Author: Carol Hulbert

Welcome back — day three of Kingdom Rock Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) at FUMC, where kids stand strong for God!

At our opening time, Sing & Play Rock, we were rocking the castle! Singing and moving to the music. How did the rest of our morning go? Great!

But first, a few links and other items of interest:

• See what we did on Monday and Tuesday at Kingdom Rock.
• Help your kids be on the look-out for “God Sightings” — noticing God at work in your world. (The beauty of “God Sightings” is, once you start noticing, you see God a lot more!)
• An item for your calendar: We will be singing two songs during worship this Sunday, so please join us at 9:30 and wear your VBC T-shirt!
• Keep those cereal boxes and coins coming! Neighbors near and far thank you!

Now, what else happened today? Well, Wally was on the run. She was taking flight from a knight in shining armor named Pistachio! Pistachio is big bully! I wonder how this will unfold?

Speaking of getting away fast, we watched a short video that introduced our very fast Bible Buddy of the day, Swift. Swift is a falcon. Did you know that falcons are the fastest birds around? They can fly at the speed of 200 miles a hour! (Can you imagine how fast your family car would have to travel to get from Ann Arbor to Chicago in just one hour? Pretty fast.)

Swift introduced our Bible Verse of the day:

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about
everything.Philippians 4:6

This would be a good Bible verse to “store in our heart” where we can pull it up, just when we need it? Visit here for some hints about “memorizing” Bible verses. Pray about everything! Yep; good advice.

It turns out that prayer was today’s Bible Point:

Prayer helps us stand strong.

Prayer is talked about a lot in the Bible. In our story for today, Nehemiah persevered to rebuild the wall around his favorite city, Jerusalem (as told in Nehemiah 1–6). He prayed a lot to God for help. And God listened!

Our preschoolers were busy with…

• Games – Played two games: one where they helped build a wall, just like Nehemiah. The second game used bubbles; it was called “Blown Away.” Can you blow away your concerns in prayer to God?
• Drama/Bible Adventures – We learned about how it can be difficult to rebuild a wall when the people around you are making it difficult to do your work. We heard about how hard it was for Nehemiah.
  
• Chadder’s Theater – We watched another episode of Chadder. Is Chadder in trouble for helping make the movie? Then we played a game called “Falcon Freeze.”
  
• Crafts – We made a prayer wall.
  

  It took a lot of work but it reminded us of all the things that we can pray to God about; big things AND little things.

Elementary kids visited the following stations…

• Epic Bible Adventures –
  

  “Jerusalem” was a mess! The wall had been knocked down. We learned about how Nehemiah felt when he heard that his beloved city was in trouble. We also learned how he constantly turned to prayer. Then we helped rebuild the wall in record time!

• Tournament Games – “Noodle Jousting,” “Knights in Knots”… what next? (But what fun!)
• Chadder’s Royal Theatre & Missions – Chadder’s stunt did not go well. Everyone was mad! Chadder was worried. I wonder what will happen!?
• Imagination Station – There were lots of surprises in store for us today! A very difficult experiment with forks and a toothpick and a match… Catching bubbles with our hands… God sometimes surprises us in how he answers our prayers.
  

What about the Grad Group? Our “older” elementary kids are working every day this week on various mission projects.

They helped out here at VBC, delivering kids to their crews in the morning and delivering coffees to our volunteers! Today they also made Rice Krispie Treats to take to the Bryant Community Center’s summer camp program. Kids at camp are fed lunch AND dinner every day during the program. What a great treat to share with our neighbors.

At The King’s Kitchen we were served a treat called “Prayer Mix.” It looked like normal trial mix, but in this case each ingredient had a special meaning! Next time twisted pretzels are served, I bet your kids will think of how the shape looks like praying hands. Ask your kids what some of the other snack pieces represented.

At the end of our morning everyone gathered together again for Fanfare Finale for more singing!

But what is wrong with Lady Adele? Why does she seem to be dragging a heavy weight? What? People keep giving her more work!

We convince Lady Adele to give up her concerns to God in prayer. We help her to unburden her load. She is very grateful!

---

Continue the learning at home!

