St. Stephen's summer Vacation Bible School was a great success this year! Over the course of five mornings we taught students about God's grace through the life of Joseph. We had nine students on our largest day and averaged 7 throughout the week.
In addition to our students, we were blessed with a number of volunteers to help us throughout the week. We're truly grateful to everyone who helped by bringing snacks, helping supervise recess and snack breaks, and other helpful tasks. A special thank you is owed to Joel and Isaac, who came as part of the CLC's Traveling Vacation Bible School program to help teach. Both of them are in college to become teachers and enjoyed this opportunity as much as we enjoyed having them here!
We had a number of fun art projects throughout the week. The students made paper collage pictures of Joseph's coat of many colors and beaded bracelets. They also made cross pencil toppers out of pipe cleaners and cross keychains out of beads. And of course there were the many coloring pages they had the opportunity to color each day!
I absolutely loved teaching music to the kids! They learned all sorts of Bible songs and it was a joy to hear them belting out the words. They especially liked singing "I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N." The song speeds up with every repetition and it usually ended with laughter as everyone got too tongue-tied to go any faster.
We always sing a song for the parents at the closing program on the last day. This year it was "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." The students made up their own verses with words and hand motions. There got to be quite a lot of verses, but the students remembered them all and performed them wonderfully for their parents at the program.
Of course, the most important part of VBS is the Bible message we are able to share. This year our series was Your Will be Done. Each lesson looked at the life of Joseph and an instance from the life of Jesus. They learned how God used Joseph as his servant and continually blessed his life and how that applies to their lives. Children of God can live carefree even in this evil world because God's grace in Christ covers them. We pray that this message strengthened all of the children in their knowledge of the Savior and His Word.
Thank you to all our students, parents, and volunteers! We can't wait for VBS next year!
Mark 10:14 "[Jesus] said, 'Let the little children come to me! Do not hinder them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.'"