In Memory of a Friend

Yesterday afternoon our good friend Taylor Vander Weele was called home following a tractor accident. Visitation with the family will occur from 3-8pm Friday at HRC, with the funeral service at 10:00am Saturday, followed by a graveside service and lunch.
Taylor was a committed Christian young man who had been an active and vital member of our youth ministry throughout middle school. Taylor loved being an adult, always choosing farming, fixing stuff, and doing heavy labor to playing and hanging out. His knowledge and ability as a handyman far surpassed me, and I leaned on him pretty heavy on several mission projects and on the remodel of the youth room (he personally installed the new screen, which had not even come with any sort of installation kit). Every Tuesday and Thursday I would see Taylor for at least a few minutes at school, and if for some reason I couldn't make it I was summarily called a chicken the next time I saw him. He was always telling me about his most current project, whether it be with his dad, their good friend Phil, or a project with his friends or cousins that often consisted of making a vehicle go significantly faster then it was supposed to. I know I speak for so many when I say Taylor was a great kid and will be so greatly missed. I also know that he had a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and now resides in Heaven. For God's grace and love in that regard I am truly thankful.

To honor Taylor and support his family and friends we are going to have a special youth group gathering for Middle School and High School Sunday night at 5:30 in the youth room. In the meantime feel free to post any words of encouragement or memories of Taylor here and we will make sure they get to the family.

This sucks. There, I said it. But in the midst of it all we have an almighty God that desires DESPERATELY to be with us to help us through. Yesterday I spoke to the middle schoolers about how God desires to be with us during the storms of our life. We looked at Jesus walking on water and how Jesus did not do that to show his power and might, but instead to get to his disciples, who were in desperate need in a major storm, so he could help them. It's the same way with our lives. In the midst of chaos and turmoil God will do the impossible to be with us and for us. We just need to let him by prayer, patience, and understanding. I thought afterwards that it was an incredibly irrelevant message and that I probably should have spoke about something else. Then this, the biggest of storms, crashed into our community two hours later. I guess God had a much better idea of what was relevant. I have also gained much strength from a verse I planned to speak on this weekend, and that is: “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep . . . I am the Good Shepherd; I know my sheep
and my sheep know me.” John 10:11,14

Jesus suffered and died on that cross so that Taylor, and indeed all who confess and believe, may have life eternal. As sad as this is we can rejoice that because of Christ's love Taylor's life is just beginning.

Doflin Cabin Trip Postponement

Because of something that has taken place in our church family we have made the decision to postpone our middle school Dolfin Cabin trip scheduled for this weekend. We will be calling everyone today alerting them to this change. We are tentatively rescheduling it for July 24th-26th. Obviously, for those of you who those dates do not work for we'll make sure to get your money back. If you have any questions please talk to Pastor Andy or the church office.

I know 90% of you know why this is, but out of respect for the family, especially family members who have not been reached, we're going to hold off on specifics on this site for awhile. If anyone needs to reach me today you can call me at home or the church office and I will try to get you called back as soon as possible.

MS Dolfin Cabin 09 is almost here!

After months of planning and anticipation MS Dolfin's Cabin 09 is LIVE in only three days. 29 middle school students will be enjoying a weekend of water activities (and with the warm weather this week the lake will be about 78 degrees), crazy (and often wet and messy games), chances to hangout with their friends over soda and even hot chocolate, small groups, and amazing and powerful worship services that will connect us all to God. Our theme this year is MADE, and we're going to be looking at what the Bible tells us about who it is that God made US to be. Besides, how can you not have fun when the packing list for this trip includes 4 jars of peanut butter (not to be eaten of course!), close to 100 water guns, around 400 water balloons, 200 Alka-Seltzer tablets (don't ask), a full sound and lighting system (complete with an industrial strength smoke machine), and approximately 25% of the Earth's supply of Mountain Dew (ok, maybe just a little less then that). Here are some details for those going to remember
**Meet at Church at 6:45am Friday with no more then one suitcase and one carry-on
**Make sure to follow the packing list you received
**We will return at 3pm on Sunday
**Prepare yourself for an amazing experience!

This past weekend at HRC

I hope everyone had a great weekend, especially all the Dad's out there. I am way more then officially back from vacation it seems like, and our vacation was certainly a good one. I'm also feeling quite jovial today after the U.S's crazy day yesterday in the Confederation's Cup in South Africa, destroying African champs Egypt 3-0 to advance to face Goose's Spain on Wed. We'll probably get killed, but beating Spain would make my next conversation with Goose quite fun. My inner soccer nerd is also rejoicing in getting to attend the semi-finals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup in Chicago this July. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm soccer....

