Big Vincent/church day

This morning a church event I'd helped work on for months, an Earth Day Celebration and Mission Partnership Conversation, a follow-up to an early January Epiphany party and mission partnership conversation, took place. After helping a little with a Habitat for Humanity house early Saturday, I got to church, late, Saturday at lunchtime and helped set up tables, chairs, plates, and serving bowls hardly at all. Last night Stephanie reminded me that the butterfly cookies for this morning and the cupcakes (yow - bad for Weight Watchers) I was supposed to get at our favorite Heitzman's bakery were still sitting there, because I had forgotten to get them. So, this morning, I got up at the usual weekday morning 5:20 a.m., walked the dog, blogged a little, stopped at Heitzman's, and got to church, 5 minutes late, but still the first one there. I had rooms for discussions to help set up, butterfly cookies to help set out, and then elaborate instructions from Andrea to start in motion. After a while a swirl of helpers -- Soni, Izzy, Lowell, Elaine, Gayle, Andrea and her daughters and husband, and then Kate and Ian and eventually Stephanie and Vincent - arrived--not before calling home multiple times for Stephanie to retrieve forgotten items. We put out fruit, cereal, milk, and orange juice, and warmed sticky rolls in the oven and then served them.

The last of our speakers arrived just in time, and then Rebecca helped us get started with a great warm-up/opening Earth Day prayer. After eating, a series of speakers - Elaine, Andrea, Marian, Barbara - reviewed what we had talked about in January - when a big part of the discussion how we could apply partnership principles not only in church mission activity but also at home, in personal relationships, and within our congregatoin - and updated on ways to think about how to connect all of that. Finally, we (after Jane - pictured above top - and I - gave instruction and perspective) broke into groups to discuss how we could imagine building and deepening mission relationships with: (1) Presbyterian mission workers; (2) farmers, farm workers, and food consumers; (3) people in Guatemala; (4) people in Appalachia/on environmental justice issues; and (5) people in Louisville/Kentuckiana. A church member had donated little flags to help direct people (U.N.; Florida; Guatemala; Kentucky and West Virginia; and metro Louisville and Indiana), and I helped facilitate the Guatemala discussion. Our group had a modest turnout - only three of the 19 people who went to Guatemala with us a year ago - but heard thoughtful comments from Marian, Carlos, Eugene, a visitor named John, and Soni, who helped take notes, along with additional comments from Luke, Ariana, and Elizabeth. We mulled over some ideas, including always hemming between projects versus relationships, discussed the real communications challenges but more we could do, and wondered about going to Tennessee for a discussion with others working with K'ekchi Guatemalans and to a mission network meeting in November and perhaps on to El Estor in November. I remain unsure if we've got the level of interest and commitment - what with the ten of us there, few others in our Spanish-language Bible class, and weak sales of our fund-raising cards. We've got a valuable resource with Pastor Carlos and his family, interest on the part of our pastor, and some excellent Spanish speakers who were on the trip but were not part of our discussion today - to go further with this. We will be praying about it. The largest group (and we did say that people would be somewhat voting with their feet), from what I can tell, was the imagine deepening relationships group with people in Louisville and Kentuckiana group, which ended up meeting outside. They apparently had 20 people or so and they thought big (or less focused), in that they lauded existing local mission projects, but thought instead about trying to partner with another congregation in a different part of town - maybe Prebyterian, maybe not. I heard mixed reports about other groups. There were official recorders in each group, and we'll be hearing from them to post reports on a Crescent Hill mission focus blog I helped construct. It may have turned out to be an error that we asked some of the people with the most expert knowledge about mission in this area to facilitate these discussions, but we'll see.

(After breakfast, Martha, Kate, and Stephanie took the elementary-school-aged children - the ones we usually have for Children's Fellowship, who I helped take off for the Epiphany Party - to the church main building. Stephanie said Martha had the kids carry jugs of water, because that's how much water people need each day. We talked about water in Guatemala, and the kids wanted to carry the jugs on their heads. She had brought a guitar, and had Stephanie and Kate and the kids sing a song about creation. Then she told a story about creation from a book with beautiful paintings. Two at a time, the kids (two pictured above) went out to paint terra cotta vases that we're going to sell at the youth mission art sale/plant sale fund-raiser. Stephanie and Kate helped supervise and painted.)

