Posts from — August 2007

This is a review of Burger King’s attempt to do iced mocha.

The good: It tastes great! Much better than McDonald’s iced mocha which, by the way is free on Wednesday.

The bad: According to the dude in the drive thru, Mocha BK Joe iced coffee is made with chocolate shake mix; therefore, it is loaded with fat and calories.

Conclusion: A great occasional treat; not an everyday drink.

Calvary Bible Church rents out a couple of rooms in our building to a daycare center called the Explorer’s Club. The room that they use is just down the hall from my office. Outside their room is a whiteboard on an easel that describes what the kids are doing today and what events are coming up. These kids do a lot of fun things: skating, hiking, swiming, Ultimate Fighting. Not that I recommend day care, but this looks like a pretty cool one to be in, if you have to be. And if your father is Bill Gates. Or Bill Ford. Or someone like that.

Whenever I walk by their room, I look to see what the kiddos are doing that day or in the next few days. They usually have some interesting things coming up. This week is “Spirit Week” at Explorer’s Club. I did not know that they had their own football team; this must be homecoming week. Anyway, just like when we were in high school, they’re doing spirit week things like mismatch day. Tomorrow, in fact, is pajama day.

In addition to wearing their PJs tomorrow, the kids at Explorer’s Club are having a food fight. Yes, you read that correctly. The people who run this daycare are encouraging kids to bring their favorite foods to throw at each other tomorrow. I’m glad I’m not the janitor.

I’ve only been involved in one food fight in my life. I was in high school and attending AWANA scholarship camp at lovely Lake Ann Baptist Camp. [Wow! Look at that site. Lake Ann Camp is a lot more lovely than when I was a kid, and I thought it was pretty nice then!]

After the lights went out one night, someone started flinging food. Others responded in kind and shortly every guy in the cabin was throwing peanuts, Skittles, and other little candies that kids usually have at camp. Our camp counselor had a couldn’t-care-less attitude about the whole thing. He pulled his sleeping bag up over his face and ignored us. I remember four things about this experience.

The first thing I remember is my friend Richard Stomps sitting up quickly in bed, probably to throw something. Someone across the room saw his shadow move and whipped an Atomic Fireball in his direction. It hit him squarely in the forehead, fell to the concrete floor, and split in half. Richard, after a brief pause, reacted with a low-pitched moan: “Ooooooh.”

Mr. Stomps—the AWANA missionary for our area, the camp director, and Richard’s dad—heard the commotion in our cabin while he was making his nighttime rounds. He opened the door, flicked on the light, and caught Rob Phipps standing in the middle of the floor wearing nothing but his tighty-whities and bending over to pick up something. Rob froze momentarily when the lights came on, then scrambled back into his bunk like a cockroach.

The next morning, we had to clean up the mess. When everything was shaken out and the floor swept clean, we piled the whole mess in the middle of the floor. It was a large, deep pile of hard candy and dust. The cabin we were in was a cinder block building on a poured concrete slab. Overnight the walls would get moist, I guess because of the dew(?). Regardless the reason, when hard candy gets trapped against a wet cinder block wall by a bunk bed or a sleeping teen, it stays there. Although we cleaned the room as best as we could, some of the candy is probably still stuck there because we couldn’t get it off.

Every morning at camp begins with a flagpole assembly. The four color teams—Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow—line up in a square with everyone else from their color. All the guys in our cabin were distributed among the four color teams. Part of the morning camp ritual is for the leader to call out anyone who talked after lights out. When this call was made, you were expected to step forward and points would be deducted from your team. On this particular morning, every high school guy on all four teams had to step out because we all were involved in the fracas. It was a very bad example to the younger elementary kids on our team.

Perhaps I should bring some Atomic Fireballs to throw at the Explorer’s Club kids tomorrow.

The top two emails in my inbox right now reveal a lot about what pastors do during the week. The top email message (in other words, the most recent) is from a member of our church and a good friend. The subject line is “Breakfast.”

The next three messages below all the have the same subject. They are from three friends, all likewise in the ministry trying to arrange a time for the four of us to meet together. The subject line there is “Lunch.”

Excuse me now, please. It is time to go home for dinner.