Here are a couple of questions to talk about around the family dinner table:

• We can pray at any time. When is your favorite time to pray?
• We often pray when we are worried. What is something that worries you? How can prayer help you deal with that worry?
• Do you suppose that there is anything that you might pray for that God doesn’t really care about? (the answer: NO!)

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

Here’s the slideshow of Tuesday’s pictures…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Photo credits: Click here for info on banner photo (not visible in readers or email).
Bible Buddy image used by permission of Group Publishing.
Today’s photos courtesy of Tom and Carol.

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

No fairy tales this week! Just epic adventures, at Kingdom Rock Vacation Bible Camp (VBC), with kids (and adults!) discovering how to stand strong with God.

First some important stuff for adults:

Each year we choose a VBC mission for kids to support. This year we have two projects:
1. Collecting boxes of cereal for Ann Arbor’s own Bryant Community Center.
2. Collecting coins (or paper money!) so that kids at the Evelyn S. Chapman Memorial United Methodist Elementary School in Monrovia, Liberia, can have bathrooms with flush toilets.
Both offerings can be turned in at the start of VBC each day at the front of the Sanctuary.

Now, here’s what your kids did today…

First we all gathered together in the royal castle Sanctuary…

for Sing & Play Rock. We learned our theme song, appropriately titled: “Stand Together.” Hear the tune in a short music video in this post. We had fun learning other new songs, most of them had motions to go along with the tune.

A special clue (which was hidden in a helmet!) gave us a hint about our Bible story. Ask your child to tell you what our passage was and re-read it in the Bible at Psalm 23. (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 the 23rd Psalm.) King David wrote Psalm 23; he wrote about God’s love. We learned that…

God’s love helps us stand strong!

(We heard that phrase a lot today.) Our key Bible verse for the day fits right in; it’s from another psalm that David wrote:

“I love you, Lord;
you are my strength.”
Psalm 18:1

At Sing & Play Rock we met a couple of interesting characters: Truman and Wally.

Truman

Truman is our Bible Buddy for the day. (That’s him over on the left.) He’ll help us to remember that God’s love helps us stand strong! (Bible Buddies look a lot different this year! Much flatter.)

Wally wants to become a knight but I think that a knight needs to be able to ride a real horse. We will hear from Wally every day this week. I wonder what Wally will do?

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

• Games – Played games such as “Follow the Shepherd,” “Sheep Herding,” and “Where’s the Heart?” They had extra time – great for building castles!
• Drama/Bible Adventures – Acted like sheep as they explored King David’s description of God’s love in Psalm 23. (King David used to be a shepherd!) In the picture below they learn about “knee-to-knee circles.” Great for talking.
• Chadder’s Theater – Kids watched a video about Chadder the Chipmunk. What sort of troubles is Chadder into this year? Will he be strong enough to help out his friend Joey by doing movie stunts?
• Crafts – We made Truman’s Tumblers and Kingdom Crowns.
  

Meanwhile elementary kids visited the following stations:

• Epic Bible Adventures – In this station kids get to hear our Bible story in a special way. They rested in a peaceful pasture with King David, traveled to a dark valley and talked about fear and then were anointed with sweet-smelling oil! (Something they did a lot in Bible times.)
• Tournament Games – which included Round Table Scramble, Rowdy Ring Toss, and Well, Well, Well – an interesting game where some got wet!
  
• Chadder’s Royal Theatre & Missions – We watched a video to see if Chadder would be strong enough to do movie stunts to help out Joey, his friend.
• Imagination Station – Explored using a Truman’s Tumbler. This tumbler needs something inside of it in order to work – a marble. Just like we need God’s love inside of us.

Our “older” elementary kids in our Grad Group are working every day this week on various mission projects – both local and global! More about them as the week progresses.

Mid-way through our time this morning we all gathered at The King’s Kitchen for a yummy snack of Heart Tart’s. We also spent a bit of time getting to know our crews better and recording “God Sightings.”

At the end of our morning everyone gathered together again for Fanfare Finale. Lady Adele was there! We sang more Kingdom Rock songs and talked in our Kingdom Crews about our day. We also saw an experiment to discover which balloon would “stand strong.”

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