Enid VBS, Day 1

Now Playing: "Rigoletto" soundtrack by Kurt Bestor. Track 9, "Singing Montage". (Playing on Missy's laptop)

This morning when I woke up, the mission team boys were already outside mowing the Ws' lawn. We're all staying at the Ws' house in Enid to do door-to-door work and VBS this week. Anna and Ruth are here, too. Anna, Mrs. W, and I ate breakfast together before the W girls had returned from running, and before the boys had come inside from mowing. When the guys came in, they ate breakfast in shifts. Anna and I sat cross-legged on the dining room floor with my laptop, reading blogs and typing comments.

This morning, Mr. P and Laura drove over from Stillwater to go door-to-door for us. We prayed in the Ws' front room, then drove to the neighborhood Mr. P had chosen. It turned out to be a lower middle class neighborhood down by the grain elevator. Katie and I went together, leapfrogging with Brad and Nathaniel. We were out for about two hours. During the whole time, Katie and I met nary a person willing to talk to us. Everyone either shut the door in our faces, waved us away, or said, "No, thank you." Katie said she'd never before felt such a cold shoulder. "This is a town full of fuddie-duddies," she complained. "They all want to stay Baptist or Catholic. Those are ok. But conservative Presbyterians are fanatics." It was horribly hot, though a light wind helped to cool the boiling sunshine a little. We walked from house to house, standing on the small porches under the broad eaves. Occasionally someone would peep out at us, but hardly anyone came to the door.

Back at the Wagners' house during lunch, everyone sat around sharing stories of people they'd met. David and Anna had spent awhile arguing with an angry Gnostic, who'd produced classic Gnostic arguments and who'd yelled at them. Logan and Laura had met a female Pentecostal pastor, who'd prayed with them, spoken in tongues, and sung a song for them in tongues. They'd also met a man who'd just been released from jail. Christi and Beth had met a highschool girl who seemed confused about her beliefs but interested in learning about Christ.

After lunch, we drove over to the Enid YMCA for VBS. The YMCA is hosting our VBS this summer. The facility is large, with an indoor pool, a rock climbing tower, gyms, and a variety of weight lifting and exercising rooms. We checked in at the front desk, then trooped downstairs to the studio that has been set aside for our use. The studio had exercise balls stacked in racks on one wall and kickboxing equipment in a corner. One wall was lined with full-length mirrors. We set up a check-in table by the door. Missy and Laura sat down behind the table with forms, pens, and nametags to welcome the children. I wrote up nametags for the children as they signed in. In the end, we had thirty-three children, ranging from four or so to ten or twelve. Some of them were friends of the Ws, but most of them were either in the regular YMCA daycare program or from the community. Laura had to ask a Hispanic mother for her children's names several times. Missy calmly signed up six kids despite the frustration of their mother. As the kids arrived, Brad and Logan drew them into a big game of duck-duck-goose. The circle soon stretched from one long wall of the rectangular room to the other. Most of the kids participated wholeheartedly, running and shouting. Their voices bounced off the hard walls, sandals and flip-flops sliding on the smooth floor. Some of them pulled faces in the big mirrors as they ran by. They cheered when Brad was chased, running with insoucient grace, and doing fancy flips as he slid into his seat. They laughed when Logan made horrified faces as a giggling little girl scurried after him, one tiny hand stretched out, trying to slap his waist.

At two o'clock, Clay came up and welcomed the children. He'd donned Mr. P's floppy hat and heavy knapsack, complete with rappelling ropes. He told the children a little about Christ as the rock of our salvation. Then Beth came up to lead singing, the same portion of Psalm 18 that we used for Stillwater VBS last week. The kids were a little cold at first, but Beth acted silly, exaggerating her enthusiasm, and slowly the kids warmed to her. Anna and David made funny faces at the kids while they held the posters with the words on them.

Next, everyone sat down, and Clay came up and told the story of the stoning of Stephen. Logan acted the part of Stephen, and David played the part of Saul. Clay talked about how Saul had a heart of stone, hardened to the Gospel. He explained to the children that Saul's heart of stone led him to be evil, to look the other way while Stephen was being killed.

