Dearest Rachel –
To be honest, honey, this letter is probably more geared for Dad than it is for you. When I left his room yesterday afternoon – because I had to collect Daniel and grab an early dinner before the evening’s Awana club – he insisted that I present him with a full report of the night’s activities when next I show up to see him (which, at the time, was not necessary guaranteed to be today, but that’s quite literally another story entirely), and an assessment of how things might go now that we’ve started this at a new location. So, as a means to collect my thoughts about it, I figured I might just write you about it, and fill you in on the experience, as well.
After all, this is our first expansion of the club in living memory; everything has always only been operating in our flagship Des Plaines campus. And while our campus in Chicago proper was the locus of the very first such club in the world, it hasn’t had the church body to staff such a club in ages. Meanwhile, the Randhurst campus has been growing (despite the fact that we siphoned off some of our number upon opening the Northshore campus), and many families from here have apparently been reluctant to drive their kids all the way to Des Plaines by six in the evening (you’ll recall that, back in the day, I had trouble juggling my work schedule to make it there on time – and that was back in the days when club would start at six-thirty). So, since we’ve had a fair number of volunteers like ourselves who attend at Randhurst, it was decided that we split our operations between these two campuses going forward.
As much as this opens up possibilities for us, I think I’ve already expressed some concerns to you in previous letters. I’m not being pessimistic about it (at least, I’m trying not to be – feel free to let me know if I’ve succeeded at all), but it does present certain logistical challenges. Our location, while extraordinarily visible and accessible from the street and within a dense population (thereby giving us opportunity to reach a vast new network of kids within a short distance), is also considerably smaller than our flagship location, with limited facilities, in terms of… let’s just say, activities. The basement isn’t exactly a proper gym, is what I’m saying. Moreover, there’s a certain concern about whether we’ve been able to field sufficient volunteers to staff the location; last Wednesday’s briefing didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that we’d have enough for each team, I’ll be honest.
I’d expressed these concerns with the folks at previous times, and while they focused more on the opportunities than our current limitations (again, I realize I tend to be more of a pessimist than anyone else in the family), they were at least willing to acknowledge that any new venture such as this could be prone to potential pitfalls. There are, by its very nature, a lot of unknowns involved. As an aside, though – and here’s a touch of optimism coming from me for you – the fact that he wants to know all the details he can is definitely a sign that Dad’s improving. Anyone giving up on life would stop focusing on what’s going on down here – apart, perhaps, from making a few more last minute, arrangements to get their affairs in order – to direct their attention to the eternal. I think at this point, he’s concluded that he’s going to be around for a little while longer, so he wants to be kept abreast of everything that’s going on, particularly at church, where he’s been involved so heavily for so long. And given what we’ve all been through lately, I’m more than happy to oblige him.
But first, we actually have to go through the evening, and I have to fulfill my part in this process, in order to make my observations. How many volunteers do we really have? How many kids are we going to get? In short, how is this going to work out, logistically speaking?
***
The nice thing about being effectively retired is that I can go where I think I need to be when I think I need to be there. Along with being at Dad’s bedside on a daily basis, this also includes getting to church with well over an hour before the leaders/volunteers are required to be there, in order to make sure that everything is ‘properly’ set up (whatever that may mean; it’s not as if we have any template to work with).
After a leisurely lunch/dinner with Daniel, (another perk of the semi-retired lifestyle), the two of us parked at the school across the street and a block away from the church (so as to leave the parking for the parents who would be dropping their kids off throughout the evening; we had no idea how many there would be, or what level of congestion we would be dealing with); arriving at the doors at about a quarter to five or so. Unfortunately, while there were staff doing this and that inside, none of them seemed to be aware that we were outside ringing the bell, requesting to be let in. I must have rang it about eight or nine times before another leader (in fact, the Director of the Cubbies group – for kids younger than Sparks) arrived, and called one of the staffers via her cell phone, at which point, they activated the remote unlock function.
Note to self, and to Daniel: there’s no point in getting here any sooner than five going forward.
That proved to be true for more reasons than that; setting things up in a smaller campus like this is a much faster operation than we were used to at Des Plaines. Sure, there’s the uncertainty of “where does everything go?” but that really only applies this first time around; and even then, we were pretty much done and set up by half past the hour.
I was rebuffed from setting up my computer at the registration desk, though; the young staffers insisted that they would take care of that themselves, and make a copy of the information to me later on. While this left me wondering what I would be doing for the first half of the night, I did appreciate the opportunity to not have to move my set up in the middle of everything. I did ask, however, if it wouldn’t be easier for them to simply forward the list of kids checked in electronically (since, after all, everything was being done on computers in the first place); they seemed to agree that this was a good idea, but ultimately, due to technical issues of one sort or another, they wound up having to print out a list for me anyway. In either event, they managed to do so with just enough time for me to prepare new entrance guides for ten new kids.
Ensconced as I was in the upstairs office, where the kids would be finishing their night, studying their handbooks and learning scripture, I wasn’t physically present for most of the real chaos. However, the summary of it wasn’t that much different from our routine at Des Plaines; everybody starts in the auditorium, after which point, the Sparks head to the gym (or similar equivalent), and from there to the study and lesson room, where I was already set up, recording attendance and preparing the new booklets. From there, it was a quick few steps for any leader to notify me of any kids passing a milestone for which an award was deserved; in fact, since most of the new leaders didn’t ‘know better,’ they would present me with the kids’ already-earned wings for me to add jewels to them that they’d earned that night (as opposed to just giving me the notification slip, and my having to collect their wings to fill during the following week’s game time).
Meanwhile, once the game time was over, Daniel was assigned to guard the bathroom and make sure that no adults were in there at the same time as any of the kids – for liability purposes, don’t you know. He noticed a curious thing; since there’s really only one bathroom in the facility (technically, there are a couple of them off to the side in the downstairs activity room, but they’re not obvious to the kids, and none of them thought to use them), there weren’t that many cases of kids needing to rush off and use the bathroom during one activity or another – whether out of actual need, or just trying to get away from whatever was going on that they didn’t want to be a part of.
In short, between one limitation or another – be it those of the facility itself, or the limited experience of our leaders, who weren’t set in one way or another as to how things ought to be done – things went considerably smoother then expected, or even in comparison to how things would happen back at Des Plaines. Now, maybe some of this is due to the fact that we only had thirty or so kids in total for our part of the club (I can’t speak for the younger or older groups), but however you look at it, things went well. Our limitations didn’t hold us back; rather, they made things work out better. They proved to be strengths rather than weaknesses.
It should be interesting to see if this becomes the ‘new normal’ here; a few more weeks, and we ought to know one way or another. For now, though, keep an eye on us all, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 