Junior Retreat

Retreat has gone well. We've had 17 campers. We were expecting 21 but 4 didn't show up. One is sick. We're not sure what happened to the other 4. Supper yesterday evening was the usual hamburger. John grilled them outside. Breakfast this morning was pancakes, grapes & cereal. John & I fixed breakfast. Of course every table had syrup on them. And I did remember to put the peanut butter on the counter beside the pancakes. I don't know though if anyone took any this retreat. We had some peach preserves down at our house so I quickly went down & brought them up. John thinned them down to make a peach syrup to put on the pancakes. The staff really enjoyed those. This morning the pancakes were just plain pancakes. During the summer John experimented different weeks by adding either blueberries or chocolate chips to a little of the batter. One boy came through the line this morning wondering what kind of pancakes. John told him plain & he said "Good. This summer you had some chocolate chip ones & I requested some of the plain ones." I smiled at the little boy & said, "We made the plain ones just for you." He said, "Really!" I think that made his day.

After breakfast was cleaned up I went down to the morning chapel service. I still am old school for children's chapel services. I'm not into the power point presentations. I believe if you're not going to just talk then you need to either use flannelgraph or the visual stories. The chapel speaker's curriculum has a lot of powerpoint & sound clips. Fortunately this morning, there were no sound clips. This summer I had difficulty in chapel...because the sound clips drove me crazy. He used them quite often. The children seem to enjoy the services so I guess that is good.

For lunch we had spaghetti, garlic bread, green beans & a salad. For dessert there was either bread pudding or brownies which had a white frosting on them. I opted for neither. The plain pancakes little boy has a sister who is also here. I was talking to her for a few minutes at lunch. This family travels to the college games every week. Their family is there today. I asked the sister if she were glad she had come. She answered affirmatively. Then I said is this more fun than going to the ball games. Her eyes lit up and she said definitely yes. I was concerned that maybe they might be a little "homesick" for the normal weekend activity. Of course these two when they found out that their family summer vacation fell the week their cousins were going to be here at camp, told their parents that they could go on to the beach without them. They'd just stay home & go to camp on Monday. So the family changed plans for a little bit. The children came to overnight camp & the parents went out of town for a few days. Of course the children have aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles & grandparents here in this area so they were never without someone stopping in to see them.

Right now the children are down at the store/canteen. After they finish they may have a few minutes to play and then closing chapel will be at 3. I don't think I will go to that. Campers will go home when that is finished. My prayer is that they go home with a new awareness of God's love. I also pray that if they have any homework to be done that they will not be too tired to get it done tonight.

We'll go to John's parents after camp. The family dog has cancer in its paw. We're going over every few days to check on her. Hopefully she'll survive until Oma & Opa (John's parents - German for grandma & grandpa) get back home. They've been in Germany. I know they have enjoyed their time. They have purchased lots of marzipan & other German chocolate. I look forward to getting some of that chocolate, hearing how the family is doing & seeing pictures of everyone. You did note the chocolate was listed first as the things to which I was looking forward!

Tomorrow is Friend Day at church. I have not invited anyone to be my friend. I'm not sure how many students I'll have. I know 2 of them will be out of town. One will be in "Deeana" as he calls it. His uncle's wedding is today in Indiana. Another girl's family is going away for the weekend. Depending on how long the ballgame goes today & how many of the rest of them attend it will probably determine how many of the others are there. The 2 kindergarten classes may combine again. We did last week.