Sacramental Summer

Ask me what I did this summer and the most honest answer is lots of child care!
Silvia's young nieces Keara and Sierra were staying with her for the summer, and so were often at our house. Though this made life hectic, it was also brought us a lot of joy. As you can see by their pictures, the girls are as cute as anything, and they are full of personality (not to say attitude!) as well.



Keara is 7, really likes crafts, and is just learning to read. She's very much a people person, and alarmingly precocious when it comes to picking up on complex family dynamics. She's a self-proclaimed tomboy and likes playing with her boy cousins and doing outdoorsy things like biking.

Sierra is 3, likes to pet our rabbits, have tea parties and loves the colors pink and purple. While she doesn't know her colors yet (except for her two favorite), she does know the names of everyone in our family, which Keara hasn't quite mastered yet (those three grown up girls are so hard to keep straight!).

Keara got to go to Noah's Half-Day Camp, our church's VBS, along with a whole batch of Cody's friends and relations. Tito, Adelle and I taught second grade boys, aka 'The Monkeys'. What a week!

The whole Noah's Crew: Lianna, Izzy, Ariel, Cody, Tito, Keara, Danny and Kayla!

Adelle teaches the creation story using Playdoh and little plastic animals and plants--the boys got to help tell the story by putting on the relevant creatures. Naturally, they were totally enthralled. Not to brag or anything, but when it comes to teaching Bible stories, Adelle + Elissa = pure genius! How many people do you know who've taught the story of the bronze snake lifted up in the wilderness--complete with prop snake and cross? Or who brought a dead frog to talk about the resurrection (don't worry, it was all formaldehyded, left over from our homeschooling days). Adelle and I have really got to coauthor a SS curriculum one of these days!

It's all about choosing the sweet OT stories (and by sweet I mean bloody) which are so neglected these days, and putting them in a form which is memorable and appealing to little boys. I have had this backfire though--my retelling of Herod's gruesome fate (you know, his brain was eaten by worms) was a great hit with the boys in my Sunday School class, but the parents were less than thrilled. But hey, in my view it's better to risk grossing out the parents to than to let the kiddos think that the Bible is boring. Which is a real danger when modern Sunday School/VBS curriculum packages seem to have a problem grasping the concept of a Bible story. The Lord's Prayer is not a story, people! There is no narrative structure to the Sermon On the Mount--same goes for the Fruit of the Spirit! [Sadly, all real-life examples]. Jael and the tent peg? Or Ehud's swordplay? Now we're talking!


The wild monkeys! The VBS theme was space, and yes, Adelle and I were sucked into the VBS decorating wars! That's why if you look closely at this picture (click to expand) you'll see a rocketship on the moon, and little monkey astronauts, complete with 3-D plastic helmets floating about. There's nothing like those huge rolls of colored paper that you only see in the church craft closet to bring out your competitive side! Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed about it now, but I know if I was teaching VBS tomorrow, I would once again be sucked into the VBS Decorating Cartel. In my defense, at least the decor did serve a purpose--the space monkeys were the prizes for memorizing the Bible verses from the week (yet again thrilling the parents). Rather than memorize several disconnected verses, Adelle and I chose to go with Colossians 1:15-17, so the boys got to memorize these kicking verses:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Which actually brings me back to what I meant this post to be about, which is the some of the cool things that happened this summer.

The first is that Cody got baptized! Here he is afterward, walking out of the ocean toward his mom.
Cody's been following God since he was young, but at 9 years old, felt he was ready to publicly profess his faith. He'd recently watched I Am Legend and was moved by the main character's self sacrifice, which reminded him of Jesus. We are all so proud of him!



The second is that Jasmin and Juan got married! Jasmin is one of Cody's cousins, and one of the neighborhood kids I grew up with. She has two adorable little kids, Jojo and Jackie, and Juan and she have been together for quite a while. So it was great to see them making a commitment to each other, not something encouraged by their family or culture.

The third is that near the end of the summer Keara asked my mom "Jeanne, how much does it cost to be baptizmized?" When asked why she wanted to baptized, she gave answers which demonstrated a good understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, so, with her parents' permission, she was actually baptized before heading home. Here she is with the baptismal font.

All in all it was a most sacramental summer!