New beginnings

This is a very special day for me. Last Friday we celebrated the final day of Camp Grandma, the summer program I set up to keep Ian (9) and Katie Rose (6) busy and happy all day during school vacation time. We called it Camp Grandma, made decorated tee shirts, added 'badges' on the back as we completed cooking and gardening projects (our sunflowers are over 8' tall and smiling down on the driveway), and did our weekly themes; adventures with rocks (finding geodes in a nearby stream bed), exploring space (lots of Lego ship building), knights and castles (complete with a Castle Cake), the first annual Camp Grandma Olympics (held on the Principia college campus), Ocean Week (we got out our sea shell collections) and Pirates! (which included a cruise on a pirate ship on the Mississippi River). We finished up with Spy Week. All in all it was lots of fun and  the kids did some writing projects to family and friends and received post cards from all over the country. We started each day with the flag salute and a short chapel. There was a lunch break and then some afternoon activities usually 'dismissing' around 3:00. I wonder how much of it they will remember later but I certainly have wonderful memories of it.

Sunday we went to an ice cream social on the St. Louis campus where we had a chance to visit their classrooms and meet their teachers. I loved it as I can now picture where they will be and some of things they will be doing. I am especially interested in what they will be reading.

Today they grabbed their lunches (we practiced packing lunches all last week) and their back packs and headed off for the bus at 6:35. Mike and Kristen returned to get ready for work and left just before 8:00. And suddenly here I am is a quiet house with the freedom to plan my day with lots of uninterrupted prayer and study. I will head over to campus for the CSO service and testimony meeting at 11:40 where I hope to meet up with our Lauren. How I wish all of you could experience that, a chapel filled with hundreds of CS college kids singing with gusto. And those testimonies are remarkable! Many given in the accents of students from around the world.

Tomorrow I am back on campus from 9-11:30 serving in the practitioners office. Local Journal-listed practitioners take turns there and are available to students and faculty and to pray for the campus. It is a very special time and I look forward to being there without Ian and Katie Rose who find the two and half hours a bit long. (Last week they took off their shoes, hung them on their ears and stared to see who could go the longest without laughing)

So this is a week of new beginnings for all of us here in Elsah and I so appreciate this week's Bible Lesson on Christ Jesus, as he shows us the pathway for our spiritual journey and how to be Christ-like along the way. It says in the Bible that 'the Lord was with him' and it is great comfort to remind myself that the Lord is with me too! All day and every day.