Bible Club Week 3

Upon arriving at Girls Inc., the girls have a chance to play. On pretty days most of them go outside & play. But there are some that stay in the gym. This year I have noticed they have a coach. When the girls come into Bible club, they are talking about him & the activity he has led.

We meet in the teen room. Last year during the play time, the teenagers would be lounging around in the teen room. Some of them would be watching the TV or a video or DVD. We'd have to "run them off". This year they have lost their privileges to the teen room so there is no one in there when we arrive. It makes it much easier to get the room set up. Between 4-4:15, the activities coordinator calls over the loud speaker, "Girls it's time to clean up the gym & line up on your line." That is our signal that the girls will be in the room soon. The teen room is located beside the gym so we can hear all the activity. After the announcement is made, there is quite a bit of confusion as the girls clean up & get situated on their lines. Then there is complete silence. One of the leaders comes in & makes announcements. Sometimes there is a sleepover. Sometimes they are announcing a new activity or an upcoming field trip. Since today was the first day of October, they were giving out the Character Counts rewards for September. The girls all sat quietly until their name was called. Then they went to the office to choose their reward. The reward was based upon the number of points they had. The girl who has earned the most Character Counts points at the end of the year is awarded with a gift certificate or cash at the annual board meeting in December.

Since most of them receive some sort of Character Counts reward, it was a little later before they arrived in the room. The two sisters/cousins (I'm not sure which they are) who had come for the first time last week were here again this week & sitting on the front row. In the back was little J who I discovered was E's little sister. How much like E she is! E was very talkative & couldn't sit still at that age. E has matured & was quite embarrassed by her little sister's behavior. Today after asking the girls their name I asked if they had a pet, what kind of pet & what was it's name. I told them if they didn't have a pet they could tell me what they would like for a pet & what they would name it. But they all had a pet. Foreseeing that some of them could have several pets, I told them to tell me just one & it's name. They liked that. And they all had at least one pet.

Chapter 3 of Sunday School Charlie was next. The pastor spoke on missions. Charlie is wondering what makes missions so important all of a sudden. They had talked about missionaries last Sunday in Sunday School, then on Wednesday during church they had met a missionary & seen his slides. This Sunday they were hearing about missions & next week would be a missions conference. After church was over, Charlie rode over to Slocum Alley where Red lives. He stopped in front of Red's house. When Red realized he was there, Red came outside & told Charlie he would not pay for Charlie's dad's fishing rod (which had been broken). Then Red asked if he could ride Charlie's bike. Charlie really didn't want him to but told Red he could if he would come to Sunday School with him next week. Red says he is no sissy and does NOT want Charlie's bike let alone ride it if that will happen. Red runs inside his house & Charlie rides home realizing how hard it is to be a missionary. The girls were disappointed that the story was over for this week & when they realized they would have to wait 2 weeks, you could just see the disappointment in their eyes. When I see the disappointment I know I have done a good job with the story.

John came up and led them in Father Abraham and 1-2-3 Jesus loves me, 1-2 Jesus loves you. Then it was time for the game.

This game came from Ed Dunlop also. It was called Noah's Ark. We talked about how the Lord had brought all the animals to the ark. We also talked about how hard it would be for Noah if he had to go & get them. After answering a question correctly, they could come up & pull a circle from the calico gift bag. The circles had different animals on them with points. The girls got the number of points on the animal. They could choose up to 3 circles. If they chose a Stampede though they lost all the points they had pulled. If they stopped choosing circles before getting a Stampede they were able to pull a circle from the silver gift bag. If they chose a circle with an ark on it, they got to keep the points. If they pulled a circle with a rainbow on it, they got to keep their points and also got 500 bonus points. But if they pulled an escape they lost all their points. There were too many stampede circles for the amount of time we had so the next time I do this game for Girls Inc. I will take away some of the Stampede circles. They did enjoy the game. There was only one girl who did not pull a Stampede circle at some point in her choosing. So it didn't take John long to figure out the total. But while he was doing that, we sang "This Little Light of Mine" (just the first verse).

After we finished the game, it was 5:05 so we had the girls line up at the door. John gave out some more of the Tootsie Roll suckers. They were glad all the banana flavor was gone & they had a possibility of getting grape, raspberry, cherry, orange or chocolate. After today we don't have that many suckers left so I will have to get something else for next week.

We packed up and left. On our way home we stopped at Office Depot so I could get supplies for the office. Then stopped at Lowe's to get a key made. Now we are home and I plan on relaxing for the evening. I will review the Dave Ramsey reading material for tomorrow & check if I need to print out something from his website - I believe I do.