Monday, June 12, 2006

Monday Monday....

interesting day...

I should start this by filling you in a bit. When our Church's current office manager took over the position she quickly learned that she could not handle all of her responsibilities and answer the office phones on Monday mornings. I don't know how the previous office manager handled all of this just fine, but anyway. So she asked the Church council if she could ask volunteers to come in on Mondays to answer the phones...and they agreed. So Darly & I go about once a month now to answer the phones and do other office tasks.

Today I had to drag myself out of bed early (as in before 9am! I love homeschooling! ;-) and get Darly up too so that we could go answer the phones at our Church. {NO! Darly doesn't answer the phones.}

I'm not sure why but I didn't get myself to bed Sunday night at a reasonable hour...kept finding stuff I wanted to watch on TV, but fell asleep during them. Crazy, I know.

So I drag out of bed and get a shower, and then go to wake Darly who doesn't want to get up either. I made my coffee and get this... I did NOT TURN ON THE COMPUTER! Yes, I said it. I did not turn this thing on first thing in the morning. I am not addicted to this thing. Really, I swear it.

We get to Church and get the run-down on all that is happening and who is actually there(hardly anyone). The office manager(OM) tells me about how she is trying to get everyone to turn their phones to "do not disturb" when they leave so you don't have to wonder if they are there or not...but so far it's not working yet.

Miss S's Memorial is happening on the 16th (ooh! I just realized that I can now go!) and she asked if I knew all the details for that...which I did.
And that our VBS (Vacation Bible School) registration is now closed and full...so don't take any more registrations because we've already had to return money and try to get the CDs back and that just gets ugly.

The OM then gives me some paperwork that she is trying to catch up on and quickly shows me how she wants that done. It turned out that all the pages that she needed entered into the computer were already entered and I just had to print out the reports...but anyway.

The phone rang three the entire time I was there. Amazing! Usually it is ringing off the hook! But the one call was for our Youth Minister and he was outta town. It was about a reservation that he had made that needed to be paid for or it would get canceled. YIKES! Luckily the Pastor & OM took that.

I had two moms come in to try to register for VBS. The one was kinda in disbelief when I told her that we were full already. I found out later that another Church is doing the same program but is charging like 3 times more so we were getting flooded with kids trying to get in. Parents tend to get all cranky with VBS registration...like its politics or something. One year this lady came on the opening day and wanted to sign her kid up. Our director said that we were full and the lady says to her kid "Come on! They don't want you here!" ummm no, we don't wany you here lady. I'm just kidding. But anyway.

I got one call about Miss S's Memorial and I gave her all that info...including stuff she didn't even ask for, but hey I figured why not. There is going to be a Pot Luck reception afterward and A-M is supposed to bring Salad & N-Z bring Desserts. The OM & I thought it might be a good idea to ask the Salad folks to bring veggies & the dessert folks for breads...spread out the offerings. I hope it works out well.

Pastor brought in his dog. I never did find out why. She was very nice though.

Darly did some sorting in her usual way...work for 10 minutes and take a 40 minute break. But she did get it all done before we left. And she got a lollypop for her efforts. I didn't get a lollypop!

But we did get a nice lunch at Quiznos afterward.

update: there are two reasons for running out of room for VBS... 1) not enough volunteers we have a 1 adult to 6 kid ratio...and 2) we actually do run out of space for all the kids.
But the real reason we have a cut off is because if we didn't they would be coming to get in until the very end of VBS and then complain that it was over! We have to cut off registration so that we can buy all the t-shirts and iron on the decals before we start...we also have to figure out which crew the kids go into.
And no this isn't a Lutheran thing. Our program is non-demoninational, so we get all kinds of kids for it. It seems like most parents are using VBS as a cheep day care for their out of school kids.
And we charge because the program that we buy costs money. The Church budgets so much per kid and then we have to raise money to cover the rest and ask for donations of supplies (mostly food).
What the kids get for their registration fee... a CD of songs from the program, a t-shirt with decal from the program, 5 Bible memory verse buddies, program book, and 5 crafts based on the program.
Yeah, we could come up with a program of our own and it would be cheaper...but it is worth it to us to pay for someone else's creativity.
Here's the link to our program Group Fiesta

4 comments:

  1. Look at you Miss Thing...I love volunteers (since the majority of our work is done by volunteers!) So sorry to hear of the loss of your friends but glad they "were promoted".

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  2. Busy Busy. I love that you're setting that example of service for Darly.

    I have never heard of having no room at VBS. Or charging for VBS. Interesting. Is it more like a day-camp? I used to help with a local bible camp in the area and never had that problem. I wouldn't know where to begin. Are there just not that many Lutheran congregations in the area to handle the load of kids? That must be so hard to handle.

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  3. Wow, what a busy day!

    I've never heard of anyone charging for VBS, either. Is that new?

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  4. Sounds like fun - especially the lunch part!
    LBC

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