At Hero Central Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) at FUMC the week is flying past. But we’ve been learning plenty and…
Discovering Our Strength in God!
Here’s a slide show of photos from our most recent activities! You can visit other posts on our Hero Central VBC, to see more pictures.
Every morning, the first thing we do when we gather at Opening Assembly is to engage in some rowdy singing and dancing. Among the songs we’ve been singing are Leap of Faith and Everlasting God and Superheroes. Based on the level of participation I do believe that singing is the favorite activity of the day.
Each day during VBC we are learning a character quality that helps all of us be God’s heroes. Wednesday we learned that:
God’s Heroes Have Wisdom!
What was the Bible story that went with our day about wisdom? It was about an experience Jesus had as a young boy. Read about it in Luke 2:41-52. This was a time in Jesus’ life when he grew strong and wise. (Kind of like our kids are doing!) He was also growing in other ways: he was exploring his calling; he was delving into his spiritual self.
Do we allow our kids the chance to grow spiritually?.
Thursday’s hero character attribute was:
God’s Heroes Have Hope!
Our story from the Bible that illustrates this Hero Code is from The Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5. The Beatitudes tell us about God’s priorities: being humble and compassionate; working with our community to provide hope for others.
This year we have such a large Grad Group, that they have been able to divide (and conquer) lots of different service projects.
- Cleaning up the grounds around our Green Wood campus, and tending the veggie garden that is there. (Everything that comes out of this garden gets donated to the Food Gatherers Faith and Food program.)
- Help distribute food from the pantry at Bryant Community Center.
- Working with young kids during academic rotations at one of Community Action Network (CAN)’s summer camps.
- Making and delivering lots of healthy snacks for the CAN summer camps. These camps are designed to prevent summer loss of learning. Having great snacks to eat helps learning!
- Collecting, counting, and delivering our VBC service project items. Everyday at the closing time they report on our progress towards our goal.
Continue the learning at home!
Here are a couple of questions to talk about around the family dinner table. (Or wherever your family is gathered together – perhaps in the car?)
- When we say God values wisdom, what is “wisdom”? What are some ways that we can grow in wisdom? (Jesus calls all of us to be his “disciples” – and what is a disciple but a student!)
- When was the last time you hoped for something? Did you have to wait for what you were hoping for? What are ways we can bring hope to others? How can bringing hope to someone else, end up blessing us?
- How can being kind (merciful) or working as a peace-maker bring hope? Which of the other Beatitudes can empower us to offer hope?
~~ Carol, on behalf of the VBC Team
Photo credits:
Hero Central images used by permission of Cokesbury.
Rest of photos courtesy of various volunteers at VBC!
On the first day (Monday) we met our leader for the week, Captain Shield, who has piano-playing super powers!
Most super heroes have a sidekick — Batman has Robin! Well, we have one too and her name is Flame.
Do good! Seek peace and go after it! 
Our “older” elementary kids in our Grad Group are working every day this week on various service projects – both local and global. After some ice breaker games, today they learned more about these projects: a camp for kids in Liberia, and projects at Community Action Network (CAN), including making snack mix for CAN’s summer camp for kids.
Along the way we will also meet some cool characters including Flame, who is a Red Panda.
Ask your adults to download the 
Parents and caregivers and everyone who is interested (grandma want to see what the grands are doing?) can sign up to receive an email each day during VBC. Just enter an address over on the right, up-above, and click on the big, blue button. (Or scroll down if you are reading this on your phone.)
Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, ‘Whom should I send, and who will go for us?’ I said, ‘I’m here; send me.’ (
The Grad Group counted all of the donated cereal boxes and coins. The report: Boxes of cereal… 170 and for Camp Garjay in Liberia… $500.64 (Double chill!) They delivered the last load to 
We got right down to singing today at Tidal Tunes. We were amped! (Did you know that “amped” is surfer lingo for “really looking forward to a surf.”) It was a few minutes before we realized that Snappy was frightened! Snappy was afraid of the stormy weather we’d had! All of that thunder…
To help us remember today’s Wave Words — “God Loves” and our Pop-Up Verse, we got another Scripture Treasure magnet! 
We were just getting started and Skippy got a call on her “shell phone.” (Yep, it was a shell.) That meant we needed to watch the video feed from the Surf Central Factory. I wonder what sort of board they will design today? It will have something to do with helping because today we learned that:
To help us remember this, we’ve got another Scripture Treasure magnet! It has today’s Wave Words — “God Helps” and it has our Pop-Up Verse for the day, which is:
Tidal Tunes was a blast! We learned some catchy tunes, including 
We were introduced to a Scripture Treasure, a special magnet which we could take home with us! (I hope we can collect a set — one for each day!) It has today’s “Wave Words” — “God Creates” and it has our pop-up Bible verse for the day:
A local project: Please consider donating a box or two of cereal which will be distributed through Ann Arbor’s own 
Family Faith Companion 