"The Race" is Over

Well, another year of VBS is behind us. This year out theme was "The Incredible Race". Unfortunately, the curriculum didn't come with missions materials - which is actually pretty surprising. The way our VBS works is that there are 4 stations...Bible Story, Missions, Craft, & Games. Last year was nice because there was a curriculum that I could use. But last year I also didn't have any help so I ended up preparing everything for 175 kids by myself. This year I had to create my own curriculum, but I had an awesome assistant plus two teens to help during the day. At first it was hard to delegate, but I put D in charge of organizing one activity/game each day. I got the "Great Commission Toolbox" CD for her to use. It has TONS of great activities to use with kids and adults. I had a $200 budget which was helpful. After much research I decided to tell the story of a Wycliffe woman who translated the bible for a tribe in the Philippines called "Forever Changed By the Book". I do have a bias to Wycliffe, but the main reason I chose it was because it came with a CD that I could use to project the pictures instead of just holding up paper ones. I was surprised how much the kids liked the story. Some other things I did was show a few different short videos such as "Unreached people groups in East Asia", a Wycliffe video about how there are "All Types of Jobs" you can do as a missionary, and "Only Imagine". Another thing we did was have a RBC supported missionary of the day and a Bibleless People Group of the day that we read about in the "Akebu to Zapotec" book. Each day I asked the children to pray for the missionary and the people-group at home. They were even sent home with a paper with sample prayers. I also asked them to write a letter to each missionary of the day and bring it back which I plan to send to the missionaries. It was overwhelming to see how many kids brought the letters back. We hope it will be encouraging to the missionary when they receive tons of letters from the kids. I really had a good time and the kids seemed to be better behaved than last year (the children's director said she was thinking the same thing). I think the hardest part of the week fell on Damien. Micaiah came down with something on Sunday. I think the cold he had been fighting for two weeks finally got the best of him. He had a high fever so I couldn't put him in the nursery. So Damien stayed home each morning to take care of him. By Wednesday Micaiah's fever was up to 105 so we took him in. The poor baby had two severe ear infections, pink eye, and a rash. The Dr. said it was pretty bad and that it might turn into Pneumonia but he thought we caught it in time. Micaiah HATES the antibiotic and has thrown up from gagging on it. But I digress. It was a great week and I pray that I helped instill a passion for missions in the over 150 kids I had in the class...if not to be a missionary, to be a prayer warrior for them.