For the past five years, I’ve been in charge of our small church’s Vacation Bible School program.  We generally have one hundred children registered and about thirty volunteers.  It’s my job to recruit, to organize and to make the magic happen.

The crucial volunteers are those who lead the seven stations: snacks, games, songs, drama, theater, crafts, and closing program.  We also have indispensable volunteers who run a parallel preschool program which runs at the same time.

Most of my volunteers have returned from year to year, but this year?  This year is killing me.  First, my drama people said they had conflicts.  (One is teaching summer school.  One is working on a project.)  I replaced them with a talented high-school student who just tonight called and said a huge, exciting opportunity came up for her to fly to Houston–it’s school-related, though I confess to missing some of the details because I was doing my grocery-shopping on-line when she called and I was distracted by the fact that she’s abandoning me.

The youth pastor (who occasionally reads this blog and let me say what a fine young man he is!) originally said he’d be gone the whole week.  He later amended that and will only be missing two out of the five days due to his commitment to be at camp that week.

Oh, the high school student I mentioned who was going to be my drama person?  She was also my song person.  Now I have to find two people, or three, to take her place.

My theater person couldn’t help this year.  (Her teens will have jobs and she has to shuttle them around.)  So, I recruited a new person . . . but now I’m going to ask her if she’d prefer to do the kitchen and then replace her with someone else who volunteered for the theater.  Confused yet?  

The kitchen person from last year hasn’t returned my calls.  (She’s left the church since last year and I heard she got married.)  A volunteer stepped up on Sunday, but she called today to say she has a scheduling conflict, too.  (Her daughter’s going to graduate school, moving that particular week.)  So I need to shuffle again and see if I come up with a replacement . . . which I think I can do.

This afternoon, my preschool director called to say she won’t be there the last two weeks.  Her great-aunt is turning 90 years old and the birthday party can’t be any other time.

So, let’s count.  I’ve had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people tell me no this year.

And that’s just the core station leaders.  I still have to recruit sixteen crew leaders for the easier job of guiding small groups of children from station to station.

Ack!  Only four weeks to go . . . my materials haven’t yet arrived, my volunteers are dropping right and left and I can only be so many places at one time.  I am capable of doing all the jobs necessary, but until I perfect cloning, I simply have to find more people to help.  The first year I ran the program, I sang the songs, did the drama, and taught the closing program, all while seven months pregnant.  But even I can’t be in two or three places at once.  

Meanwhile, the church ladies have gone crazy making Mexican flowers out of tissue paper in response to my request on Sunday morning.  I’ve been getting phone calls asking where to put the finished flowers . . . I might not have a functional program come July 10, but I will have eight thousand tissue paper Mexican flowers in which to drown myself.