Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Middle School Retreat

Ben and I have been helping with our church's jr. high department this year. Ben leads an 8th grade boys group and I have the 8th grade girls. We really love it! This weekend was the retreat, and we had a blast (pretty sure the kids had fun too)!

There are a lot of funny memories that I took away. I won't be able to take the time to write all of them down here, so I will just share one snippet from my experiences. 

We all met in the church parking lot Friday evening. We were not taking buses, but 8 borrowed vehicles, each driven by one of the leaders. There were 53 people going and we had exactly 53 seats available! After about 15 minutes of people arriving, the announcement was made for the students to start claiming a seat. Well, you can probably imagine the chaos that this set into motion. Every student had already calculated the "perfect" group that they wanted to ride with, but not everyone had the same vision. Then when a group was solidified, they wouldn't fit in a particular car, so the herd would run to the next car hoping for better luck... this carried on for about thirty minutes.

Anyways, I guess I had my own expectations for the ride - I would have been way pleased if my girls rode with me, and if that didn't work out, then just girls in general would have been great, but it wasn't to be.

The very first group to get settled was five 7th grade boys... and you guessed it, they randomly claimed MY car!  Before we had left the parking lot, one boy had completely painted is face with camo paint. Then they disassembled the pvc pipe marshmallow gun one of them had brought and used the pieces to beat each other the entire way there.  Boys are so weird. 

I thought I might escape that group on the ride home, but on Sunday morning one of them came up to me and said, "Hey Susan! (Great, so glad I made an impression on them.) Can we ride in your car again???"  And because I was beginning to sorta find there wild ways wildly entertaining, I acquiesced to his request. 

Again it was a great trip, and I did get plenty of girl time too!

4 comments:

Robert and Heidi Stevener said...

That sounds crazy and fun! I am so happy that you are guys are doing that and loving it!

Gardiner Family said...

Wow Susan, you are quite the trooper! You've definitely got a gift for working with those kiddos :-)

mark said...

There's nothing worng with being called "Susan". Some of my favorite people are called Susan. I once had a cabin of boys (not my favorite year) at youth camp call me "Nark" all week; ahh, happy memories. Bouts of brain-deadness not withstanding, junior highers are a lot of fun and I'm delighted that you and Ben "get it".

Anonymous said...

So fun!!