After the Bible lesson, Brad marched all the kids up in two lines, their hands on one another's shoulders to make two trains. We all trooped upstairs to the basketball gym to play lions-tigers-and-bears. Brad lined everyone up against the wall and counted us off into kinds of animals. Then we ran to the two opposite ends of the gym, and the game began. Brad yelled, "Lions!" Logan and I ran forward with all the other lions, dodging the three kids who'd had yellow batons bestowed on them by Brad. These kids were the "hunters" and tried to tag the "animals". When Brad called for tigers, Clay and David roared and raised their arms while they ran, which made the kids laugh. The gym echoed with shouts, squeals, and laughs. The room wasn't airconditioned, but a couple of huge wire fans chugged away on the floor, puffing out warm air. The usual gym smells of old basketball rubber and sweat hung on the air. Mr. Parnell scooped up one of the smallest girls, Leeanna, and she clung to his back with thin white arms and legs. Her short, brown hair flopped into her face, but her two big, pansy-blue eyes smiled with glee as he ran carefully forward. Ruth held the brown hand of another small girl, Naomi.

One of the older girls, Katie, latched onto me. She had dark blond hair, a snub nose, and snapping blue eyes: a vivacious, confident girl. After the game, during snacks back in our room downstairs, she told me all about her family. She's the youngest, nine years old. She has five brothers and two sisters, but most of her siblings are grown-up. She has a cat named Spats and a couple of dogs. While she talked, I listened, keeping half an eye on the rest of the kids. The kids were sitting around in several large groups, mixed with the helpers. Logan had spotted some of the kids who'd been troublemakers and was sitting with them. The W girls were sitting with their friends, and Anna was sitting with another Anna, a little girl who'd been reluctant to participate. Mr. W strolled around with a big broom, sweeping up crumbs from the crunchy granola bars.

After snack, Anna lined everyone up against the mirrors. She asked Clay to hold the sign with the words of the verse. Laura helped her show the kids how to make the sign language motions to fit the verse, Ezekiel 36:26. Four boys goofed off until Mr. P came and stood by them. Most of the kids participated happily, though I doubt they'd ever seen anything like this before. After they'd gone through the verse a few times, Anna chose some of them to come up and help lead the verse.

When the memory verse time ended, Brad split the kids up into two groups. Some kids stayed behind to play duck-duck-goose, but most of the kids ran down the hall to play red-light-green-light in a racquetball court. In order to enter the racquetball court, we had to duck under a little low door. I stood against one wall and watched. Christi lined all the kids against the far wall, but she put Katie, the girl who's been hanging onto me, in charge. Katie had a little pink whistle, shaped like a train. "Green light!" Katie shouted. Everyone raced forward: Ruth with Naomi on her back, Logan with Leeanna on his back. A pair of small Hispanic boys stomped enthusiastically so that the echoes thudded like the noise of giants' feet. Then Katie blew her whistle for red light, and everyone stopped. We played games for thirty minutes or so, then returned to our room for the mission story.

Christi pulled on a nice blue jacket and sat down at a table in front of the kids. Missy sat down in a chair, and they did a TV-interview-style-skit about Sudan, giving the kids basic information about the climate, population, religion, foods, and culture of Sudan. After the mission presentation, at four o'clock, most of the parents arrived to pick up their kids. During this process, another massive game of duck-duck-goose was in progres.

A few of the parents had gotten the wrong message that VBS ended at four-thirty. We picked up the room so that it could be used for a kickboxing lesson, then sat outside in the hall area. There were fusball and air hockey tables. Logan played ping-pong with a boy who happened to walk by, while Mr. Parnell organized a running game of fusball with the left-behind kids. After most of the kids had been picked up, helpers started to leave. Katie took a load of girls in her car, and most of the boys drove in Clay's car. Mr. P and Laura left to drive back to Stillwater. I found myself left with Logan (still playing ping-pong), Brad, and Mr. W. Mr. W and Brad were playing air hockey. I sat on a bench and watched weight lifters in the weight lifting studio nearby. One man hefted some huge dumbbells ten times. His fat muscles heaved under his sunburned arms. Three Black boys sauntered past, sweat beaded on their foreheads. A family led by a mother with four small, blond girls and a couple of little boys pattered past, the girls' flip-flops thocking on the tile floor. The ping-pong ball skipped back and forth between the paddles, and the puck whacked against the sides of the air hockey table: staccato sounds.

Finally, the boys were ready. Mr. W and I drove back in Brad's car. Logan followed Brad.

At the Ws' house, people lounged around in the living room, resting. The W girls organized everyone to practice a song for talent night on Thursday: "We're doin' a show and we're doin' it right!" I sat in a corner with my laptop. Mrs. W served spaghetti for supper. We had to sit at two tables: the main dining room table, and a side table.

