the shepherds have it

well just finished up the second vbs of the summer...pretty soon i think we'll be considered experts on the material and the songs! boy, do those songs get stuck in your head or what?! so let me explain the title, tonight after we finished cleaning up the church the 4 of us went ahead and got in the van using mrs. karens keys. so about 5 minutes later someone asks us if we have seen her keys and we tell them yes, that we have them in the van with us. well evidently the message didn't get to her because about 5 minutes later, she came out of the church and asked the group of people if they had seen her keys...little quinne who is 3 calmly replies, "yes, the shepherds have it," as she pointed to the van. so as of now we are no longer referred to as summer missionaries, but as shepherds. haha i thought it was pretty cute

Summer Shepherds: "Herding Kids as They Learn God's Truth"

i think it has a better ring to it than just "summer missionary girls," dont you??? well lets see, vbs went great, the week started out with around 25 kids and i think climaxed with around 37, tonight there weren't many kids at all but here in montana when the weekends roll around its hard to find people at home because most people go camping or something so fridays are always a hard day to get kids to come. tonight instead of having a big program, the kids brought their parents with them and the parents went through a typical vbs night with them. it was a really cool idea, and honestly i was so surprised to see the number of unchurched or at least parents who were members of other churches there. There is one family in particular that just really surprised me. earlier in the week the pastor had notified us that there were four kids who were brothers and sisters and that for the longest time the four kids have been coming to sunday school and church. one teacher said a lot of times they are the first ones to the church, but the thing is...they are the only ones who come. their parents don't come so the kids make the effort to get themselves to church each week. we were also told that their family situation is a bit rough, so i honestly did not expect to see anyone with them tonight. but as they slowly came in i realized that each of the four kids had an adult with them. their parents and grandparents were all there and were able to go through the entire night with them. its just so neat to see the little ones bring their parents to church and that is what this family of little ones did. the kids themselves are awesome, anthony is in 5th grade, ethan is in 4th, dakota is in 2nd and kennedy is in 1st. one amazing thing is that as we were walking back from the community ball park tuesday afternoon one of the kids in anthony's class told me that later monday night in the music class anthony repeated the story i had told about moses and the burning bush and crossing the red sea. she told me it was so weird because "he said like every word you said, he told the entire story and explained everything just like you did." the funny thing is, i had thought anthony didn't pay attention at all to my story, i guess thats just the way the word of the Lord works...it doesn't matter how many games we play or how good of a stroyteller we are, God has a specific word for everyone of us to hear and anthony heard exactly what he needed that night, whether he was into the games and story or not.

so today we did a little sight seeing. we rode up to the once booming mining town of Elkhorn. I say once, because its a ghost town now. it was quite interesting!! there are two historic buildings that are still standing from the late 1800's/early 1900's so we were able to go in them and look around. in the late 1800's there was a brain fever epidemic that swept through the town and killed lots of the people, mainly children. there is a cemetery above the town so we went up there and looked at all that. its a cemetery that they just happened to put on government land. the government wanted to exhume all the bodies and relocate the cemetery but just recently passed a law that will allow the cemetery to stay there since its been there for so long. it was pretty neat. we also learned though that its not completely a ghost town, there are several people that still live in it - you know the kind that are really weird and want to stay as far away from society as possible? yeah, those people are there. there is one house that is home to a hippie from california that grows pot - at least thats what pastor dan told us and i believe it from the way his house looked!! on the way up there we got caught in the middle of a herd of cattle as some cowgirls were trying to move them down the road to another field. kinda made me feel right at home!! they completely surrounded our church van as they just meandered on down the road haha i'm telling you, i dont see why people think mississippians are rednecks after some of the stuff i've seen up here!! on our way down the mountain we put the van in neutral and made it nearly all the way to the bottom without using the accelerator...it was pretty fun!

well i think that is all of my adventures for the day...got a couple more pictures to share!

heres for you, daddy...some nice angus cows that were being moved down the road near elkhorn (the ghost town) they were right in our way!!

up close - so you could see some true montanan cows, daddy...everyday there are probably close to 100 cattle trucks that go through downtown boulder on their route from alberta to denver

cuttin a rug at the dance hall and saloon in the ghost town of Elkhorn - me casey and elizabeth


front of the dance hall and saloon

walking across the coldest creek in the world...ok maybe its not really "the coldest creek in the world" but IT SURE FELT LIKE IT!!!!!!!!! oh yeah and its not a creek up here...its a "CRICK" got to learn to speak the language a little better, and also just for your FYI, trees dont have roots, they have RUTS (sounds like you are saying a sophisticated form of rut)

first baptist boulder

friday night at vbs