Sandy's Sayings

Checking out a new camp

So while the guys on our youth team are in the Dominican republic, all of us girls went to check out a new camp in Mammoth! I've never been to Mammoth, it's absolutly beautiful! We are checking out Mammouth Base Camp! They run a winter camp as well as summer stuff with rock climbing, mt. biking and horseback riding! Today we went rock climbing and there was still a ton of snow on the ground! Lots of fun had by all! Really like the team that has started this camp! Great people.

Two-Weeks of Craziness is Over!

I'm breathing a sigh of relief as the two weeks of craziness are over. I have a love/hate relationship with the month of May!  I love it because summer is coming!  I hate it because I feel my life is not my own!  The ministry school year is over and our summer program starts in two weeks.  High school graduations and grad parties are over, Jr. High graduations start on Tuesday!  This was our largest senior class we have had, and it sure was fun to see this class graduate!  I'm so excited to see where God will take them.  It was a bittersweet good-bye to our 8th graders!  This was one of those really special classes.  All awesome kids who have been such leaders in our ministry, who love the Lord and one of the few classes who really cared about the younger kids in our ministry. I will miss them in our Jr. High Ministry but look forward to see how they will shape our high school ministry. In all the craziness, our summer intern also started.  I love having are summer interns around.  This is our second summer having interns.  I'm looking forward to spending time with them and doing ministry with them.  We've got a fun week planned with them as we leave on Thursday for Mammoth Base Camp, to go check out this ministry. Four days of mt. biking, rock climbing, hiking and adventure!

The Teen 10 Day Tech Challenge

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10 Year Old Gives Advice on Getting A Girl

Over the last few weeks in our Jr. High Ministry we've been talking about the difference between guys and girls.  We showed this video this morning on "how to get a girl."  Great advice from 10 year old Alec Greven. 

Summer Designs

May and September are the craziest times in student ministry for me.  In May we are winding down the school year, yet gearing up for summer. For instance, this weekend holds a play, writing all of our jr. high/high school graduates, our usual Sunday AM and our Student Ministry Family BBQ. The week holds end of year meetings, 09-10 calendar planning so I can finish up the 09-10 budget as well as getting ready to teach and work on my summer sermons and get ready for our summer interns.  Weekend after that is the overwhelming job of fitting as many graduations that you can, in a span of 2 days as well as all the parties that I get invited too! June 1 I plop down on my couch and breath a sigh of relief until June 11 when it's time to fit as many Jr. High graduations in, in the span of 4 days.  Then summer kicks in. I love summer in youth ministry.  It's not a vacation but it is a lot of fun.  The kids aren't stressed, you get to see a glimpse of their real selves.  It's pure hang out time with jr. highers with a few fun activities thrown in as well as "seriously ridiculous" summer study.  As I sat and designed all of our summer calendars this week, I was wishing I could just snap my fingers and skip the next 3 weeks and dive right into summer!  The weather this weekend in the Bay is going to be hot, which will really make me wish I could just skip to June 16 and start summer!

Student Ministry Family BBQ

On Sunday, May 17, the Student Ministry will be having a Family BBQ at Booth Bay Park in Foster City from 1-3 pm. Bring your chair, rec equipment and food item, we will provide the meat! We will also be honoring our 6th graders, graduating 8th graders and graduating seniors. It will be a fun time hanging out with family and friends! Sign up with Darcie, Rob, Sandy or Ben by Sunday May 10. Download Student min picnic 09

Good News

In 24 years of youth ministry, I have sat through a lot of plays and musicals.  Last night I went to see "Good News" at The Kings Academy.  Of all the plays I've been to, I had not seen any school do this musical.  What a great musical!  I think this was one of the best musical's I had seen any school perform! The students were amazing and I still can't get over the huge tap routine the cast did.  What a fun night. Katie, Hannah and Sarah, you girls were awesome, it's always a joy to come and support you girls!  

My First E-Newsletter

In January our Student Ministry made the final transition to go green. Yes, we are that cool now! This has been a year long transition for us. Throughout 2008 we were slowly making the transition to go paperless by moving towards a blog format to communicate to parents and students, as well as replacing our old phone hotlines with twitter and adding a text message service. The last thing to take off of my plate was mailing postcards and newsletters. I sent my first e-newsletter a couple of weeks ago. We are using My Emma as our newsletter host. For the most part the transition has gone fairly well and I've been pleased with the response.  We still have some work to do with our parents to get them looking online instead of through snail mail, but they are getting with it.  For myself personally, I've found that designing and doing mailings was such a time consuming process.  Going electronic saves my time and saves the church a good chunk of changing with paper and postage.  The best part in all of this, is each of these services can all be done from my iphone, so where ever I might be, whether I'm at the beach with kids or at camp, I can update our parents of what is going on with words, pictures and video!

The Oscars Take Over!

Usually this time of year is pretty mellow, but not this year.  Sorry for the lack of blogging!  We had a huge event last night for our Jr. High Ministry. Every other year we do this event called Oscar Riot Nite.  The Jr. Highers make some movies developed around a theme with their small group, they get edited and then we debut them at "The Oscars!" Everyone come dressed up, the paparazzi are there, crazy screaming fans welcome our Jr. Highers as they walk down the red carpet!  It's a very fun night, but a very time consuming night, hence why we only do it once every other year! So I should be back to blogging on a regular basis again!  I'll be posting some of our Oscar Award Winning movies CPC style! Pictured is our Oscar winners and then our some of our Jr. High Staff.

My Favorite Posts of 2008

Usually around Christmas time I click through all my blog posts for the year to see what has happened as well as choose 11 of my favorite posts!  Here they are:

11. A Little Christmas Gift for Our Staff

10. Winter Camp Memories

9. Psalms From The Wildside 1 and 2

8. The Meaning of Life

7. Dirty Viruses

6. Alright Cara, I Give

5. Quote Of The Week

4. I Was Humbled

3. Finishing

2. After 43 Years

1. Operation Christmas Child Part Duex