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I loved seeing kids bringing in offerings for our mission projects! Some serious change made it into the toilet today! (Kids: Remember not to try this at home!) We have already collected over $250 for running water bathrooms for kids at the school in Liberia. And, we’ve collected over 75 boxes of cereal. Thank you for your generous donations!!
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At our opening time, Sing & Play Rock, we met today’s Bible Buddy: Sir Valient. Sir Valient is a large, powerful lion. He is our Bible Buddy for the day to remind us that God is powerful. God is so powerful, not even death can stop him! That’s what our Bible story is about today: God’s son Jesus died and yet he rose from the dead! That’s powerful! That’s the sort of power that we can place our trust in. Indeed, today’s Bible Point is:
Trusting God helps us stand strong.
Wally could use some help standing! She was so worked up and worried about appearing before the king, that she couldn’t even stand up.
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We told her that trusting in God was the way to go. (That and practicing for her test!)
Our key Bible verse teaches us about trust:
Trust in the Lord always,
for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.
Isaiah 26:4
Oh but it can be hard to trust God! Sometimes we go through difficult or confusing times. And then we keep making goof-ups; we call it sin – anything that causes us to become separated from God. That is the cool part of our Bible story: Jesus was willing to die on a cross and take the punishment for our sin. We can be reunited with God because of what Jesus did!
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The preschoolers went off to engage in the following…
- Games – Today we were bowling! One of the pins was very surprising. It just wouldn’t fall over. Ask your kids why.
- Drama/Bible Adventures – We used a rock to help us to understand the story about Jesus’ death for our sins, and his coming back to life. (Kids: Ask your parents to try to break rocks, and to walk around with a rock in their shoe. Recreate what we did today!)
- Chadder’s Theater – Our Chadder movie always leaves us hanging on a cliff! What will happen to Chadder in the dungeon? He sure looked like he was afraid. (It was dark!) Remember what he kept repeating? “Trust in God…”
- Crafts – Today we created a surprising picture, but it required waiting to be able to see it. First we “colored” our white paper with white crayons. That’s right, it sure seemed like a strange request but we had to trust the leader. It only made sense when we did the second step.
Meanwhile the elementary kids visited…
- Tournament Games – We played “The King Says,” “Four Kingdoms,” and “Lion Tag.” ROAR!
- Epic Bible Adventures – We learned that Jesus was willing to die on the cross because he knew we’d sin. Jesus took our sins to the cross – the sins of everyone, even us! After hearing this moving story, we discovered a surprise in the dark tomb!
- Chadder’s Royal Theater & Missions – Chadder is in trouble again. Will he be able to find his way out of the scary dungeon? We heard more information about the school in Liberia and looked at pictures. That’s one of the classrooms below.
- Imagination Station – More surprising events in this station today! Unexpected results of a special type of paint, and more how-does-that-work demonstrations. We talked about how hard it can be to trust God because we can’t see God. We took a special trip to a dark room and were surprised by what we found there.
At the King’s Kitchen we feasted on “Crown Rounds,” two reminders about God: a crown for a King, and roundness because God’s love is never-ending. After we replenished our energy we worked on recording our God-Sightings and build relationships with our friends.
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At the end of our day we gathered at Fanfare Finale. We sang and watched a very moving performance about Jesus dying on the cross and coming back to life again.
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The Grad Group was “off-site” today. They headed over to the Bryant Community Center. The report from Dave: “Eight Grads and two VBC volunteers handed out canned goods, produce, bread, sweets, and boxes of cereal (collected this week at VBC!) to local individuals and families in need. These young volunteers did an awesome job in spite of being on their feet for a solid two hours. After the clients had moved through, we stored any food that was left, broke-down and recycled some cardboard boxes, and cleaned off the tables. At the end of their experience, we were rewarded with some malted milk balls and chocolate covered raisins for all of the hard work.”
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Boxes of “freshly donated” cereal, passing between hands of those who have and those who need… What a moving experience!
Continue the learning at home!
Here are a couple of questions to talk about around the family dinner table:
- Name some places you can be where you can trust God. (Hint: everywhere!)
- Practice is good in sports, musical instrument playing, and in trusting God. What are some ways you can practice trusting God? (Some hints)
- How do we know that God is real if we can’t see him? (I heard a preschooler answer this question with “but everything we can see is God.”
See you tomorrow!
~~Carol (on behalf of the VBC Team)
Here’s the slideshow of Wednesday’s pictures…
Photo credits: Click here for info on banner photo (not visible in readers or email).
Bible Buddy image used by permission of Group Publishing.
Other photos courtesy of Tom, Dave, Derrick, Wendy, Marcie, and myself. (Thanks guys, for all of the wonderful pictures of kids having fun!)
Family Faith Companion 