For a fundraiser, our youth group moves flocks of fifty flamingos from house to house.  For $10 you can send them to somebody's front yard and that person has to buy flamingo "insurance" to have them removed.  We bought the best insurance, which guarantees the flock will fly away within 24 hours.  We did this because other members of the church love to send them to us.  I think we set a record last year for having the flamingos in our yard the most.  It's pretty funny the looks we get...like from the guy who came to turn on our sprinklers and asked, "What's going on here?"

The funniest thing is that an older woman (my daughter calls her "the girl with the white hair") had the flamingos in the yard of her mobile home.  When the youth group went to retrieve the birds, neighbors called the police and our youth group leader got pulled over.  It took him a while to convince the cop that he was a leader in our church--he has an afro pierced ears. 

This is so going in my next novel.  The main character will be trying out church for the first time and will be shocked to see a kid in a flamingo outfit greet her at the front door--a kid really did this at our church to advertise for the fundraiser.  Anyway, I can see her and the guy who lives in the other half of her duplex sending the flamingos back and forth to each other.  

Who are we going to send the flamingos to next?  I think we decided on a church council member who is also a school principal.  That should get his neighbors talking.

Our church put together 24-hours of prayer this weekend. My husband took our 8-year-old son with him to the prayer room for his one hour shift. When I went for my shift I was able to read what Jordan had written on the paper covered walls--he prayed for the salvation of his friends. It was so sweet (even though it sounded as if he just wanted them on his heavenly basketball team) that I was overcome with tears of thankfulness.

So many other amazing things happened, and it all culminated in a pizza/pie party after church today. I won the pie-baking contest and I tried to get my husband to do the pie eating contest, but he refused. (Pictured is our youth pastor Afro Phil.) There was also pizza bingo for the kids and a build your own mini-pie that came with a scripture verse about "being filled with fruit." Who ever said church is boring?