Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set the example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. I Timothy 4:12
Gotta keep that in mind when I’m going through all this AIM craziness as I have been the past couple of weeks. I love AIM so much, but sometimes it’s just exhausting, and these two weeks are a case in point.
It all started… well, it all started with Family Camp, but we’re going to fast-forward to September 8th, our beginning-of-session SALTeam meeting. We held it at the Gaar Ranch, in Ms. Lois’ old house. When Jo and I got there a little before six they were just sitting down to eat so I had an idea it could be a long night.
The participants of said meeting were Jory (who led most of it), Tess (who led the rest of it), Mr. Dave and Ms. Sue, Jorge, Madison, Courtney, Amber, me, Jarek, and Josiah. Those last six are the SALT for this session. Be it duly noted that four of them – the four that aren’t related to me – are leaving tomorrow for the ECMT09. The onlookers to said meeting were Banner, Nation and Anthem.
For the first hour or so, we talked about what we’d learned from AIM, what we needed to fix from Family Camp, and the like. After that we went over what we’d be doing for Bible study and surprisingly enough, we’ve already started on the theme for next year, which is Back to Basics. We’re going back to AIM’s core verse (I Timothy 4:12) and studying it in-depth, plus studying I Chronicles 7:14 and how it applies to us. This week is “humble yourselves,” and I’m leading the study. I’m super excited.
We talked about the session schedule, response team presentations, structure of any meeting (you need a leader, an observer, a morale monitor, a catalyst… etc.), and many other things. Tess also rapidly handed out responsibilities and discipleship assignments, which were of course switched all around on Thursday.
Anyway, the meeting was supposed to be over at eight so most of us were pleasantly surprised when we wrapped up right before nine. We took Madison and Jarek home – trying to help Mrs. Lilly out – and then went home and crashed.
Fast forward to Thursday. We had decided, as a SALTeam, to meet thirty minutes early ‘cause we were supposed to get there at the same time as the team but we’d decided that was not only impractical, but it wasn’t smart, so we arrived at the church at 8:31 AM (Jarek would be quick to point out that we were one minute late, since they were early. =D). We met about various things, such as who would lead which song, how we would show the songs before we would present them, and we touched on Bible studies. That’s tip-of-the-iceberg touched.
The team began arriving before we were done – actually, the new team members, so we wrapped up in high-speed and welcomed them. There are four new girls and one new boy, all under thirteen. Impressive, huh? We started off with orientation: standards (Jo), expectations (Jarek), and Salvation Army rules (Jorge). Then we split to do Bible study/discipleship.
Courtney graciously introduced the Bible study while I frantically wrote down the order in which people would be doing the studies (and, of course, promptly lost it, leaving me wondering now what to do about it). After we handed out said assignments Courtney took all the girls to the back of the sanctuary to play a game while I asked Tess where the new girls would be placed in the discipleship. I have Maria, Sadie and Jessica (how coincidental).
Josiah and Jarek taught technique. I think it was a challenge for them – Jo, who taught technique alone in China to three different workshops and Jarek, who hasn’t taught much technique at all (not that he doesn’t know it – gotta be cautious ‘cause he tends to read this blog). It was a short but fairly effective technique session (hey, they only had thirty minutes to crash course the newcomers in technique). After all that intro stuff, we finally got into the “fun” *coughexhaustingcough* stuff: teaching the songs.
We showed every song we taught except the sign language ones, starting with Forgiven. Ha. Ha. Ha. Jarek and I were guards, in a pinch, and I kinda messed it up because I didn’t know how to lift Jo, who was playing Jesus. Well, I’m a girl! Sheesh. Anyway, aside from Jo breaking character in the middle of the lift because he was about to fall over, showing that one – on the spur of the moment with no practice… – went fine.
I'll be remembering / The dark night; the hard fight; the long climb up a hill knowing the cost / The brave death, the last breath, the silence whispering all hope is lost / The thunder, the wonder... the power that brings the dead back to life!
