Staff Fun Day

Don't we look like we're having fun? Oh, what a day! Today was Staff Fun Day for First United Methodist Church. We've had a very difficult year, and our staff has really been through the ringer. In an attempt to relieve some of the stress and pressure and to help us bond together as a team. Gretchen organized it, and this morning we all met in the Sanctuary at 9:00 to start our day.

We were divided into three teams:

I was on a team with Michael Williams, Silvia Stewart, Judy Jones, Josh Mink, and Bill White.

The second team was Amanda Diamond, Ben Alexander, Janet Jones, Julie Leath, and Tommy Lusk.

The third team was Lynn Hinkle, Gavin Richardson, Lora O'Steen, Michelle Seibert, and Vanessa McPeak.

There was someone with a van or large vehicle on each team and someone with a camera on each. I just happened to bring my camera, so I was our team photographer. (I will pause now with a shameless plug for the Gorillapod by Joby. It's a great little tripod with fully bendable and grippy legs. It's great for hiking and things like this wear you need to set it somewhere and jump in a picture.)

Like most churches, our financial situation is worrisome at the moment. We went the free route and had a photo scavenger hunt. We had a list of things to do with different point values. We were warned that we wouldn't have enough time to do them all, so part of the challenge was figuring out which photos to take and the most efficient way to accomplish the tasks. There was also a five point bonus for every photo where the group was hugging or giving high fives.

My team started with the trunk picture. Now, we could have just jumped in the back of Bill's van like the other teams, but we all got into Silvia's trunk instead (the back seats fold down). We got some really strange looks from church members in the parking lot while we tried to cram everyone in.

Our second photo was at the Waffle House. We needed a picture of everyone wearing their hats. We got the hats and ran into another church member who took the picture for us. We later got in trouble because we took the hats. The employees there told us to take them, but I guess there weren't hats for the other teams.

I'm not going to go through all of them, but you can look through the Staff Fun Day photo album on here and see the pictures. There was a pretty funny misunderstanding of the last task. Teams were supposed to go to First Baptist Church and take a picture holding up "their" pastor while two Baptists look on. We thought we were supposed to pick up the Baptist pastor, but they just wanted us to pick up the pastor in our group (we have four pastors, so each group had one).

Gretchen and Cay sent us text messages throughout the morning with bonus points for getting answers to questions right. We had to figure out the clues at 11:45 which led us to lunch at Fuji and a slideshow of everyone's pictures from throughout the day. Amanda's team won the grand prize Fun Day Cups. It was a great day full of laughter!