Teaching for the First Time- Teens and Leather Craft

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This week during VBS I am teaching kids for the first time.  I have the ‘teen’ class for crafts.  We are doing a leather craft class, which was proceeded Saturday by a demonstration to draw some interest and give them an idea of what we’ll be doing.  By the weeks end they should have one, maybe two, completed projects to take home with them. I had 14 students last night and expect that I’ll have 12-16 each night this week.

For the first night I started with some small pieces of leather that I let them case, the process of wetting to the right moisture content for tooling, and then bang away at it with different tools to get a feel for how the tools work.  It was a fairly chaotic night if I were to be completely honest.  But not an unproductive one.  Tonight we will begin the first real project: leather bracelets.

They are a rambuncious lot I must say.  But they were fun to begin to get to know.  It wasn’t all that long ago I would not have been able to do this project.  I just did not have the patience to ‘fool with’ a bunch of teenagers.  My, my, how God can change a person’s entire being if that person will let Him.

This morning I am getting ready to tape and case the bracelets for the kids.  I figure it’ll save me some valuable instruction time as well as make certain it is done right so they will get the best results.  I am anxious to see how they act tonight, after getting a bit of a feel for the tools and me, for that matter; I don’t really know any of them.  I look forward to getting to know them this week.  Yeah, that is another thing a few years ago you would n ot have heard me say. LOL  And I am eager to see what they each decide to do with their projects, how they’ll decorate them and how much effort they put into thinking through the design, coloring, etc.

Family Fun Day

Yesterday we held our 2nd annual Family Fun Day at church. It is the kick-off to VBS week on which we play lots of games, have food and refreshments and live entertainment among other things. It was a glorious day spent fellowshiping with Brothers and Sisters and folks from the community.

My wife and I were sort of ‘in charge’ of organizing it all. It would be a lie if I said it was less than stressful and at times a lot of work, not that I’m complaining. About 10 days ago I finally did what I should have done to start with: I turned it over to God. My, what a difference it made doing that! Stress melted away and everything just went into place. That is until about 30 minutes into the event when I started to allow doubt to creep into my mind.

The crowd was smaller than last year, it was terribly hot and humid, our 20-foot inflatable kept blowing circuits and deflating on the kids, it seemed like we were heading for a dismal event in my mind. Then two of my dear friends, a Brother and a Sister, said just a few encouraging words to me a mere few minutes apart, one thing being ‘when God has His finger in it everything works out.’ Those two dear folks words brought to mind the Scripture ‘my grace is sufficient’ and I realized that the devil was about to get into my head and weaken my faith in my Lord. You see, if I doubted I was doubting Him since I’d already turned it all over to Him.

It wasn’t 15 minutes after that and the folks began rolling in, kids were everywhere having all kinds of good, clean fun and everyone was enjoying themselves. And my lack of faith nearly jeopardized it all; I honestly believe that.

The whole event wasn’t perfect and some items we’d planned didn’t go the way we thought or even happen at all. But God saw to it that things went well. We opened the event with a prayer, reminding ourselves that the reason we were there ultimately was to praise Him and lift up His name. I believe He knew that and blessed because of it, after I had to be reminded that my faith shouldn’t be swayed any because of His timing not matching mine. That is a lesson I have had trouble with all my life but He’s teaching me to understand it better and better.

In the end I stand by what I said at the outset of taking on this responsibility: If any thing good comes of it, it is from God; anything that that was a flop I take full responsibility for.