If I Scream, Will I Feel Better?

Next week, our church’s annual Vacation Bible School will begin. I am in charge, as I have been for the past three years. Why? I broke the rule I made for myself when we arrived here six years ago: I will be happy to volunteer, but I will not lead. Normally, people assume the pastor’s wife will do everything, and pretty soon, she does. I won’t. Not here. Not this time.

But I did agree to do this and now, five days before it begins, I get a call from my crafts leader. Two days’ worth of crafts kits are missing. Back-ordered. No one knows when they will arrive, but my contact person in Minnesota is checking for me.

And I realized yesterday that I am short about five warm bodies. I have my main station leaders recruited, but I need people to be “crew leaders,” essentially escorts for small groups of children. If I don’t recruit a few more people, my small groups of kids will be big groups of kids and the quality of our program will suffer.

Then, the other problem that looms over my head is the number of preschoolers we anticipate. I limited preschool registration to twenty slots this year, and they quickly filled up. People registered their preschoolers without checking with me, as the website instructed. I am terrified that on the actual day of VBS, I will have to turn away disappointed four year olds. I really, really don’t want to do that, so I’ll probably allow them to register, even though we aren’t equipped for more than twenty kids.

Well, I guess this is why I get the big bucks. Oh wait. That’s someone else. I’m doing this for free.

At least this will all be over in 10 days and then I’ll have a break. Oh wait. That’s when my husband will be gone for the entire week on business.

I’d better go make some phone calls. The last one I made sounded like this, “Hi, just calling to see if you will be able to help us out next week. If not, I’m just asking you to PRAY FOR ME! Thanks! Bye!”