Fancy Napkins And Crying

Last week was our church's VBS week. "VBS" stands for "Vacation Bible School" and even though our church changed it to Vacation Bible Camp to make it sound more fun (whatever), we still all call it VBS. For the past number of years we have combined with two other churches in our city to all do VBS together and it is always hosted by the one church. It makes me a little sad that our kids will never get to do VBS at our church but, again, whatever.

The theme this year was "Give And Receive God's Great Love" and, even though I was doing the JK/SK Science and Snack centre this year, there was actually no science. Sadness. The kids were sad too. However, we did read a lot of books about hospitality, learned how to serve a fancy meal (tablecloths, place mats, and napkins make a meal "fancy," right?!?!), and wrote our own book about peace.

The best part of the whole week was that we blew the roof off our records of attendance (we were completely full at 200 kids and had a waiting list), and, even better than that, our offering collection. We raised over $2800 to be split between our national church's work in The Philippines and to help homeless youth here in our city.

As usual, I got teary every day during worship. The worship at VBS just always gives me goosebumps and makes me cry for some reason.

Rachel cried almost every day too but that was because I left her in the nursery. The first day was forty-five minutes of her screaming, "I WANT MOMMY!" which I got to hear most of because my room was right next to the nursery. Awesome. After that she did improve though. Thank God for small miracles.

The pictures are of Sam and Rachel dressed in the colour of the day. Wednesday's colour was yellow but I don't blame you if you thought it was orange. We don't own all that much yellow! Oddly enough, Rachel doesn't own all that much purple either. And you even get a picture of me in my awesome volunteer shirt which I was so ready to hand back at the end of the week.

All in all, we had a fun week and we're already looking forward to next year!