After supper, Mr. W took Brad, Logan, David, Nathaniel, Clay, Ruth, and me to Vance AFB to use the aircraft simulaters. Mr. W is an instructor for the airforce. The base sits aloof from the town in the middle of broad, flat pastures. Wind-beaten elm trees line the narrow road out to the base. Housing for airforce members huddles at one end of the base, low brown houses hiding under grey overhanging eaves. Mr. W flashed his ID to the guard at the gate, then pulled past the dormitories where the USAF unmarried students lived, and stopped in the parking lot in front of one of the training buildings. We trailed behind him as he led us inside.

We walked through long, narrow corridors. Cinderblock walls, concrete ceilings, tile floors. Naked piping ran along the ceiling, and bare flourescent bulbs gave a greenish, flickering light. We walked past many doorways: one for a Boeing maintenance room, one for a generator, and several classrooms. The hallway smelled like coffee, but also of other things, which I didn't recognize--bitter, rubber and metal smells. At the end of the hall we came to one of the simulator classrooms, and Mr. W escorted us in. The room smelled sterile and bitter--a smell like computer dust. On the right was the power generator against the wall. The room stretched to the left. Three huge black boxes marched down the room, taking up almost all the space except for narrow walkways between the boxes and the walls. These boxes were the simulators. The room was full of the whirr of the big fans which cool the computer and TV screens inside the simulators. Mr. W led us to the middle simulator. These simulators are for T-38 aircraft. There's a small platform, surrounded by a metal railing. On the platform is a desk with three monitors perched on it. The desk sits to one side of the platform. In the middle of the platform the pilot's chair is set, low down, and the screen opens above, in front, and on either side of the pilot's chair. Mr. W warned us that the screens are frangible, so we had to be careful as we ducked in and out of the pilot's chair.

Brad flew first. He took off, zooming the plane up the runway. Flying crazily, he managed to go above G level several times. David flew, and then Ruth flew. We watched the altitude, speed, and velocity indicators on one of the computer monitors. The green dials on the monitor were an exact replica of the cockpit indicators. There was also a monitor with video feed of the images on the simulator screen inside the cockpit, and a monitor for the instructor (Mr. W), which allowed him to control what the simulator showed. After Ruth flew, it was my turn. I flew fairly even most of the time, only trying one barrel roll. The brown-and-green countryside streaked past under the nose of the plane. A pale sun stood like the pointer of a compass in the blue sky above the low-slung seat.

Logan flew next, with a big grin on his face. "Exhilarating!" he said as he clambered out of the seat. He chatted with Ruth, the two of them hanging onto the metal railing around the edge of the platform. Clay and Nathaniel both flew next.

Then Mr. W led us back down the hall. He opened a door and briefly showed us the old hydraulic systems, which used to be the standard simulators. Next he took us to another big room. This room had a much higher ceiling than the T-38 room. The simulators in this room are for T-6 aircraft. When Mr. W opened the door, Ruth and I gasped a little. The T-6 simulators have a 270 degree surround screen, not like the 180 degree screen on the T-38 simulators. So the T-6 simulators are like big cylinders, black tubes--or like observatories. Stairs run up to a room inside the simulator. The bank of computer monitors is set to one side, and the pilot's seat is set low in the floor to the left of the monitors. The simulator screen runs almost all the way around inside the room, and slants up overhead, too. Ruth flew first. Mr. W moved her along the simulator map so that she flew over Stillwater. She and I laughed with delight as we recognized Boomer Lake, the football stadium at OSU, San Born Lake, Lake Carl Blackwell, and our home neighborhoods. Mr. W set the program to late dusk, and stars leaped out on the smooth simulator screen. The brown-green-cream land darkened, flecked with city lights. The square fields were like tiles of a mosaic.

Then it was my turn to fly. As I scrambled into the cockpit, Mrs. W and Anna stuck their heads into the simulator. They'd come to take Ruth and me home. I did a couple of barrel rolls, which made Anna woozy. It was fun to watch the countryside streak past below, to make the plane come about, banking the white wings. As close as I'll ever come to flying....

After Ruth and I had flown, Mrs. W drove us back to their house. The boys are still out at the simulator. Katie is asleep on her bed upstairs. Christi is trimming Ruth's hair in the kitchen: I can hear Ruth giggle, the soothing murmur of Christi's voice. Beth and Missy listen to 1950s music in the office, chuckling as they try to choose a piece for their skit on talent night. Mrs. W and Anna both sit in the living room. Mrs. W folds brochures for church, and Anna checks her e-mail on Missy's laptop. The computer plays the soundtrack to "Rigoletto", dreamy, fairytale music. The ceiling fans rattle and creak. A gentle close to the evening.