Fam Jam

For the past few years, our church has replaced traditional VBS with a new-and-improved VBS called "Fam Jam." Instead of dropping your children off for a week of VBS, this event has the entire family experiencing a VBS-like event. This year was no exception and so last Sunday night, we dove in to "Jam with the Fam" for several nights running.

This year, we were invited to be a part of the team to lead worship each night. Mind you, because it's a family event, it's entire families that make up that worship team. The only minor hitch in this plan is that the head of our family wasn't able to make either of the two rehearsals to learn words and motions to the songs. I offered to catch our fearless (or is it "fearful"?) leader up to speed, to which he answered,

"Nah. I'll be fine."

For those of you who know Gregg, he was in rare form last week. If you don't know my husband, suffice to say he lived up to his high school elected title of "class clown." Unfortunately, the more people who stopped him throughout the week to tell him how funny he was, the more he hammed it up. It's no wonder that Mackenzie is the way she is sometimes. As my father-in-law always said, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
We had a great week, though. My nieces Alaina and Chloe were up here with us and we had good time sharing Fam Jam with them as well.



A new element added to Fam Jam this year was a service project. As we discussed the importance of serving others during the week, we were asked to donate school supplies to fill 100 backpacks that someone had donated to our church. One evening was spent filling them in an assembly line-like fashion, then we wrote notes to the children who would be receiving these backpacks. They will be distributed to shelters here in our town who will pass them along to kids for back-to-school.


Our church just recently went through an expansion project, so when we walked into the gym one night, I could only imagine where they came up the mountain of broken-down cardboard boxes that greeted us in the center of the floor. We were given the count of "ready-set-go" and we dove into the pile to claim pieces to build a house in 10 minutes.



We girls fit inside the house nicely, but Gregg (just to the left of us) was still holding duct tape in his hand-trying how to make it more structurally sound. As much fun as it was, it was more than a little sobering to later discuss the reality that for some people, a shelter like ours shown above IS their only means of a house. We are so blessed.



And of course, what is Fam Jam without food? The week concluded with a picnic out in the parking lot. Afterwards, the girls had fun on several inflatables.

All in all, it was a great week. Good friends, lots of fun, great food and of course,

GREAT laughs!