Back To (Vacation Bible) School: Part II

If it weren't for the fact that everyone was blind and in the dark on Tuesday, I would have had a lot more pictures to show for the day. The children were learning the story of the blind man whom Jesus healed by applying mud to his eyes (John 9:1-41). So here's how the VBS Bible Blast day went: First, Logan and Amy met them outside, gave everyone blindfolds to put on. The kids were allowed to wander into the dark room without their leaders. The rest of the team (Bethany, Sara, Michael, and I) stayed in the room to act as bouncers--keeping the kids off of the black paper "walls." Paul had become too sick to even speak, so Amy bravely took over all of the speaking parts. After bumping around in the dark for a few minutes, the boys and girls sat down to have "mud" applied to their foreheads. The shocking part was--while still blindfolded--multiple kids in different rotations said, "Hey! What is this?" and proceeded to grab a clump of the goop off of their foreheads and eat it! Yes, it was only plain, cooked oatmeal. But, would you have eaten a mysterious sticky glob (that a stranger had just applied to your face with his or her fingers) without a second thought? I think not!

Well, then we had the crew leaders "heal" the childrens' blindness by washing their faces with wipes. Everyone got to whip off the blindfolds together on the count of 3 at the exact moment I flipped on the lights. Surprise! The room was different! Yesterday's leper's cave had disappeared. We used the brown paper from it to create our Pool of Siloam. Originally, we had a plastic kiddie pool that we spray-painted to look like stone. We were going to fill it with actual water (instead of paper, plastic and blue glitter like this one). However, our friends over in the Games department had a leaky pool (uh-oh...) and were searching all over the Big Bend for another one. Apparently, there weren't any. So, we decided to give ours to them. Good thing I'm getting pretty handy at paper crafting.

But anyway, the kids could now see, and Amy talked to them about how Jesus gives us the power to help others. They prayed about being on the lookout for ways to reach out to help others this week.

Here's my team. Jesus gave them the power to help others this week! "Others," meaning "me" because I couldn't do it without them. Although I'm pretty sure I've heard the phrase "Craft Nazi" whispered a few times behind my back.
Left to right: Amy, Me, Paul, Sara, Logan and Bethany.


I also had to post a picture of Noodle and her friend. Her friend actually has the same name as her, so for blogger purposes I'll call her Noodle also. It's been kind of funny throughout the week to hear their crew leader call out, "Noodle and Noodle! Come over here!"