Meet Vern

Vern is the food coordinator for SERVE. He and his team of kitchen staff are famous for some amazing creations, both at SERVE and other church events. In Vern’s own words:

[My favorite part is] watching people as they gather for coffee time or at a event, sitting around enjoying one another’s company. You can see the smiles and wonderful fellowhip they are having. God is surely at work.

Vern and his wife Joyce are avid University of Michigan fans, so if you want to get on his good side (your tummy will thank you) wear blue and gold and practice up on your “Hail to the Victors.” In addition to the cooking, Vern also feels the need, the need for speed, as he’d love to star in the 80′s classic, Top Gun.

Meet Brian

Brian is Calvin CRC’s youth pastor; he’s also the cat herder for SERVE. His job is to organize or delegate all the different details that make up a SERVE week: food, transportation, lodging, work sites, fun and games… it’s a lot of work but worth it. Brian’s favorite part is “how many different people, young and old… get involved and have such a spiritual awakening that impacts our church, the kids who come, as well as the community.” The Friday night worship for 2009′s SERVE was a God Sighting for Brian, as the service lasted for over four hours and “everyone wanted more!”

Brian and his wife Courtney have two daughters, with a third child on the way. Brian just finished his Master’s degree, which is pretty impressive for a guy who says his best subject in school was gym. Maybe that’s why he’s a youth pastor: there’s always a dodgeball game around the corner. When he’s not in the gym or at home, there’s a good chance he’s on the golf course, pretending to be Happy Gilmore.

Mail Call

In the past two days, we’ve already had 51 messages sent to our serve participants via the contact form. That’s awesome!

I thought some of you might be interested in knowing how your message gets from the web site to the recipient. When you fill out the form, it sends an e-mail with the message to myself (the Muskegon Serve webmaster and tech guy) and our prayer coordinator. One of us prints up the e-mails each morning, usually around 10 or 11 AM EST, so if you have a message that you want to arrive on a particular day get it in before then

All Serve participants were assigned an mailbox; these are usually mailboxes for families A-L at our church, but they’re taken over for a week during Serve. Once the messages are printed off, they delivered to the appropriate mailbox, usually along with a small gift from the participant’s prayer partner (everybody has one).

It’s great fun seeing how excited everybody (kids and adults alike) gets over checking their mailbox, so I’ll try to get some video of that tomorrow. Until then, keep sending those messages!