Awesome Start to the Week of VBS!

Night one of VBS is done and the only word I can think of is ‘Excited”. There are only a handful of things in a young child’s existence that really make their eyes sparkle...birthdays, Santa Claus and seeing mom and dad after a long day without them. Tonight, I saw some of those eyes through the eyes of a 6’ tall panda. When Derek asked me to suit up, I thought “sure, sounds like fun.” Little did I know I’d be seeing those same sparkles all night. Although I’m about 5 lbs lighter due to the heat in that thing, the high fives and hugs made it all well worth it!

While that was one highlight of the night, I also had a chance to walk around and help out with security. I got a chance to see some different activities like the arts/crafts, kids talking to our Super Heroes, Bob and Karl, the worship band and kids singing and dancing along and also how much fun the kids had with the games. You can never truly appreciate kids having a blast until you see a group doing a monkey dance, led by Jay! God is really working through all the volunteers and in every situation the kids are in at VBS. Liz and I look forward to hear all the “God Sightings” throughout the week from our girls and know that each child attending will be truly blessed by Him. As we walked out to head home, we looked up to find a rainbow in the sky. Yet another sign from God that he loves us no matter what.

Shawn

5 Reasons Why I am Looking Forward to VBS!

#1 VBS Midday! It is something new we are doing this year where we open the worship center from noon-1:00pm Monday-Thursday for our church to come and pray for VBS. We will have candles, music, and the names of every VBS participant running across the screen! We are going to be able to SOAK our kids in prayer!

#2 Worship. There is nothing like it!!!! Hundreds of kids, volunteers willing to let down their guards, and our Horizons worship team coming together to praise God! AMAZING!

#3 New People. Horizons gets to truly live our mission the week of VBS! We will have kids from the Barnabas Project, kids from the People's City Mission, and kids from our community that have never been to church. This is exactly why we are a church!

#4 Our Kids. We get to pour into the next generation of the church! What a great mission field!!!

#5 Our Team! We have the best team of volunteers on the planet! I CAN'T SLEEP after meetings with our team of directors because I am so PUMPED! The volunteers in every area of this VBS are a blast to work with, and I can't imagine not spending the week with everyone!

Invite your friends, we have spots open for them! Register to participate or volunteer at horizonschurch.org.

Thank you for your help at Camp Oasis!

A huge thank you to all of you from Horizons who came out to make this week a huge success! These relationships within our church are very important to us. Please join us in thanking:

Susan Samuelson - Camp Oasis Director

Chris Berger - Managing the Bob and Karl tour stop at Oasis

DJ Hawke - Teaching sign language to worship songs

Loren & Valda Davidson - Fiddle, karaoke, and square dancing

Pastor Brian, Nicole Feather, Amber Gapp, Traci Schoen, Bowen Schoen - Outdoor games

Pam & Lia Williams - Sewing bags and backpacks

Jim Brennan - Teaching and demonstrating juggling

Ellie Clinch & Kelso Larsen - Stopping by and cabin leading

Kyle Steinacher - Leading a cabin room all week

We are already excited to start planning for next year's experience! Hope you can be a part of it!

DiscoveryZone's trip to Camp Oasis!

Day 3 has come to a close at Camp Oasis already, the week has been flying by! Tonight our half week finished, so we said goodbye to our youngest campers. A little over half of the group of 22 DiscoveryZone students and friends are still here now for the remaining part of the full week experience!

Today, we had a ton of fun paddle boating, water sliding, & playing the infamous game of gaga! Plus we had some guests from Horizons come out! A group of 5 led some sweet games, one person taught us sign language, two others taught us square dancing (with a live fiddle), and a couple just came to hang out and experience it all with us! We still have a lot more to look forward to as the week closes out. A special thanks to everyone who has, or will be coming out here. One of our goals this year is to connect our kids with the adults in our church. I have LOVED watching these relationships start to form!

Keep us in your prayers the rest of this week. Kyle and I have had a ton of great laughs this week while staying with the campers, and I cannot wait for even more! We are having a great time experiencing the "Abundawonderful" life of Jesus!

Derek

"I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." -John 10:10b

Final Night at YouthFront Camp West

Sitting up at the snack shack tonight reflecting on what has been a great week at camp! Tonight our kids shared how they have experienced God throughout this week, and once again I was blown away! Several times today I would just sit back and watch our group as they competed in games, discussed deep questions, and worshiped together. This years group has been amazing in the way they all connect with each other. It is cool seeing how kids from different schools and parts of town have clicked with others from Horizons this week. I have LOVED observing this take place! God has been at work in this and so many other ways all week long. It pumps me up!

This is the 5th year that we have taken kids to the preteen/middle school location, YouthFront Camp West. Chris and I have considered ourselves lucky to be a part of all of them, Kelso has now officially been here multiple years, and Kaitlyn made a start this year too! Along with a great group of 22 5th-7th grade campers! The week has been amazing for all of us, leaders included. A couple of times Kelso, Kaitlyn, Chris and I have been able to talk about each of our kids and the futures we see in them. I love working with these guys - they have so much passion for our Fusion students.

Another thing that has been on my mind all week is a conversation I had at church on Sunday. Zach Moore from the Horizons Steer Team caught me before I left and gave me some great news. We had gone in to Steer Team last week to request a special camp fund be started, and he said we have been approved! After how great this week of camp has been, I am pumped to start raising funds to send our Horizons kids to camp next year! Between transportation and camp registration our middle schoolers each pay over $435. We always offer scholarships, but often people won't even consider registering at all with that cost. So the hope would be to fund a portion of every kids camp in 2012! That way even more kids can have this experience next year!! I am excited to think through this more, but if you are interested in helping with these fundraising efforts, shoot me an email at derek@horizonschurch.org. I think if we had a team of us behind this the impact could be amazing!

At events like this I often get to connect with other youth pastors. They remind me of how lucky I feel to be a part of Horizons. Many of them are from larger churches than us, but with much smaller youth groups. I am so thankful for the continued support that you all have for our kids! The culture at Horizons is so amazing in these areas.

We are hitting the road home tomorrow, which right now seems like a huge bummer. I could stay another week :). But Sunday afternoon we are back off to Camp Oasis with our elementary DiscoveryZone kids! Then a couple of Bob and Karl tour events before our big VBS at the end of July! Keep us in your prayers, and see you Sunday!

Derek

3rd and 4th Grade Bible Study Visits the City Mission

The 3rd and 4th grade Bible Study went to the People City Mission this week! It was such a wonderful and eye opening experience! They were able to bring and donate several items as well for the kids their age that are staying there! We still have 4 meetings left! We would love for students to join! The next times we will meet are July 6, 13, August 3, and 10. We meet from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

Dodgeball

Thank you to everyone that participated or was a spectator at our 3rd annual dodgeball tournament. We had 13 teams compete and the winners were the Pretty in Pink team. All proceeds will go towards the youth mission trip to the Rosebud Indian Reservation that is July 14-19.