Thursday, September 24, 2009

2.5 hours of Controlled Chaos - Otherwise known as Awana! :)

Last night was my first official night as the Awana Sparks Secretary. The directors and leaders of our church have often described it as 2 hours of Controlled Chaos and now I understand what they mean. It was wonderful! There is such energy and such joy there it is hard to put it into words. It is an amazing feeling to be a part of a group of almost 200 who are being positive, encouraging and learning/teaching about Jesus. In a lot of ways it reminded me of when I worked at camp (Phantom Ranch) - just much more condensed. However, the feeling was the same.

Although I have known about Awana since I was a child I was never a part of it. One of the reasons we chose our church was because of the Awana program they offered. After all I heard about it I knew that was something I wanted for my children. Not only does my church provide Awana for our children but also for many, many children in the community. I would say about 80% of the children involved are not from our church. We have almost 150 children that come every Wednesday night. It is amazing and I can not wait for the girls to be a part of it.

For those that don't know what Awana is you can check it out here - Awana.  In a nutshell Awana stands for Approved workmen are not ashamed as taken from 2 Timothy 2:15 of the Bible. Joy will start next year as a 3 year old and will be involved until 6th grade as a participant. After that she can become a LIT which is a Leader In Training program that allows Jr. and Sr. high students to help out and learn to be leaders.

I must admit that I felt a little teary-eyed as I watched the Cubbies go by (the 3 and 4 year olds) and imagining Joy there next year. I am sure she will love it. Both girls will be there some nights in the nursery program now on the nights Les is working late.  

I am working with the Sparks which are students in grades K-2. I forgot what it is like working with kids that age. After years of teaching high school it's quite different! :) There was not much down time as I am still learning how to do everything and get myself organized. I figure by Thanksgiving I should be good to go!! (Christy, as a former Sparks Secretary I will take any suggestions!).


Well, I am off to PT. Still doing that for my knee surgery. Have a ways to go but hopefully will be as good as new in the next month or so!

2 comments:

Missie said...

I'm still in recovery since my knee surgery back in Feb. I had to have my ACL reconstructed. Tore it right off the bone. I was told the recovery took a year!

I wish you luck!

Christy said...

Janis I was only a secretary for a year, and of course if my secretary's out I fill in for her.

We have slips that are not actually from AWANA for my leaders to fill out, but they're condusive to the books, I can get one and scan it so you can see it, makes it sooo much easier for everyone!

Here the leaders only fill out the slip of what the kids (the verses) as well as an attendance sheet. The secretary keeps track of the pink attendance and progress sheets, which they're able to do when the leaders give her the slips she fills out her pink attendance/progress paperwork. We also have in our folder where the pink sheets are kept, everything's seperated by team and then alphabetized!

As the director I go around finding out what my leaders need, and make sure my secretary is taken care of too!

Here how we do things is We have about a 1 minute time where the Sparks and T&T are all together in the gym, we do a call of attention, they say the AWANA pledge, Pledge of Allegiance, and say a prayer, then the two groups are released. T&T then begins game time, while Sparks goes and has handbook time. Once handbook time is over, Sparks heads to Game time and that's when the Secretary gets to work! By the time game time is over, we have councel time and she's done with her work, and we have song time, a bible lesson, then we end with AWARDS. (We do not combine this time with T&T and Cubbies are off in another area because of space here, doing their own thing).