On Thursday, May 25, LOL, the student juggling team I direct, headed to Vermont for four days of performances and ministry. 13 of my 14 students went, along with my wife, Sue, daughter, Rose, three other chaperones and myself. The work teams were incredibly efficient as they loaded up the trailer Charlie provided, and we were on the road by 8:30 AM. The only snafu in our departure was that I forgot to get our money from the safe in the office! All$1500 that the students raised was still at school when we left. Praise God, I realized my error after only 15 minutes. I called the office and the administrative assistant met us with the money. We lost very little time, and we were on our way again.
The kids traveled great. We had lunch in the vans and arrived at our first venue before we even reached our home base of Essex Junction. Our first gig was in Lyndonville, Vermont at a residential school called the Fold Family Ministries. The Fold is a home and school similar to Teen Challenge. Teenage girls who have life controlling problems such as self injury, addiction or promiscuity enroll in their program for a year or two. They live a very structured, disciplined life, but are also loved and introduced to the love of Jesus.
The Dold is up on a hill in a beautiful location, but, being on a hill, it tends to be windy. That day was no exception, which made juggling in an outdoor show challenging. But the team did well. Emily did her eighth grade solo, which was impacted by the wind, but was still cute. She was able to do fire torches and battle axes, which went a long way to impress the audience. "Beautiful, Scandalous Night" was as powerful as ever, and the club juggling involved was the best it has been all year (although later in the weekend it got even better!).
After the show, our girls hung out with their girls whoe the guys picked up. Apparently one of the girls from the Fold reared up and shared how effective our presentation of the Gospel was. Another girl talked about how nice it was to get visitors from"the outside". Youth in programs like this can often feel isolated.
From there we headed to our base in Essex Junction, my home town. We stayed at Grace Methodist Church, which is adjacent to my old middle school. The accommodations were excellent, for a church basement. It had a big kitchen and the congregation left a big jug of real Vermont maple syrup for us to enjoy! While Sue and Linda went shopping for our meats, cheeses and milk, the men chaperones took the kids to a park across the street where I used to play basketball when I was a kid. The park is better than ever, and the kids had a blast with their first real free time of the day.
We had a great meal and the kids were remarkably good about going to sleep (after "Momma Sue's sleepy time tea for all). This was a good thing because we had three shows the next day.