(Throughout the Earth Day activities, mission discussions, and worship that followed, Vincent and his youth group mates took pictures and videos of us, as part of footage that youth group mates will edit down for a video for a nationwide Presbyterian church video competition. Vincent mainly used a new digital video camrera, which he seemed to enjoy using. "I want one," he said.)

Birthday boy Vincent went on to try - only with limited success - to interview World War II veteran Bob Abrams, from our church, for a World War II oral history project for his World Civilization class. We went on to Panera with the Crescent Hill lunch bunch and talked with Phil, recovering from a stroke. After a quick visit home to walk the dog, I was back at church helping plan a youth mission fund-raiser/Up-scale Plant Sale, Tea, and Art Sale while Stephanie shopped for taco salad for supper for youth group/another Vincent birthday celebration.

I went home to get Vincent for a youth group effort to finish shooting video footage for a national church video competition. We prepared taco salad and related food items and the cupcakes for supper, with Claudia, Phil's wife and Natalie's mother. We joined the about ten kids (most of them Vincent's age), Claudia, Ian, and Kate for taco salad supper. Then, we rolled out the cupcakes (red velvet and Italian cream - yum - both with cream cheese icing) - shaped like a "17" - and Vincent (pictured above) blew out a single candle. Then, we watched/participated in a "highlights"/"lowlights" round robin, with the birthday boy starting. This is a youth group tradition, which essentially points out areas of thanksgiving and prayer concern. In weeks/years past, I've seen Vincent say simply "pass" (never seen anyone else do this). But, Vincent, having been in Murray and Ohio the previous two Sundays, and starting first and with some extra birthday attention, ended up trotting four or five or six highlights or lowlights each, starting out a 25-minute highlights/lowlights discussion, highlighted somewhat hilariously or indulgently by Rachel ribbing Gabe for about to be being driven by another youth group person (not there) to their prom, Gabe (whom Vincent and I ran into at a restaurant, with his mother, Friday night) breaking into an improvised rap, and - many, many minutes later - Elizabeth accusing Luis of calling her boy and chasing him across the parking lot, with his brother trailing behind for protection. What a chaotic but comfortable group! In the midst of this, Stephanie and I got to add our own highlights and lowlights. Some of it extended from church. I had missed some of the service, as I had cleaned the Fellowship hall where much of our Earth Day event was. But I got back to church in time for the rarely short explicit sharing of Thanksgivings and prayer concerns. Unusually, two of our church members talked about having just lost their jobs, and Ian talked about another church member who had cancer surgery this past Friday. I had written in a request for prayer for health and healing for Stephanie's mother, Nancy, two weeks ago, when our pastor wasn't there. Stephanie tried to speak about her mother, but started crying and couldn't say anything. She mouthed "my mom" to Pastor Jane, and Jane asked for prayers for Stephanie's mother. A few people had noticed my prayer request form request for prayer two weeks ago, and we'd told a few people about this (and it apparently got into a church e-mail of prayer requests). But, generally people had paid more attention last week at Washington Avenue United Methodist in Columbus South End, maybe because some of them have known Stephanie for longer and others remember Nancy (from when she worshiped there occasionally for several years around the time Stephanie was born). But Stephanie tearing up definitely caught more people's attention, as Mary came over to comfort Stephanie, our pastor called tonight, and a number of people asked about this. Hopefully their prayers will help.

After all of this, we hung around to clean up and then came home, where Vincent opened cards from us and Meemaw Nancy (he'd already gotten to one from Grandma Martha), and then modest presents from us - two Threadless T-shirts (including a brown "Miss Scarlet in the hall with the revolver" T-shirt - modeled after our favorite board game "Clue") and two AC/DC CDs (Vincent pictured above bottom opening the CDs), then we had Healthy Choice ice cream sandwiches (a tough Weight Watchers day today). Vincent then went back to writing a short story to the tunes of "Back in Black" and "Hells Beels," the songs of our youth (Vincent actually tried to buy one of these before, but we thought we had it - Vincent wears a black T-shirt, and I swear Luke from youth group wears his black AC/DC T-shirt every other Sunday morning and to Guatemala. Hopefully, Vincent wont' get the lyrics to some of these songs.)