We had a great Sabbath day today. It started out with church which is usually not anything great at all. However, it was a huge surprise to walk in this morning and find more than 30 people in the small meeting that the local church district sets up for the campers on camp. Kids had been inviting their friends, and they came! Woot! The talks were nothing stellar, but one of the speakers shared the story of Elijah and Elisha. It was good to be reminded of the beauty of that story. The musical number was so much better than anything I've ever heard by any other arrangement of youth (as it should be, seeing we are at Interlochen).
Afterwards, I took the kids down to the beach, and we held a Sunday School class. These kids are so desperate to discuss the things of the gospel, seeing as there are so few opportunities for them during the week. Last week, I pulled out a lesson that I had used previously in my class at home, but this week I felt like it wasn't the right thing to do. Instead, I borrowed an idea that I had learned from a previous Sunday School president of mine.
Every principle or idea in the gospel can be connected to another principle through the use of "bridges". I was learning this because at times, we may feel that a talk in church has nothing to do with our lives. However, if we look at the trials we may be experiencing at the moment, or think about the scriptures we have read in our personal study, we can connect the two ideas.
Each kid had two pieces of paper, and I asked them to write two random "things" of the gospel on them. It could be a gospel principle (faith, prayer), or a scripture, or a person in church history (Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ) or a commandment or ordinance (the Word of Wisdom, the sacrament). We then piled all those pieces of paper in a huge pile, and one of the kids picked two of them. It was then our job, through discussion and study of the scriptures to build a bridge between the two ideas. It was great fun, and a great discussion of the gospel from the beautiful and thoughtful minds of these kids. It reminded me of the class I have at home, and it made me miss them. Nobody really wanted to end the class, but it was time for them to go elsewhere, and we made plans for next week.
After lunch, Mark, Glo, Margaret and I headed to Crystal Lake. I had heard from several people that it's the nicest lake in the area, and they were right. It was a 45-minute drive to the lake, but worth it. At first, we got out and hiked 15 minutes on the wrong trail, but as I told the kids, the heat was just preparing us more for the coolness of the water.
Here are some photos:
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| Here's the "wrong' trail. |
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| We knew it was the wrong trail when we came to this point, and there was a 100-foot drop straight down to the water. |
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| Look at the crystal clear water! |
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| Oh yeah, baby. |
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| Margaret, Glo and Mark |
We headed home a couple hours later, cooled off and relaxed. Mark had to get ready for his WYSO concert tonight, and I drove out to the airport to pick up Johannah. Yay for Hannah coming back! I was so glad to hear about her adventures from the last week.
Finally, we rode our bikes down to the WYSO concert. I had ordered the tickets months ago, and as it turned out, I must have been one of the first because we were in the fourth row. Although we couldn't see Mark, we were up-close-and-personal with the guest artist of the evening, Nathan Gunn, a world-famous baritone and Jung-Ho Pak. WOW!What a perfect way to spend the Sabbath.
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