Awana Swag

I have accumulated vast amounts of Awana pins and Awards. I am working a creating a web application so Awana nerds like me can display their Awana awards on their website. This is as far as I got today. This project is just in its beginning state. I'm looking for more pins to scan. If anyone wants to let me borrow yours, please let me know.

JD's Awana Awards

1st Place at Awana Quizzing

Our Awana Quizzing teams were able to capture 1st and 3rd place in T&T Book 2 today. There were 11 teams participating in book 2 and nearly 40 total teams from the Springfield, Ohio area. Major congratulations are in order for our T&T'rs. They put much effort and many practices into this endeavor. This was their first Awana quizzing meet and the first Quizzing meet for our church at Emmanuel Baptist in years. For the record we sent 2 1/2 teams for just book 2 and the event was staffed by perhaps the best Awana ministry team ever assembled.

First post of '08

Looks like I have fallen a bit behind on posting this year. We ending 2007 with a New year's eve party at our house. There were near 20 people at our house and we had a great time hosting. Last week was my first night as T&T director for our Awana club at church. Danielle and I continue to be busy making our house a home. Lily has started to eat carrots and green beans. Soon she will start sweet potatoes. Yum, Yum. Here are a few pictures of Lily and our New Years Eve Party.

New Year's 08

Awana Quizzing & Belated Valentines Party

On Saturday February 24th. Cornerstone Baptist Church had it's first Awana Quizzing. We ended up having only 2 kids participate. They did fantastic job for each being on their own team. I think we where able to create excitement within the church for next year, hopefully with more kids participating.

We finished the day with a Sunday School belated Valentines party. We had food from Sonny's BBQ, which for the money is an excellent source of food for a large group. We had a lot of fun.

Awana Updates

Our Awana Missionary Tim Welcher visited our Awana Club. We kept him very busy with Council time for Sparks, T&T, Cubbies and Treck. He used rope tricks to present the gospel in a way that captivated the attention of most of the kids. We also took him out to dinner at Panera Bread. We had excellent conversations about motivation kids to memorizing verses. One of the thrills of eating out with Tim is not wondering if he will share the gospel but when. Thank you Tim for your inspiration to all of us at Cornerstone. We pray that God will continue to bless your ministries.

Danielle was promoted to Sparks Director this week. I know that she will do a wonderful job.

Awana Week 4 Crazy Hat Night

This week at Awana was crazy hat night. It was a resounding success! About the only thing I would have improved was the delivery of my lesson about hats. The clubbers had a great time! We had high participation. The clubbers even invited their friends to come with a crazy hat. Roger did a great job coming up with hat games. We had a contest for the tallest hat, the most unique and the most Awana-fied hats. All in all a great night enjoyed by all.

Enjoy the pictures.

Awana Crazy Hat Night 2006

Sep 17, 2006 - 28 Photos

Awana Crazy Hat Lesson

One of my goals with my blog is the share information with other people. I put together a lesson for crazy hat night and thought that I would share it with whoever wanted it. So here it is. I'll let you all know later how the lesson went.

Crazy Hat Night Lesson

Prep: Bought 8 hats from the Party Store in Lexington, next to Great Clips, south of the mall.

What I want the kids to learn:

· Hats often identify a persons job or responsibility.

· Christians also can be identified, *not really* by the hat they wear but the things they do.

· Live your life as an example so others know that their is something different about you. And when they ask what is different about you can explain that you are a Christian.

Lesson

· Come in wearing my crazy hat, carrying a large bag of hats.

· "Wow, I am glad to be here tonight,and so excited to see you all here with your crazy hats. Let's see what crazy hats we have here tonight."

· I'll walk about the room and give a one sentence summary of a few of the hats I see.

· Hopefully, I'll find a few hats that identity what a child is interested in. Perhaps I'll guess totally wrong and the child will have to correct me. I want to make the point that I can tell something about you based on what hat they are wearing.

· If I find a kid wearing a hat that is connected to an occupation or job all have them come up front.

· "Well, let see what I have in my bag!" I'll have a kid pull a hat out of the bag. Each hat that is pulled out the kid will wear and the group will tell me what the job might be.

· Christians also can be identified, *not really* by the hat they wear but the things they do.

· Talk about the things Christians do, ask for examples. Pray, Read the Bible, Help others, tell others about Jesus, Obey mom and dad, listen in Church, be nice to others, Obey when no one else is.

· "Just like people can tell what job someone has by the hat they wear, people can tell your *different* by the way you act or the kind things you do. People will ask why do you do the nice things you do? This will be your chance to tell them you are a Christian."

· "Why is a Christian? I christian is someone who knows they are a sinner, (broken Gods rules). Sin must be punished and their is nothing I can do to "make up" for the sins, I have committed. But God loved us so much, that God sent Jesus his only son to died for my sins and the cross, in my place. This is God's gift to us. We must ask God for this gift. Once we have received God's gift, The God comes to us in a special way to help us understand how he wants us to act and obey him. "

· "If you have never prayed to received God's gift of taking my punishment, please see a leader after we are done, your leader will be able to explain more to you."

Awana Week 2

We just wrapped up week number 2 for Awana at Cornerstone Baptist Church. The commander was out sick, so I got to be the acting commander. The night went fairly well, we had 23 sparkies and 21 T&T'rs. We were blessed that two college students from the church helped us out as leaders tonight and for the rest of the year. They did an excellent job tonight with the kids even without much training. Hopefully we will be able to arrange training for them soon. Next week is Labor Day weekend so there will be no Awana next week. Awana will pick up "Next Next Week" as phased by one of our Korean Sparkies.

Assistant Awana Commander

I have been an Awana leader 10 years now all of which have been in Sparks. If you count the 3 years when I was a Sparkie as a kid I have been *in* Sparks for more than half my life. This year I get to be the Assistant Commander at Cornerstone Baptist Church. I am charged with planning Awana Quizzing, AwanaGames and other activities. I am also planning of being in section time for both Sparks and T&T. We are off to a good start, last Sunday we started the year with about 13 Sparkies and *21* T&T'rs. Putting that into perspetive, T&T's largest attendance last year was 16! We have a great group of Leaders and kids. I pray that God will be able to use us to "Reach boys and girls with the Gospel of Christ and train them to serve Him"