Back To (Vacation Bible) School: Part I

It's baa-aaaaaack! Yes, VBS is here, and I am once again up to my elbows in colorful paper, bible-times robes, and paint fumes. If you're looking for me, check in the leper's cave, the Pool of Siloam, the boat on the Sea of Galilee, the cross at Calvary, or the upper-room, because that's where I'll be this week.

This is my third year as a volunteer--and I'm sure I've found my niche, because I've been doing the same room every year. This year it's called Bible Blast, last year it was the Bible Expedition (see the July 2007 archives), but it's always the same: bible stories being taught through an interactive skit complete with scenery.

Well, to be honest, the scenery part is mostly my invention. The guidebook we are given usually has a few ideas like, "stack some cardboard boxes and draw black squares on them to look like a bible-times city." I read it (smile) and then toss it aside before leaning in to my team and saying, "Okay, here's what we're really going to do!"

Today, instead of stacked boxes and plastic palm fronds stuck in cardboard tubes, we created this:

We found discarded foamboards, wrapped them in paper, and painted them to look like buildings. They are hung from the ceiling with fishing line! (And let me tell you, dangling from the top of a ladder, trying to get a bunch of giant buildings to hang "just right" is NOT fun.) Then we used spray-painted canvases draped over stacks of chairs to look like the outside wall of the city. Brown paper wraps the front of the stage...Green paper taped on top of that and trimmed to look like grass...Blue paper for the sky. Spread a few fake palms around, and voilá! You've got a place for the story of the 10 lepers being healed by Jesus to take place. Of course, we (I) couldn't leave it at that. We also added a cave at the doorway for everyone to walk through into the room (aka. the place where the lepers were living). It was constructed from a tent wrapped in crumpled brown paper. We have the Taylor family to thank for assisting us with that project. It was "Taylor Made!" Ha ha.... okay, moving on.The kids really seemed to have fun today. We gave them "leprosy" by sticking red dots on them and placing them in quarantine (wrapping in them in caution tape). Then, we healed them.
The lesson for the day was about being thankful. In the story, one man came back to Jesus to thank Him for healing him from leprosy. We talked with the kids about how to pray and thank God for the good things in our lives.
Everything went really great! I'm THANKFUL that things went smoothly and I got to come home earlier than usual (2:45 pm) because the set-up for tomorrow was super easy!
Of course, now I've got to get off the computer and paint wood-grain texture on miles of brown paper... But that's another story to be told on Wednesday!