YAC (warning...VERY LONG)
Ok, YAC was AWESOME!!! Best part? Everyone wants to come back!!!!!! *is VERY excited; excited more than ANYONE could understand* (YAC=Youth Annual Conference)
(apologies in advance for the outline...it'll keep me organized...I'm that close to losing it...)
1) Cedar Point--YEYEYEYEYEYEYEY!!! Silvi was there...*groan* but we didn't end up hanging out together, so I didn't go completely crazy. And lines were short!!
a) Jane and John--First, could you *ask* for a better name combo? Yeah, so uhhhhhhhh...Jane and I spent the ride down talking about anything and everything. It was amazing. Magic School Bus (*cheers*), amusement-park stories, other random stuff... I'm sure John thought we were nuts. But throughout the day, they were fantastic. Jane decided she and I would make a fantastic lesbian couple. (Too bad neither one of us is lesbian...) Then she decided, well, perhaps we could have an affair anyway...*laughs hysterically* I'm sure John was really confused. Then we were a threesome..."just for the funny looks...hey! nobody's looking at us funny!! *pout*" Thank you, Jane. :) I was really amazed at the way John put up with us. I think we really confused him. All in all, they were amazing. Uboh yubeah. Jubane rubemubindubed mube ubabubout ubububie-dubububie. :) That definitely confused John. Oh well. He was a good sport.
b) The rally went really well. Granted, the band was a couple random CCYM-ers and someone's grandmother, but they were good. We couldn't find our group, but when they started playing "I'm Trading my Sorrows" I saw them...cuz they were the only ones dancing. =P
c) 8th graders--were there on their end-of-the-year field trip. First I saw Miranda. I think she confused Jane and John. Then I saw the dynamic duo from Science Olympiad at the middle school. Lindsay screwed up her foot! Bad girl! Later I saw Austin and Isabella when we were getting on Maxxair. I think I confused Austin by being there...it was kinda fun to see all of them, though.
d) Dinner was...amusing. Apparently either nobody's noticed or nobody can fix the problem with the register: SNAANDUSKY, third year in a row... nothing else particularly interesting though. Oh, we met up with James and Rachel.
2) Friday Night--long...
a) Drive down was fine. Rev. Mark drove by himself. The rest of us went with Rachel.
b) I saw Harper! Yey! She was just coming back to her cottage (only a block away from ours), and I saw her "save darfur" shirt and went, "hey. That's just like our STAND shirts. I wonder if that person goes to my schoo--Harper!!!!!!!" Yeah. I'm good.
c) God Time--mosquito-filled and cool (literally). Figuratively cool too, I guess, I just couldn't hear...
d) After that I went back to the cottage, in theory to shower before the rest of the crew, but I ended up sitting down with James and making a SET deck because I had forgotten to bring mine. :( Everyone else went to get ice cream, and then they came back and played SET/showered and went to bed. I worked on the EPIC letter. :)
3) Saturday Morning--I *acutally* woke up. Like, I didn't lay in bed for 20+ min first. I woke up and got up and got dressed. No problem. Even having gone to sleep at 1:00 and getting up at 8...oh well. No complaints. Just surprise...
a) The random band from Cedar Point/God Time (CHAOS? maybe?) was replaced. With some weird gospel group...oh well. Life goes on.
b) Business went well. We even got ahead of schedule. (What? What?) The CCYM PowerPoint could've used some work though...duplicate slides, skipped slides, bad speakers.......... yeah. NO...
c) Resolutions--Unfortunately, with so many amendments and amendments-to-amendments and such, people got really fed up and just called the question before we had really debated anything. :( On the other hand (you have different fingers. ~Jack Handey), the 2 resolutions (of 3 total) we covered that morning went the way I wanted them to, even without adequate debate, so that was good. *wishes website would let her look at the resolutions* *retrieves resolutions from her bedroom*
i) Resolution 1--basically encouraged churches to do communion once a month. It was good. And it passed. YEYEYEY! It'll go on to Annual Conference (which is this week) to be affirmed.
ii) Resolution 2--encouraged youth to make use of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal and so forth "to further the ministry of Jesus Christ." (I obviously haven't taken that to heart...=P) It passed too, after much debate and an amendment or three. The amendments didn't pass, though. What I didn't understand was how the argument "MySpace is gonna shut down soon" was relevent at ALL. (Plus, is it going to?) The resolution was about using things like MySpace (e.g. LJ, Xanga, Facebook, etc.) to communicate to other people. *sigh* That one got called really early, but it still passed, which was good.
d) Lunch was good too. We all talked a lot about the youth program at our church and how it ought to be more connected to YAC. We even have some (extremely) tentative plans. YEYEYEYEY! (I'm really psyched, in case you couldn't tell...) We also looked over resolutions 4 and 5, which were submitted later than the first 3. Very nice.
