Sky VBC: Day 1

Today was the first day of Sky Vacation Bible Camp (VBC). We’re off to a soaring start! First some important stuff for adults:

Each year we choose a mission for kids to support during our VBC week. This year we have two projects:
1. Collecting backpacks and school supplies for children in our community that can’t afford these essential items.
2. To “share smiles” with kids in Liberia by collecting coins (or paper money!) to support children going to a United Methodist church camp, Camp Rawana.

Both offerings can be turned in at the start of VBC each day at the front of the Sanctuary. Watch for more info coming soon.

Now, here’s what your kids did today…

First we all gathered together at Up & Away Sing & Play. We learned our theme song, appropriately titled: “Sky.” (Hear the tune and see the words in this post.)

♫ “Wherever we go and whatever we do, we’re trusting God all along.” ♫

That song pretty much taught us our theme for this years VBC: Trust God!
Each day during VBC we’ll learn a different situation in which we can trust God. Today we learned that:

No matter who you are… trust God!

We heard a Bible story about someone who trusted Jesus. (That’s the same thing as trusting God!) We learned about a Roman soldier who figured that because he was a Roman, he wouldn’t be worthy to have Jesus come to his house! (Even to heal his very sick servant.) Ask your child to tell you this story and re-read it in the Bible at Matthew 8:5-13. (Any time you see highlighted words, you can click on them to be taken to a link, in this case, one where you can read our Bible story.)

Also at Up & Away Sing & Play we met a couple of interesting characters: Pat the Bat and Flash Sky Runner.

Pat the Bat	That’s Flash on the left

Both of them supposedly have lots of experience flying. (At least we know that Pat the Bat does. Flash on the other hand, I’m not so sure. We’ll be seeing Flash all week long, so stay tuned.)

Pat is our Bible Buddy for the day. Look what’s printed on the backside of our Bible Buddies: the day’s Bible verse! It applies to our Bible story even though it’s from 1 Samuel 16:7c. (Isn’t that cool how the Bible ties together so many stories.) The verse is: “People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Oh, I get it! That’s why they choose a bat as the Bible Buddy; bats look kind of scary on the outside but they are actually very helpful little creatures! This reminds us that God doesn’t care what we look like, or where we live, or what brand of shoes we wear; God is interested in whether we are honest and do we help people. Stuff like that. It’s what we call “what’s in our heart.”

What happened next? The preschoolers went off to their special rooms and did the following:

• Games – Including “Name Toss” and “Go” provided lots of fun.
  
• Bible Adventures – This was our drama workshop. Ask your kids how the story was told. Also ask them what foreign country they learned about.
• Bible Buddies – The kids met the puppet, Sklyer. He told us about a contest that he entered to build a rocket! Except there is one problem. Ask your kids about it.
• Crafts – Here kids decorated faces to remind them it’s not what the outside looks like that counts.

Meanwhile elementary kids visited the following stations:

• All-Star Games – There were a couple of games with a parachute and one very strange game that involved using our brains: “Mystery Substances.”
  
• Wild Blue Bible Adventures – In this station kids experience the Bible story through exercises that point out how it would have felt to have participated in the story. Then they gathered in what we call “knee circles” to discuss the story’s application to their life.
  
• Sky High Movie & Missions – Here’s where the kids watch the adventures of Chadder Chipmunk. This year Chadder is animated! Ask your kids about the contest Chadder is involved in.
• Imagination Station – New this year! Where the Bible story is reinforced in diverse ways.
  

Our “older” elementary kids in our Grad Group are working every day this week on various mission projects – both local and global! Today’s project was to prepare school supplies for the Bryant Community Center. They reported we needed the following:

Items needed	Quantity needed
Rulers	64
Pencils	133
Packs of markers	23
Boxes of colored pencils	5
Pencil cases (bags or boxes)	79
Spiral notebooks	50
Packs of lined paper	48
Colorful folders	445

Mid-way through our time this morning we all gathered at Sky Dive Diner. Our snack was called “Sky Surprises.” Ask your child what the surprise was.

At the end of our morning everyone gathered together again for Fly Away Finale. There was more singing and we watched a slide show of our day. Ask your kids about what else hapened. Something about a launch?

See you tomorrow!
Carol (on behalf of the VBC Team)