Swirling through Sunday

Today started with a devotional time with Andrew where we talked about where we're at and how we see our circumstances. Then we headed over to the New City Sunday morning service and had a great time singing with the same group who had performed last night. We also heard teaching by Tony, a pastor here, who did a great job with a challenging passage: Ephesians 5.
At that point we split into groups and went to eat with different families in the church. It sounds like pretty much  like all of the hosts were just neat and interesting people and we all had good food - yum! Then it was back to the church for a training session for the upcoming week and some last minute prep before we headed to the neighborhood where we're doing Kids Club for the week. For the last five years or so we've been coming to the same area and have formed some relationships with the landlord/apartment owner, as well as some of the kids and their parents. So it was sure neat to roll back in again tonight and reconnect a bit. Things were better organized than they've been in the past, so we're learning and getting better at this! Normally we don't take pictures on the first day (mostly so we don't scare anybody off!), but today Mike asked me to take a few of the swing set that we previously built there. He wanted to have a good idea of the structure to send to Matt D back in Appleton so they could figure out further work they'll be doing on it this week. So it gave me a chance to catch a quick snapshot of the folks grouped around for kids club - a pretty neat deal.

Jeremiah & Christy, as we try to talk them into staying for the rest of the week (no luck, unfortunately. Newlyweds!)

Meeting the folks from the other two groups Sat night 

beautiful people

Every day in St Louis should end with a Quik Trip slushy stop - and today was no exception!

Mike doing an ad lib song on "Enlarge My Heart" - our theme for the week

skit about Paul's time in Lystra

prepping for slushies that we'll give to the kids at Kids Club

pizza for supper!!!!

After we wrapped up we headed back to debrief and close out the day. All of us our pretty tired and probably smell a bit, but it's sure neat to be here and we're excited for what the week has in store.