Monday August 16, 2010

I sat and watched the sun burn the mist away from the trees this morning while hummingbirds warred with each other right outside the window. Birds were swooping across the yard and I wished for one instant that summer would be far enough gone to open the windows and turn off the air. (And thought better of it immediately. Summer, please stay.) The beauty reminded me of two things.

1. The night I listened to the song, “What a Wonderful World,” live by Concordia. I tried to find Clausen’s version on youtube and couldn’t, but I liked this song by them, too.

2. Vacation Bible School. David and I were superintendent this year and opted for a Creation theme. David has been listening to Ken Ham some the last while and one of the things he came away with was this, “If you don’t believe Creation, you won’t believe the rest of the Bible.” It’s that foundational. I loved that it is so easy for children to get excited about and so easy to re-create.

Marcus and Missy, another couple from church, were our assistants; we could not have had better people to work with. They were excited about everything, had lots of good ideas, and best of all saw what they could do and jumped in and did it. Because of them, I have such good memories of that week and getting ready.

We re-created the scene of creation in a limited way onstage every night. David would talk to the kids about what God created that day and then raise the curtain so they could see. They loved, loved it. Since Bible School is only five nights instead of seven, he put days 1 and 2 together and days 6 and 7 at the end. My SIL, Kristina, did an amazing job painting posters to represent the days and to write out the poem on Creation. Anyone out there already know you are Superintendent for next year and want a pre-made theme / decor? Have posters. Will ship for cash.

We used those big rolls of plastic table cover for the sky and bought grass from a landscaping place. The fish really should have been swimming in the pond itself, but we didn’t want the kids to jump up on the stage. So if you ever do this, put the pond way in the front. The bamboo wilted pretty badly even though we put it in water overnight, but thankfully we had generous friends who let us cut more.

The last few years the attendance has pretty much fizzled out except for our own church kids. It’s not surprising. Our church is way (!) back in the mountains where no one except the ever present bikers go and the mountain folk who have lived there forever have passed the stage of school-age children years ago. When we passed out invitations in a subdivision last year, we got 0 response. I wasn’t surprised. Twenty-five minutes is far to drive your children every night and even though we offered transportation, I would never send my children with strangers, even to Bible School.

This year we tried something new. Instead of a group of people passing out invitations in one general area, every family was given three invites to give to people they knew and they were responsible to provide transportation. We still ran one or two vans for people who were comfortable but it made all the difference in the world to invite people who personally knew someone in our church. Our attendance hung out around 71 instead of 35-40.

The other very cool new idea we implemented came from Missy. Where she was from in Iowa, they have this fun way of doing offering. Monday night the kids bring pennies. Tuesday night nickels. Wednesday, well, you get the picture. It sounded like a blast so we tried it. I expected to get lots of pennies because what mom or dad isn’t willing to dump a pile of pennies in a little bag. But I was completely blown away. The year before our offering Monday night was a stellar $8. This time we had $32. I was sure that by the time we got to quarters it would drop off and definitely with dollars. I was wrong. We ordered a poster from C.A.M and put our offering toward their food for the hungry family. They sent a poster with truck stickers because $25 will buy enough seeds to grow one truckload of vegetables. They sent enough truck stickers to represent $600. David toyed with the idea of having one truck load represent $10 or something because we were afraid we wouldn’t end up with many trucks. Good thing we didn’t. The offering nearly doubled every single night and the momentum seemed to feed the children’s excitement about buying more trucks. By the time the week was over we had well over $700 in offering money! I think some teachers were helping because Thursday night we found a $50 bill and Friday night there were two 50’s and a $100. We filled that poster alright! The kids were ecstatic!

The last night of VBS is traditionally celebrated with ice cream cones. Cleanup can be kind of a mess we found out last year. Some teachers put their rooms back together, some don’t. And the superintendents get left with all general cleanup. This year David made a list and everyone pitched in and helped because they knew what to do which went a hundred times better. Better yet, Missy and I and few other people fixed food and we all got to enjoy a pizza party afterward. And when that was done, let me tell you, we were so ready to be done. I loved the job except for the whole, pulling the boys out of abbreviated naps and trying to stuff supper into them at 4:15 so we could hit the road and dealing with their grouchy slowness for the next hour. But by the time we were halfway to church, everyone was excited again (except for Liam who’s bad attitude always lasted til we actually got there) and having so much fun.

And just for fun, here are some video snippets from the last night. Oh, and I uploaded tons of VBS pictures in the photoblog. I just didn’t add many here so the page wouldn’t take so long to load.

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