Last night our High School Youth Group kicked off our summer message series, God's Extreme Make-Over. We talked about how our world has become obsessed with making people over to be better (just look at TV: What not to Wear, Extreme Make-Over, Biggest Loser, etc.). As Christians we do all need to be better, but that's something we need to LET God do in our lives. I think too often we think "well, I accepted Christ into my heart, that's all I need to do." But really, that's only step one in the Christian life. The next step is to let God transform you into something better, which we seminary types give this crazy word sanctification to. Basically, what it means is that God sends his Spirit to make-over your life, to make you better. The results of letting God make-over your life can be found in Galatians 5: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, and Self Control. Looks like a pretty good life right? That's what we can have if we let God make us over. The problem is, we too often try to do it all ourselves. Checkout what the Bible says about that route: "It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time; repetitive, cheap sex, a stinking accuimulation of mental and emotional garbage, frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness, trinket gods, magic show religion, paranoid lonliness, cutthroat competition; all consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants."To let God make us over we simply need to stop just trying to get what WE want, and instead start letting God take over our life.

Vacation Update and stuff for this week

Greetings from the land of corn, eternal flatness, and smelly pigs. We have had a great time seeing many of Andrea's friends and classmates in Jefferson, and spending a couple of days with my parents. Being back in Sioux City meant preaching the obligatory homecoming sermon, so I preached at Mom and Dad's Church (Grace Methodist) for their outdoor outreach service on Sunday. They got to see the great picture of Jentink stuck in the overhead compartment of the bus, so that was all good. Tomorrow we head for the Twin Cities and Mall of America, and Annalysa is mega excited to meet Dora the Explorer. Should be a very fun mini-vacation for us. We will also be driving by what I think should be the location of the next Kappers family vacation, The International Spam Museum, since Dan showed us all how much he loves SPAM (ask a middle schooler!).

This coming Sunday our high school group WILL be meeting at our normal time. We debated months ago whether or not to have youth group, but if we did not have it we would only have one all June (which I would'nt even be at) and we figured that most Father's day celebration would be occuring earlier in the day. Our feelings will not be hurt if you can't be there (so don't start a family civil war just to make it to youth group), but if you will be around we will be doing a fun game that will take you all over Hingham and kicking off our God's Extreme Make-Over series, which we will be looking at all summer long. So, hang with Dad early in the day and we'll see you at night.

Schedules up and some schedule changes

If you look to the right you will find our summer schedules for both groups, so if you've lost yours you can always find it here (there are plenty of extra copies in the youth room as well).

We have made a couple of changes to the next week because of people's schedules. The high school gal night for Wednesday is being moved to Monday at 6:30. All gals will be heading to Kelly Lee's house for a night of fun, hopefully outside depending on weather. The Guy's All You Can Eat Rib Extraveganza for Thursday is being moved up half an hour to 6:00. This should hopefully give everyone time to get off work, but also get home at a normal time. Cost for the guys is the cost of your meal, which comes out to about $20. Gals, if you have questions you can talk to Kelly, and guys you can talk to Ben.

We try to not make changes to the schedule as we realize it is hard to get the changes out to everyone, but in these cases we just had to. Everyone should be receiving a phone call about the change. We do not forsee major changes to the remainder of the schedule, but if we change anything we will call you.

Otherwise, I am currently headed towards Iowa as we have our family vacation. We will be visiting family and then heading to the Twin Cities to do Mall of America and the Zoo. Then it's only one more week after getting back that we head to Dolfin's Cabin with our Middle Schoolers! We have a record 29 students attending, and I am getting realy excited about everything that God has planned for that weekend. See you all soon.

Random stuffs

Got back from the crazy memory work pizza party. Why is it that everyone in elementry school thinks I am either A) their own personal court jester or B)their own personal jungle gym? It was a fun night, but certainly a hyped up crazy one. It was really cool to see over 50 kids who took learning their memory work very seriously this year. We upped our expectations in rewriting our program this year, and the kids actually were willing to learn MORE then ever before. Pretty cool...
Cubs still stink, but it's only June, so maybe an amazing comeback is coming...
Tomorrow is graduation at Oostburg. What a huge change in a bunch of lives. I pray God helps them all through the massive changes in life they are about to experience... Why is it so cold here? It's June and I'm like shivering. I keep wearing Hawaiian shirts everyday thinking that will make it warmer, but it does not work. Maybe tomorrow I'll wear a down jacket and Dan's massive dead animal hat thingy... We had a good HS group on Sunday. We went to Gustavo's fav American joint, Culver's and had some great discussion on why people choose not to attend church. You could tell the students had great interest in it because they actually discussed it very seriously WHILE at Culver's. For the first time in our country less then half of the country is going to church weekly. One of the craziest stats we looked at though was that of the people who do no attend any sort of worship only 10% list as their main reason not believing in God. Most either have problems with Christians or are just too lazy (by their own admission). It blows my mind though that most people are willing to accept God existing, but much slower to believe in us Christians. That's a challenge to us to change our ways and actually live according to scripture.