DAY FOUR, FINALE: PART I

While most programs -- and our curriculum -- are designed for 5 days, it was decided last year that 4 days of Vacation Bible School are enough for this church. It's sufficient time, our logic went, for kids to develop a routine and internalize the lessons, but not enough time to hit that awful, sluggish, dim-witted wall of exhaustion that marks almost every "camp" experience.

OK, you're right -- but it SOUNDED good to say it was for the kids! Truthfully: The four-day-only concession was probably more for the grown-up helpers. This I realized at breakfast on Day Four (7:20 AM), when I glanced around the room and noticed we all looked like the collective parents of a newborn. Damp hair, hastily thrown-on clothes, each of us some combination of bumbling, stumbling, exhausted or cranky (not that the crankiness so much showed, just that we all readily confessed to it when asked).

We were dragging, for sure (my throat was killing me, whether from talking louder than the campers or from affecting a Frieda-Johnson-from-Wisconcin accent, I could not decide). But we dialed up the energy fast, because the kids deserved it and needed it. And because, as one leader said, "We can survive anything as long as it's Day Four." Around the staff room, this quickly became a mantra. " DAY FOUR. DAY FOUR. HALLELUJAH, DAY FOUR!"