VBS is a big week for our church. It takes hours of planning and hard work. I loved praying with about five women every morning before it started as we looked forward to what God would do that day! The kids hear truth all week and God always seems to be vividly at work as we interact at our small group tables. I was in 1st & 2nd grade and had all boys (and a teen guy helper) at my table! We had really good conversations every day about things like death, man’s rebellion, and how “it’s impossible for a kid not to sin.”–one of my rambunctious kids told me this. I asked him how he knew and he said seriously, “Oh, I just know!” I felt like I was spiritually watering, weeding and seeding all week. My favorite moment was when I asked one of the boys at my table to help explain the gospel message in his workbook to the other one who’d never heard much about Jesus before. I loved hearing him explain it in his own words!
VBS week is never without humor. It’s impossible not to laugh when you’re surrounded by 150 kids, although much of the laughter does come from the pastoral staff’s daily skits, although our one funny thing did happen after our Saturday “hiking” skit. Our skit had three parts, one where we were packing for the backpacking trip, one where we hiked to our campsite, and one where we set up camp. My character did quite a few silly things like trying to bring my pressure cooker in my backpack and keeping tons of “midnight snacks” in the tent (bad bear manners). But Payton did a really bad thing during the skit and ate berries without knowing if they were poisonous or not. A week after our skit, we were helping some friends move. As Payton was moving boxes in and out of the house, one of the little girls looked at Payton and pointed to some flower bushes that were budding and said very matter-of-factly, “Those berries are poisonous!”…just in case Payton decided he was going to munch on their plants while he was out and about. I laughed pretty hard when he told me. The kids think I eat about 8 Cliff Bars every night for a midnight snack, but they think Payton doesn’t know which plants he’s allowed to eat and he might at any point eat something he’s not supposed to! What a legacy!
Then there were the pastors skits in which Payton played the lion. I’m not sure that the skit ended exactly the way they had all planned, but I was amused. I loved the sabotaged hunting expedition and the fact that it ended in the bear and the lion running off with all of the hunters’ shoes, phones, and wallets. Extortion is always a great ending to a skit, don’t you think?
Apparently the kids learned a valuable lesson too. I found this scribbled on a marker board after the final episode of their skit. The artist even included the “Humin Fud” bait box full of donuts that the lion and bear used to lure the pastors into the trap.
Every time I look at this it cracks me up! Maybe you had to be there? God seemed to use kids to remind me to laugh at life and to view every moment with those little souls as precious, especially when it comes to sharing truth!
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