Vacation-Bible-Camp

Does anyone else have VBC withdrawal?
Or are you wishing the music would stop running in your head?

♪ ♫  Stand strong, when life changes.

Stand strong through the ups and downs.  ♫

As for me, I’m missing VBC! I’m missing the comradery… after all, there were 127 kids and 75 volunteers!

(Place your cursor over each photo to see a caption.)

…And I’m missing the daily divulging drama…

…And then there was the savory silliness…

But my favorite part was that we were tending God’s kingdom; reaching out to kids with an important message: God’s kingdom is a loving place. God accepts you into his kingdom here on earth — you don’t have to wait until you get to heaven — God wants you to be a part of his kingdom now!

When you build your own personal “kingdom” (i.e., your life)
on the foundation of God’s kingdom,
you will STAND STRONG!

We had our week of VBC. Now it’s your turn. Are you helping your kids to remember God?

Need support? That’s what we’re here for! Try these:

• Hints on how to squeeze in talking about God in your family.
• Adding some fun to your dinner table.
• When faith is slipping.
• How a few simple words a day can sustain your child.

Sometimes it can be hard to understand what God is up to, especially when hit with the “ups and downs.” Help your child to see that God is always with them, helping them to STAND STRONG!

~~Carol, on behalf of the VBC Team

Watch the slide show below of pictures from the last day of VBC.
Or to see other days of VBC photos.

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Friday was the last day of Kingdom Rock Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) at FUMC – Where kids stand strong for God! At our opening time, Sing & Play Rock, we sang songs, of course! We’ve got a few favorites that kids were asking for and there was big news…

Wally became a knight! She did it!
But in typical Wally-fashion she started to worry about it right away! (Standard behavior for a lot of us, right?) Wally was concerned that she’d forget something that she’d learned in the training manual. The mention of a training manual reminded us that we all have our own special training manual: The Bible. And you know what?

The Bible helps us… Stand Strong!

All week long we’ve been learning ways that help us to Stand Strong! Amazingly enough, kids remembered all of the different ways!

• God’s love helps us stand strong,
• Family and Friends help us stand strong,
• Prayer helps us stand strong,
• Trusting God helps us stand strong, and now, today…
• The Bible helps us stand strong!

In what has now become routine, we met today’s Bible Buddy: Victoria, a Red Fox. In the video that introduced Victoria, we learned that fox are thought of as cunning animals. Victoria told us that the fox weren’t special; they were just using the gifts God gave them. She reminded us that God gave us a gift that helps us, just like a training manual. So whenever you don’t know what to do, check out the Bible!

Today’s special verse from the Bible is:

Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.
Psalm 119:105

Our sneak peak at today’s Bible Adventure came from the once again, lost/hidden helmet. It was quite funny how the kids tried to help Rachel find the helmet. It turned up behind the cross but she thought they were saying it was, “in a pile of moss.” Ha! Our clue introduced another king. (We’ve talked about lots of kings this week!) This king’s name was Josiah (pronounced Jo-SI-ah). I’ll bet that Josiah will teach us something about the Bible.

The preschoolers went off to the following stations…

• Games – We played “Pin the Tail” and “Scripture Search.” Did you know that in King Josiah’s time, the Bible wasn’t a book like we know it; it was written on scrolls that unrolled to be read. We unrolled the scrolls we found to see what they told us.
  
• Bible Adventures – This is the station where our Bible story is told. Josiah became the king at the age of 8! Can you imagine being king as an 8 year old? Even though he was a youngster, Josiah wanted to follow God. But he didn’t know how to follow God! Luckily Josiah made an important discovery in the rubble of the Temple in Jerusalem. We looked for treasure in the “rubble” and just like Josiah, we found God’s word!
• Chadder’s Theater – All’s well that ends well. Chadder found the treasure and saved the castle.

• Crafts – We decorated picture frames for our Kingdom Rock crew photos. What a great memory!

Meanwhile elementary kids visited the following stations…

• Chadder’s Royal Theater & Missions – All’s well that ends well. Chadder found the treasure and saved the castle.
• Tournament Games – We played “Towers and Castles,” “Pool Pass” (yep, it included water), and “Fallen Knight” – a different twist on tag.
  
• Epic Bible Adventures – This is the station where our Bible story is told. Our story is found in 2 Kings 22:1-23:23. Josiah became the king at the age of 8! Can you imagine being king as an 8 year old? Even though he was a youngster, Josiah wanted to follow God. Luckily he found an important treasure in the rubble of the Temple in Jerusalem. We looked for valuables in the “rubble” and like Josiah had done, we made sure that all of the “false gods” or idols were destroyed. Ask your kids how we demonstrated that!
• Imagination Station – We decorated picture frames for our Kingdom Rock crew photos. What special memory from VBC will you recall when you see your crew picture?
  

At the King’s Kitchen we feasted on “Bright Bites” – a reminder that the Bible lights our way. (What cool cupcakes the kitchen folks made for us! Wow, they sure were bright!) We continued to gather God Sightings. God is everywhere when you look for him.

We gathered one last time (alas) for Fanfare Finale, the closing of another great day of learning. Today we learned about the power of the Bible. God gave us this special gift that helps us know what to do when we are sad, afraid, confused, worried and, even when we are happy (hint: say thank you.)

The Grad Group delivered another load of cereal boxes to the Bryant Community Center in Ann Arbor. Their count was a total of 122 boxes! The amount collected for the Evelyn S. Chapman Memorial United Methodist Elementary School in Monrovia, Liberia was over $400.00. (Sorry, I didn’t get the exact amount.)

Great job Kingdom Rock participants! You’ve done much to spread God’s great Kingdom in the world.

We reviewed the Bible Buddies for the week and everything they’ve taught us and watched an interesting demonstration that used balloons, Bibles and fans.

And of course we sang a few more songs!

Thanks for joining us at VBC!
~~Carol, on behalf of the VBC Team

For more info about children’s programming at FUMC, visit here.

Watch the slideshow below of pictures from Thursday. (Pictures from Friday will be up early next week.)

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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.

  Day four (already!) of our Kingdom Rock Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) at FUMC, where we have been exploring how we stand strong with God!

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!!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.”

Boxes of “freshly donated” cereal, passing between hands of those who have and those who need… What a moving experience!

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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…

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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!)

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!

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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…

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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)