you to know that there wasn't an earthquake during the video. Michaela was laughing so hard that she couldn't hold the camera still. I had to use YouTube to get you this rare footage because the blog site was taking too long to upload. Enjoy. (Paste the following link to your browser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL_Y02eNeGY