If the past few weeks are any indication, we're in for quite the summer, in many different ways. We started VBS (or day camp) a few weeks ago with our 11 interns running it by themselves along with a few staff members. Our first day we had more than 50 kids show up and we were pumped.

Our second week we had a young man in from my hometown who essentially became an honorary intern for the week. He was great with the kids and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. The kids at day camp loved him and seemed to seek him out when we went to the projects for Challenge Circle in the evenings. Thanks Sam for all your hard work and for loving on our kids!

This week we have our first full team in from Wisconsin and I know our interns are relieved to have a great amount of help with day camp. We now have 105 officially registered and average 50-55 per day.

In addition to all hands on deck to help with day camp and other summer things, there was a huge storm a week ago and the tree outside the Yellow House was struck by lightning. Several of the interns saw it happen and I was around at least to hear it. I had literally just finished printing the materials Pastor John needed for National Conference and the lightning hit. I noticed that at the same time, my internet went out, but I figured it was just the router needing to be restarted.

As it turns out, the lightning fried our modem, router, my network card, the printer network card, etc. etc. etc. It took a few days to get internet back online and just when the printer got fixed, the internet went out again.

It's amazing how little I can actually accomplish without the internet. I guess we don't realize how much we depend on it until it's gone. We had a mailing that needed to get out and without internet or a printer, I ended up addressing some 300 envelopes by hand. I definitely felt muscles in my arm I didn't know I had! Everything seems to be in working order now and it is good to get back to "normal."

This weekend I will be heading to Challenge (the EFCA national youth conference) with several of our students and staff members. I am going to man our booth, but I am excited to see several former staff members, youth pastors I know and friends. It should be a great week. Please pray that our youth would grow and be challenged in their faith and that the leaders would find a time of refreshment as well.

As a financial update, I am getting closer to being back on track. Due to additional monthly partners, I am now supported at 54% monthly but need to continue to increase that percentage. My account is still negative, but I am slowly climbing out of the hole.