who needs sleep?

well you're never gonna get it.
who needs sleep?
tell me, what's that for...
(lyrics from a bare naked ladies song... where in the world did that band get their name anyway?)

friday night was our middle school lock-in. we had 84 kids. sometimes i forget the magnitude of our youth program, but it's hard to ignore when you have to rent TWO charter buses just to get to the mini-theme-park at the mall (after it closes) so the kids have their run of the laser-tag, go carts, games and climbing wall. oh, sure, we did the more traditional lock-in stuff too... like playing sardines... nothing like hide-and-seek in a big dark church!

ah, memories.

what i had forgotten, though, is how COOL it is to stay up at that age! one kid came up to me toward the end of the movie we watched (cheaper by the dozen) to ask what time it was. i looked at my watch and said, "almost 3am..." her face lit up in wonderment, "wow... coooooool."

the following day i watched a kid tell his mom, "we had church at 1 in the morning!!!"

awesome.

needless to say, none of us were very rested for the service projects we participated in the following morning. hundreds of church peeps did work all over the city. pretty cool.

and this weekend will be our lock-OUT, when the high schoolers sleep outside in boxes. me too. good times to come.