Vacation Bible School 2019

At the beginning of the year, my husband created a master calendar with all of the big church event dates and times. We let everyone at the church know that these were our "planned-in-advance" events and that we would need as many workers committed to help as possible.

As the dates came closer for VBS, we made flyers and invitations and began going out in the community inviting people to attend.  Last year was our first ever Vacation Bible School and I was praying the God would send 10 children. He more than doubled that because 24 children came on the highest night! This year I prayed that 20 children would come consistently each night.

Our theme this year was Pioneers and Prairie Dogs. I absolutely love these Quality Speech materials! They do a fabulous job. I envisioned how I wanted the platform decorating to be and drew a sketch. The backdrops and cacti I was able to find on oriental trading company on sale! I showed Dan my sketch and asked if he could build me a 3D Conestoga wagon and fence.

 

Like the amazing man he is, Dan built this for me.

 

 

One of the members of our church owns horses, so she lent us the use of her saddle, rope, and bridle. We used paint cloths for the rough Conestoga wagon canvas. A few other church members donated their time on the Wednesday before VBS started to help me with the decorating.

Our Granville house had a bunch of huge burlap sacks in the basement, so I cut up two of them and a sweet church member helped me to sew up four smaller bags for our "supplies" of flour, sugar, and gold.



Originally, we were thinking we'd need to get actual wagon wheels from an antique store.  One of our local antique dealers said that they would allow us to borrow any props we needed as long as we paid a deposit of the amount they cost until we returned them.  But we ended up not needing to do that when Dan saw that Tractor Supply Company sells old-looking wagon wheels at a reasonable price.

That way we can reuse them, AND they all match.

VBS started on Sunday night and went thru Wednesday night.

 

We even had a bandit come each night!  The children got excited about that!

 We praise God that 32 children came on the first night and every night after that! It was exciting!
I was so thankful that one of the ladies at church volunteered to watch the girls for me while I was doing the part of the "wagon master".  After four nights of competition, the red team won and brother Jon got a pie in the face!

The coins children brought each night went to the Redeemer House which is an orphanage one of our missionaries began in Togo, West Africa.

The last night of VBS, we invited all parents and guardians to join us for the program as well as some refreshments afterwards.  I just love our local Stewart's shop....they donated a huge container of their amazing vanilla ice cream and all the trimmings for make-your-own-sundaes.

 

Since the theme of the VBS was basically that God's Word is our guide and we ought to read it, we gave out new bibles to all of the children on that last night. 

I tried to take some quick photos, but some of them were blurry they were so rushed.

We had such a fabulous week, and we're so thankful for each child who came and made decisions for Christ.  I'm already planning and preparing for our 2020 Space theme!

Vacation Bible School

 

 The month of July was so full of activities and events.  We decided that this year we would do a Vacation Bible School at our church for the first time. 

Since I am very familiar with the curriculum put out by Quality Speech, we settled on doing their VBS theme "It's a Jungle Out There."

 

One of the ladies in the church volunteered to be in charge of decorating the auditorium to look like a jungle.  That's no easy task, but she did a marvelous job of it!  The only thing she wasn't able to find was a box big enough to pass as a tiki hut.  Dan and I went and found these two boxes in the dumpster of a furniture store.   

 

 

 

They worked perfectly!!

 

I love how it turned out!!

 

The first night of VBS was a success!  Since this is the very first VBS this church has ever done, and since just one year ago when we arrived, there were no children at all, I wasn't setting my hopes too high.  I set a goal to have 10 children there.  I told the workers that if 10 children came each night, that would be an amazing feat. 

But the first night, 20 children came!  God doubled what I hoped for. 

Since I was in charge of everything, Gwen was looked after each night by so many kind people.  I think she enjoyed all of the extra attention.

 

Miss Peggy did an amazing job with the snacks each night.  She stepped in and volunteered to do them right before VBS, and I appreciated her help so much.

 

I told Dan that we needed two team captains- one for the red team and one for the blue team.  Since we had no volunteers for those jobs, we took them.  The week consisted of lots of good-natured ribbing and contests to see who would win. 

I had an inspirational idea to have the children put their handprints on white tee shirts for us to wear on the final night of VBS when we would see whose team won.  As you can  see, I was quite confident that I would come out the victor. 

 

See, each night, my team brought more pennies for the offering, my team sang nice and loud, my team said their memory verses, and also won more games.  BUT I wasn't anticipating that Dan would go to the bank the last day and get $25 worth of pennies and have workers distribute them to his team.  The little sneak.  So, I ended up with the pie in the face.

 

 

It worked out perfectly though that the workers who made the pie (out of whipped topping), made a second pie just for Dan. 

 

It was a great week of Bible School.  Several of the children begged us to please have Bible school every week of the summer. Although that's definitely not going to happen, it's exciting that five of the children who came to VBS are now coming to Sunday school each Sunday.

 

 

In other side news, our chickens are AWESOME!  They lay double yolks all the time, and finally (today being the first day) they are all 20 laying.  So exciting.   

I hope you all are having as awesome a summer as we are!  Today we are headed off to New Hampshire to attend the wedding of one of Dan's childhood friends. 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!