Sometimes we need to see through the eyes of children!

 Here is pastor Ed telling a Bible Story at the kick-off for Vacation Bible School!

 Many young people are leading our children in worship for this year's Bible School!

The Sunday night picnic was attended by many, many young families who enjoyed some great food and friendship together!

Last evening I had the privilege of sitting with three of my grandchildren during the Family Worship Kick-off of this year's Vacation Bible School.  Most of my attention was focused upon the faces of my grandchildren as the program was presented.

It was awesome to watch my grandchildren respond to the worship, dancing, Bible story, picnic and a remote controlled blimp.  They began quite hestitant and then as the program progressed they loosened up and began to enjoy.  I watched their faces closely trying to perceive what was going on in their heads and hearts.

I left very encouraged that this year's Bible School is going to plant some serious seeds of truth and light into the heads and hearts of our children.  Please join me in praying for our staff, our volunteers and all of the children who will attend.

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The Church is People--Plain and Simple!

The church is people!   Plain and simple.  It's not a building, a service, a ministry or even a set of beliefs.  It's people.  I'm so grateful we have such good people as a part of our church family.   Here's a recent picture of most of our staff following a Monday morning staff meeting.  Three of our staff were in Africa and a couple were involved in other projects.  We have an inspired and committed staff who are called by God to lead our church family.  It's an honor to partner with them.

It's Sunday evening, June 3 and I'm thinking about all of the interactions I had with so many different people in our lobbies this morning.  Twelve hundred people at our Cedar Falls campus this morning and each of them have their own story, their own needs, and many of them have a personal relationship with Jesus.  It's so good to hear the stories, the needs, the inspirations and encouragements.

We watched an 8 minute video of Steve Furtick from his Global Leadership Summit talk entitled Audacious Faith.  In the talk he described the need from 2 Kings 3 to "dig ditches" in our lives to prepare to receive the blessings of God.  I then challenged people to figure out what ditch God would have them dig--what commitment they could make to God in order to allow Him the access to grow them spiritually.

People seemed inspired to ask that important question for the summer.  If you are able, go to our website  www.orchardhillchurch.org and register for the Global Leadership Summit on August 9-10 this summer.

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