day 045. [SD: day 001]

Some of you might be wondering what "SD" stands for. Unfortunately, it doesn't stand for San Diego. What it does stand for is ... SUMMER DEPLOYMENT. I only did Summer Deployment last year, but it was honestly one of the best weeks last summer. That's obviously not counting High School Summer Camp, which I'm crossing my fingers hoping I can go :)

Now that you know what "SD" stands for, I bet you're probably wondering what it is. Well, I grew up, and I'm sure some of you grew up, with it known as something else ... Vocational Bible School aka VBS. I definitely had my fun doing VBS, but I'm having so much more fun being on the other side of it. That is, seeing the kids have fun.

Some of the things we did today was we played games, well the kids that is. They had a potato sack race and an egg/spoon race. Before I get any further I should mention that I work with the 4th/5th Graders along with another leader, Ms. Tasha :)

After games our group went over to the memory verse station. The theme for this year's summer deployment is water, which explains why most of the verses are coming from books in the bible that deal with water. Today's memory verse was:

He said, in my distress I called to the LORD and he answered me! - Jonah 2:2a

As always, with our memory verses we always come up with hand gestures to remember them. When memory verses got over we moved over to the craft station where everyone made little tote bags. When I say little, I mean little. If I were to wear one of them I wouldn't be able to get it past my elbow because they were so small. Some of the kids made some pretty awesome bags and it made me jealous because the leaders weren't allowed to make one :(

I love what our last rotation was ... SNACKS!! They made smores today using chocolate and vanilla icing. It was so good, ha.

Now that I think about it, I forgot to mention that before the different groups go off to their different stations we always start out with worship and a little skit. Worship crew was tough this year for some reason, ha. Too much dancing; it definitely gave me a work out. As for the skit that we had, Ms. Janelle and Ms. Tasha pretended to be these lost nerds who were saved by Lifesaver Red (Ms. Kristen). What Ms. Kristen gave them was a piece of paper that said "Jonah" on it. That's how we sprung into the idea of Jonah today.

Alright, now that that is out of the way, once everyone finished up their last stations all the three groups were brought back where they helped cheer on their leaders in the leader challenge. I'm quite proud of myself because the challenge was one of the kids in our groups would hold some large slices of watermelons while the leaders (Ms. Olivia, Mr. Sean, and myself) had their hands behind their backs trying to get to the rhine. Sean won, I came in 2nd, and Olivia came in third. Good job to Yellow Team! haha. Red Team will definitely be making a comeback tomorrow though!! As for the Green Team, they'll come out of nowhere and get a win in the leaders challenge!

Day 001 was way too exciting. I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this week :)