Birthdays with Chuck E.

This is the birthday bunch! David and I teach a Sunday School class, and just about everybody in it is in this picture. On the far left, we have Chris and Libby, and their oldest son, Martin. Robert is to my left, and David and Zimmer are on the other side of Chuck E. Cheese. David and I started out teaching "young adults" at Bluff Park, but when our current youth minister left about a year ago, we expanded our repertoire to teaching youth, specifically, two, now 18-year-old boys. Having them in our class has been a really wonderful experience. David and I don't consider ourselves natural "youth people," but Robert and Zimmer make teaching youth easy. They are genuinely interested in learning the truths in God's word. We don't change the lessons for them, and they greatly add to the class discussion. Over the past months, these guys have become "my boys." When we found out that all of us, me, Zimmer, and Robert, were all having birthdays in February, we decided that ChuckECheese was the place for our joint birthday party. Ok, David and I decided it, but the boys were good sports about it. We had cake and pizza, and the birthday kids got special cups and cotton candy, and ChuckE came out to dance with our group. And we got a ton of tokens, so that made everybody happy. Each person brought a gag gift for the others. I got Zimmer a garden gnome complete with red pointy hat, and I got Robert a Muppets puzzle. Of course, David and Zimmer had to crawl through the kids only maze, and everybody wanted to beat me at the car racing game. They did, by the way. Libby got way too excited about the basketball shooting game. All in all, good clean fun was had by everyone mature enough not to get embarrassed by all this kid's stuff. I hope that our time at ChuckECheese teaches some lesson. You are never too old to make fun of yourself. Christians don't need alchohol or drugs to have a ton of fun. They just need the ability to find excitement in everyday places. They need to have the guts to redefine "cool" to something that honors God and the ability to laugh that He gave us. If you're reading this, Fred and Oscar, I hope you remember that. We love you.