Summer Camps

This year we declared the summer of rest. No trips and not many scheduled events on the calendar. Just lawn chairs and coffee shops. Elise did mange to fit in a few fun camps though!

First up was a day of Glee Camp :)

 Then a week of morning VBS where Elise was an action leader for opening and closing worship...

 and played ukulele...

 and had a crew of 2nd graders to lead around for the morning. The theme was "Shipwrecked!"

In the afternoons of that same week, she participated with the high schoolers in Up In Out camp. It's a mission and service camp. They did yard work around the community... 

 including the Lutheran Center at UNL... 

 At Barnabas Community they spent an afternoon painting walls and sorting clothes, then helped prepare and serve the dinner meal, then helped lead worship. Leading worship came up organically when they discovered that the songs they were doing in the morning at VBS tied in with the theme at Barnabas that night, so this picture is the kids rehearsing before the guests arrived. Such an awesome group of servant hearted youth!

 Here they are with one of our church members where they did some yard work.

 Then a couple weeks later, Elise went on the ELCA Youth Gathering to Houston, Texas.

29 high school youth and 7 adults.

 On the way they stopped at NASA...

 and Galveston...

 and then they spent a few days with (literally) 30,000 lutheran youth from around the states listening to speakers, serving and worshiping together.

This was an unexpected trip for Elise as we had not planned on her going. But a spot opened up last minute and she decided she would like to go and was so glad she did. It was an awesome experience!

 Elise's final camp of the summer was also unexpected. Elise made it on the newspaper staff for school this year and there was a mandatory, 3-day, "boot-camp"! One of her assignments involved pictures, so Chubby and I were her subjects.

She is the only freshman on the paper, (no sophomores either) and is excited for this opportunity! And also, boot camp was ok- besides lots of information being thrown at her, meeting the upper classmen was the trickiest part!