Overwhelming, overflowing Thankfulness

Even though it’s not yet time for Thanksgiving, today I am overwhelmed by thankfulness.  I try to be thankful a lot, and not just in the month of November, but today, it’s not trouble at all!!As I sit here eating my slightly stale bowl of honey nut toasty O’s, I’m just full and running over!   I love, love, love how God gives us what we need!!

Tonight was our first night of AWANA. I love AWANA, I’ve been an AWANA leader for YEARS. I’m not officially in charge of AWANA at our church, everybody just assumes I am. I guess that means I really am, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t!  I have been teaching the Bible lesson for our TNT clubbers and doing Game Time for Sparks and for TNT. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. All summer, I’ve been praying for a Game Director. I even found someone who I thought would be perfect. So I started praying specifically that God would make him want to be my Game Guy! I did give him fair warning, that I was praying that.

We also have been wanting a man for our TNT boys.  I really feel like it’s so important for little boys to have a good male role model at church for them to look up to. We had a guy, but his job has made it really difficult for him to be there. So I’ve been praying for a man. 

Tonight, God answered my prayers and gave us just what we needed.  I’m so, so thankful for our two new Jasons!! We have a Jason for our boys and a Jason for Game Time!! Isn’t that awesome??

I’m also constantly amazed and thankful for the other leaders we have. We have two secretaries who check our kids in every week, greet them and keep up with records for us. They do an amazing job!! Our little kids LOVE them and know exactly who to go see and what to do. They’ve trained our kids to check in. I decided (since I’m sort of in charge) we should have a snack tonight.I sent a few text messages and ended up with enough brownies for all our clubbers to have two and some of us got extras to bring home! Not only that, one more email got me tubs of Kool-Aid mix, our ladies mixed it up, poured, and served. All I did was drop off a pan of brownies and pick up a clean pan afterwards!! Well, after I ate a few!!

I really do love AWANA, but some days, I feel tired and grouchy and would rather stay home.  I don’t – I always go and I’m always glad I do.  Our kids always make me feel better and the people who come and work with those kids week after week constantly amazed.  I am truly grateful and my church is blessed and lucky to have such wonderful leaders in it!!!

Bad luck with pointy fingers

Okay, I have this neat classroom tool I call my “pointy finger.”  It’s a finger pointer that I use with my document camera. I have big hands and sometimes when  I want to point something  out  to my students, my fingers and hands just get in the way.  So, several years ago I found a finger pointer.  The day we passed our media certification tests, my friend Robyn and I stopped at our local teacher store and I saw this tub of finger pointers. I like them, so she bought me a red one.  I used it  a LOT until one day, two years ago, an evil child in my class stole it!! He actually was playing with it in another teacher’s class and he made the student throw it away. The boy even tried to get it out of the trash and the teacher made him throw it away a second time. If he’d read  his email, he would have realized I was already looking for it and suspected THAT student had taken it. When the student was confronted, he said “it’s just a pointer.” That wasn’t the point.  That first one was red.

So, I was so bummed about my lost pointy finger that my sister brought me one that she had She didn’t use it much and I was being such a whiny baby, she brought me hers. I think she got it at the book fair.  This one was blue.  I can’t find it.  I have a vague recollection of putting it somewhere “safe” while I was out for a week last year for my gall bladder surgery, but I can’t find that safe place.

On Saturday, my other sister and I had lunch right down the road from the teacher store and my sister needed  a tree for her Sunday School bulletin board.  I got a new pointy finger. This time I got a green one.  So we get to her church and she’s working on her bulletin board. I pulled out the “read” poster and the pointy finger that my sister bought for me and put the trash in the bag from the teacher store and threw it away. 

I post something about my pointy finger and my friend Debbie asks what it is. I start looking for my pointer to take a picture of and show her. I can’t find it.  I’m looking all in my giant school bag (where I put the poster)  under the couch, inside the folders inside my giant school bag and I can’t find it anywhere. I’m beside myself at this point. I’m downstairs telling Robyn and Josh the sad tale of woe regarding the universe’s plot against me having a pointy finger and I remember bringing in my bag of library books from Robyn’s car.  I tear up the stairs and there it is, my lost and now found pointy finger. I don’t know why I have such a hard time keeping up with them. They only come in four colors and now I’ve had every color except yellow.  Really, it’s not that hard, is it??