The past four mornings I've been volunteering at Vacation Bible School at the church where my grand nieces worship and I serve as Nursery Supervisor. What a blast!
The theme this year was Camping, so Pastor Peter took the kids--ages 2 to 12 or so--"camping" in the wilderness with the Israelites. Camping with Pastor Peter bears scant resemblance to the actual trials and travails inherent in wilderness wandering/camping for 40 years in history. But the lessons were good!
One of them was the story of the time God commanded Moses to smite the rock to bring water forth for the thirsty Israelites to drink. It's just that, in Pastor's retelling, when Moses smote the rock, two girls jumped up from behind it and squirted everyone with assault-style squirt guns! Squeals abounded.
And when the Israelites griped because they were starving in the wilderness, God made manna fall to satisfy their hunger while they "slept." So our designated "God" dropped corn chips on the floor around each "sleeping" camper. But when the campers "awoke," none of them were hungry enough to eat the "manna" from the carpet, considering it polluted! (I'll just bet that in the actual event, seeing food lying on the desert floor was the least of the Israelities' worries!)
Another story was why it was important that the Ten Commandments be laid out for the tribe of Israel. Pastor Peter had various kids "portray" blessing and curse, life and death and had the actors stand on opposite ends of a blindfolded camper. Pastor spun the blindfolded campers around several times and then had them advance on one or the other.
Invariably, except for one time the campers headed toward and touched curse/death. So that's when Pastor Peter said, "The Ten Commandments were given so that God's people wouldn't be wandering blind anymore. They now had rules to follow to keep them holy in God's sight."
Not long after, he followed up with Jesus being the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments and becoming The Way, the Truth and the Life.
They sang some great toe-tapping, hand-clapping songs, and on Friday an a Capella group of four gents (Barbershop Quartet) stopped by to entertain. THAT was a major highlight for the adult volunteers. The kids loved them, too. (Kids love music. That's why taking music out of schools is a disaster; more kids will drop out as a result, for sure.)
Friday night the older kids stayed the night indoors. They all brought sheets and made one huge tent out of it. They ate hot dogs and s'mores and played games. Had a great time!
Today I bathed a niece's dog and bathed, clipped and groomed two of our three dogs. (Jansy had her bathe earlier in the week.)
I slept most of the rest of the day! Vacation Bible School is a hoot but it wears the volunteers out (in a good way)--that's for sure!
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