4) Saturday Afternoon--I stopped in Marilyns after lunch to say hello to Harper. She was losing her mind... :(
a) Business--ran smoothly again. There was a motion to do something da-da-da-da-da-da-da about recycling, but it failed. I don't know. It really didn't need to be a motion. Somebody just needed to take a mic and say, "hey! recycle your junk!"
i) Resolution 3--We spent a LONG time debating this one. The intent was to make YAC more affordable for low-income churches, but it really didn't work......there were a million-and-a-half amendments, none of them made ANY sense, and the resolution failed anyway. CCYM needs the money. Period.
b) District Caucus--the District Youth Council did the "country-earwash" skit. Kinda gross, but not really. Not ANYTHING like the PB&J one last year. Then all the churches did skits, introduced themselves, and/or invited people to events they were holding. We invited people to Summerfest ("Saviour Summerfest!" "Why? Is it drowning or something??" *sigh*) and did the Trading-my-Sorrows dance. :) James was a loser and didn't sing though. (Just kidding, James, we love you...you just need more spirit!)
c) Yey free time! I journaled and worked on the epic. After James and I talked to Harper as she was leaving her shift and she directed us to the restraunt we were trying to find for us all to have supper. Mark and James went on walks, and Rachel and the girls went swimming.
5) Saturday Night--VERY LONG!
a) Dinner--We did NOT let James get Shock-a-lot (2x caffeinated coffee). Anyone surprised? We all got yummy smoothies/sandwiches/quiche-that-burned-my-mouth/muffins etc. It was quite nice. The quiche was aMAZing. Just a little warm. Afterwards I wandered about for a bit and then headed on over the the God Time thing.
b) God Time--WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!!! Ok, so the random gospel band was replaced. By whom? Praise-appella. WOW. There were NO instruments, but they totally sounded like a normal band. They had a beat-boxer/vocal-percussionist guy, who was basically a walking, dancing, special-effects drum set. NICE!! Then there was a guy who just sang the bass line (WOW). There were two other singers too, who actually sang, but they were aMAZing!!! Then Zach spoke, which was fantastic as always. That kid is GOING to be a public speaker. I mean, he's got an analogy for EVERYthing and a hysterical personal-experience story to go with it. NICE! Then we did the candle walk. :) Yey! Of course, by this time, the crazy gospel people were back. *steals Rev. Mark's joke* What's the difference between a saxophone and a lawnmower? --You can tune the lawnmower.-- *sigh* That sax was SUCH a mess. It totally ruined stuff. Then we sat by the lake and talked again (it was much warmer). I got a little upset though, because one thing led to another and I started reflecting on the mess I'm in with Silvi...yeah. I really needed a Star Wars friend at that point. But then--
c) Cottage--We all meandered back to the cottage and stayed up past midnight playing the umbrella game, snaps, crossed knives, "My aunt May, she died last night", etc. and doing random camp skits. It was the best thing EVER! "Umm, can James bring Ibuprofen?" "Can I bring a potato?" "Umm, can I bring a surgical team?" NICE! Then sleep :)
6) Sunday Morning--again, I actually woke up! No problems! Well, 'cept that my mouth and throat were really swollen from the burn from the quiche. But Ibuprofen fixed that up nicely. :)
a) Music and devotions were fine. Then we moved on to our last bit of business.
i) Motion--Make the Conference Youth Leader position a full-time job again. It passed. No discussion.
ii) Resolution 4--GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! This was here last year! We failed it last year! There was a reason for that!!!! Oh well. Topic=providing links to websites that give a Christian perspective to movies, books, games, songs, etc. My main problem with that is that CCYM doesn't need another thing to do, and we shouldn't make/let only one youth group do it either. Besides that, if people want to use such things, they do already exist, and the people can go find them/they already know where they are. We don't need to provide more. *sigh* After much debate, it failed.
iii) Resolution 5--was withdrawn. A couple people tried to bring it back up, but it wasn't voted to bypass the rules to allow discussion/vote. Main reason for this, in my opinion, was that people were really sick and tired of it all by then, and just didn't want to deal with it. That really ticked me off. Topic=ecourage youth to actively mentor autistic/ADD/Down's Syndrome kids. I bet it'll come up again next year.
b) Worship and Induction of New Officers--haha, James. =P No, we did not worship the officers. Some guy talked for awhile, and I swear to goodness I was listening! It all made sense! I just can't remember a word he said because I was only half-conscious. But I was listening! I was just tired... We inducted all the new CCYM-ers and then a couple, who were both preachers, gave a sermon on the "don't be looked down on because of your youth" passage. There was a VERY nice parallel to the children's book about the mouse and the bear and the red ripe strawberry. :) Then the gavel was passed and the meeting adjourned.
c) Lunch--nice. Just relaxed and talked about relatively unimportant stuff. Had a good time Catholic-bashing (Just kidding). We did make a little bit of fun of them though, particularly the whole shortage-of-clergy-but-no-women-or-married-people-can-be-priests thing. :)
d) Drive home was LONG! James sang... K and Emma were...obnoxious. (No surprises.) K decided I spent the whole weekend flirting with James. No, actually not, but whatever... Charlotte slept. Rachel drove. I read/talked. James talked/dozed/got mad at the girls. K put his hair in pigtails!! Dang I wish I'd gotten pictures! He took it out too soon... :'( We took a very nice detour because there was traffic jam on Route 2 that went from here to heaven and back... We got back really late and my mom was pissed off. Oh well.
-fin-
In other news...
We have a new kitty! He's really thin and long and REALLY pretty. No name yet. He came on Friday, courtesey of my mom's coworker...long story.
I watched 4 episodes of NUMB3RS today!!! Too bad K and Ev didn't appreciate my sarcastic comments... The episodes were really intense, though--the first 4 ever.
-fin- for real this time! Good night!
(apologies in advance for the outline...it'll keep me organized...I'm that close to losing it...)
1) Cedar Point--YEYEYEYEYEYEYEY!!! Silvi was there...*groan* but we didn't end up hanging out together, so I didn't go completely crazy. And lines were short!!
a) Jane and John--First, could you *ask* for a better name combo? Yeah, so uhhhhhhhh...Jane and I spent the ride down talking about anything and everything. It was amazing. Magic School Bus (*cheers*), amusement-park stories, other random stuff... I'm sure John thought we were nuts. But throughout the day, they were fantastic. Jane decided she and I would make a fantastic lesbian couple. (Too bad neither one of us is lesbian...) Then she decided, well, perhaps we could have an affair anyway...*laughs hysterically* I'm sure John was really confused. Then we were a threesome..."just for the funny looks...hey! nobody's looking at us funny!! *pout*" Thank you, Jane. :) I was really amazed at the way John put up with us. I think we really confused him. All in all, they were amazing. Uboh yubeah. Jubane rubemubindubed mube ubabubout ubububie-dubububie. :) That definitely confused John. Oh well. He was a good sport.
b) The rally went really well. Granted, the band was a couple random CCYM-ers and someone's grandmother, but they were good. We couldn't find our group, but when they started playing "I'm Trading my Sorrows" I saw them...cuz they were the only ones dancing. =P
c) 8th graders--were there on their end-of-the-year field trip. First I saw Miranda. I think she confused Jane and John. Then I saw the dynamic duo from Science Olympiad at the middle school. Lindsay screwed up her foot! Bad girl! Later I saw Austin and Isabella when we were getting on Maxxair. I think I confused Austin by being there...it was kinda fun to see all of them, though.
d) Dinner was...amusing. Apparently either nobody's noticed or nobody can fix the problem with the register: SNAANDUSKY, third year in a row... nothing else particularly interesting though. Oh, we met up with James and Rachel.
2) Friday Night--long...
a) Drive down was fine. Rev. Mark drove by himself. The rest of us went with Rachel.
b) I saw Harper! Yey! She was just coming back to her cottage (only a block away from ours), and I saw her "save darfur" shirt and went, "hey. That's just like our STAND shirts. I wonder if that person goes to my schoo--Harper!!!!!!!" Yeah. I'm good.
c) God Time--mosquito-filled and cool (literally). Figuratively cool too, I guess, I just couldn't hear...
d) After that I went back to the cottage, in theory to shower before the rest of the crew, but I ended up sitting down with James and making a SET deck because I had forgotten to bring mine. :( Everyone else went to get ice cream, and then they came back and played SET/showered and went to bed. I worked on the EPIC letter. :)
3) Saturday Morning--I *acutally* woke up. Like, I didn't lay in bed for 20+ min first. I woke up and got up and got dressed. No problem. Even having gone to sleep at 1:00 and getting up at 8...oh well. No complaints. Just surprise...
a) The random band from Cedar Point/God Time (CHAOS? maybe?) was replaced. With some weird gospel group...oh well. Life goes on.
b) Business went well. We even got ahead of schedule. (What? What?) The CCYM PowerPoint could've used some work though...duplicate slides, skipped slides, bad speakers.......... yeah. NO...
c) Resolutions--Unfortunately, with so many amendments and amendments-to-amendments and such, people got really fed up and just called the question before we had really debated anything. :( On the other hand (you have different fingers. ~Jack Handey), the 2 resolutions (of 3 total) we covered that morning went the way I wanted them to, even without adequate debate, so that was good. *wishes website would let her look at the resolutions* *retrieves resolutions from her bedroom*
i) Resolution 1--basically encouraged churches to do communion once a month. It was good. And it passed. YEYEYEY! It'll go on to Annual Conference (which is this week) to be affirmed.
ii) Resolution 2--encouraged youth to make use of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal and so forth "to further the ministry of Jesus Christ." (I obviously haven't taken that to heart...=P) It passed too, after much debate and an amendment or three. The amendments didn't pass, though. What I didn't understand was how the argument "MySpace is gonna shut down soon" was relevent at ALL. (Plus, is it going to?) The resolution was about using things like MySpace (e.g. LJ, Xanga, Facebook, etc.) to communicate to other people. *sigh* That one got called really early, but it still passed, which was good.
d) Lunch was good too. We all talked a lot about the youth program at our church and how it ought to be more connected to YAC. We even have some (extremely) tentative plans. YEYEYEYEY! (I'm really psyched, in case you couldn't tell...) We also looked over resolutions 4 and 5, which were submitted later than the first 3. Very nice.
4) Saturday Afternoon--I stopped in Marilyns after lunch to say hello to Harper. She was losing her mind... :(
a) Business--ran smoothly again. There was a motion to do something da-da-da-da-da-da-da about recycling, but it failed. I don't know. It really didn't need to be a motion. Somebody just needed to take a mic and say, "hey! recycle your junk!"
i) Resolution 3--We spent a LONG time debating this one. The intent was to make YAC more affordable for low-income churches, but it really didn't work......there were a million-and-a-half amendments, none of them made ANY sense, and the resolution failed anyway. CCYM needs the money. Period.
b) District Caucus--the District Youth Council did the "country-earwash" skit. Kinda gross, but not really. Not ANYTHING like the PB&J one last year. Then all the churches did skits, introduced themselves, and/or invited people to events they were holding. We invited people to Summerfest ("Saviour Summerfest!" "Why? Is it drowning or something??" *sigh*) and did the Trading-my-Sorrows dance. :) James was a loser and didn't sing though. (Just kidding, James, we love you...you just need more spirit!)
c) Yey free time! I journaled and worked on the epic. After James and I talked to Harper as she was leaving her shift and she directed us to the restraunt we were trying to find for us all to have supper. Mark and James went on walks, and Rachel and the girls went swimming.
5) Saturday Night--VERY LONG!
a) Dinner--We did NOT let James get Shock-a-lot (2x caffeinated coffee). Anyone surprised? We all got yummy smoothies/sandwiches/quiche-that-burned-my-mouth/muffins etc. It was quite nice. The quiche was aMAZing. Just a little warm. Afterwards I wandered about for a bit and then headed on over the the God Time thing.
b) God Time--WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!!! Ok, so the random gospel band was replaced. By whom? Praise-appella. WOW. There were NO instruments, but they totally sounded like a normal band. They had a beat-boxer/vocal-percussionist guy, who was basically a walking, dancing, special-effects drum set. NICE!! Then there was a guy who just sang the bass line (WOW). There were two other singers too, who actually sang, but they were aMAZing!!! Then Zach spoke, which was fantastic as always. That kid is GOING to be a public speaker. I mean, he's got an analogy for EVERYthing and a hysterical personal-experience story to go with it. NICE! Then we did the candle walk. :) Yey! Of course, by this time, the crazy gospel people were back. *steals Rev. Mark's joke* What's the difference between a saxophone and a lawnmower? --You can tune the lawnmower.-- *sigh* That sax was SUCH a mess. It totally ruined stuff. Then we sat by the lake and talked again (it was much warmer). I got a little upset though, because one thing led to another and I started reflecting on the mess I'm in with Silvi...yeah. I really needed a Star Wars friend at that point. But then--
c) Cottage--We all meandered back to the cottage and stayed up past midnight playing the umbrella game, snaps, crossed knives, "My aunt May, she died last night", etc. and doing random camp skits. It was the best thing EVER! "Umm, can James bring Ibuprofen?" "Can I bring a potato?" "Umm, can I bring a surgical team?" NICE! Then sleep :)
6) Sunday Morning--again, I actually woke up! No problems! Well, 'cept that my mouth and throat were really swollen from the burn from the quiche. But Ibuprofen fixed that up nicely. :)
a) Music and devotions were fine. Then we moved on to our last bit of business.
i) Motion--Make the Conference Youth Leader position a full-time job again. It passed. No discussion.
ii) Resolution 4--GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! This was here last year! We failed it last year! There was a reason for that!!!! Oh well. Topic=providing links to websites that give a Christian perspective to movies, books, games, songs, etc. My main problem with that is that CCYM doesn't need another thing to do, and we shouldn't make/let only one youth group do it either. Besides that, if people want to use such things, they do already exist, and the people can go find them/they already know where they are. We don't need to provide more. *sigh* After much debate, it failed.
iii) Resolution 5--was withdrawn. A couple people tried to bring it back up, but it wasn't voted to bypass the rules to allow discussion/vote. Main reason for this, in my opinion, was that people were really sick and tired of it all by then, and just didn't want to deal with it. That really ticked me off. Topic=ecourage youth to actively mentor autistic/ADD/Down's Syndrome kids. I bet it'll come up again next year.
b) Worship and Induction of New Officers--haha, James. =P No, we did not worship the officers. Some guy talked for awhile, and I swear to goodness I was listening! It all made sense! I just can't remember a word he said because I was only half-conscious. But I was listening! I was just tired... We inducted all the new CCYM-ers and then a couple, who were both preachers, gave a sermon on the "don't be looked down on because of your youth" passage. There was a VERY nice parallel to the children's book about the mouse and the bear and the red ripe strawberry. :) Then the gavel was passed and the meeting adjourned.
c) Lunch--nice. Just relaxed and talked about relatively unimportant stuff. Had a good time Catholic-bashing (Just kidding). We did make a little bit of fun of them though, particularly the whole shortage-of-clergy-but-no-women-or-married-people-can-be-priests thing. :)
d) Drive home was LONG! James sang... K and Emma were...obnoxious. (No surprises.) K decided I spent the whole weekend flirting with James. No, actually not, but whatever... Charlotte slept. Rachel drove. I read/talked. James talked/dozed/got mad at the girls. K put his hair in pigtails!! Dang I wish I'd gotten pictures! He took it out too soon... :'( We took a very nice detour because there was traffic jam on Route 2 that went from here to heaven and back... We got back really late and my mom was pissed off. Oh well.
-fin-
In other news...
We have a new kitty! He's really thin and long and REALLY pretty. No name yet. He came on Friday, courtesey of my mom's coworker...long story.
I watched 4 episodes of NUMB3RS today!!! Too bad K and Ev didn't appreciate my sarcastic comments... The episodes were really intense, though--the first 4 ever.
-fin- for real this time! Good night!