Though there were a few weeks in May I thought it may never come, summer is definitely upon us! A few days of cleaning my classroom, a few days of Annual Conference, and suddenly- poof! VBS time. Last summer, it worked really well to get Cherie started with a double week of Bible school- Vanderwilt Park and Beacon. We kept the same set up as I worked with Paige, our new summer assistant. Since there are now three of us traveling around, logistics of vehicles and materials gets a little more interesting. But Cherie thinks ahead, and I was amazed to find that all the Bibles, craft supplies, hula hoops, and a scaled-down puppet stand all fit into my car. (I guess that really shouldn't be too surprising considering the amount of stuff I cleaned out of it to get ready for summer.) We loaded it from her car to mine in under 15 minutes. Talk about a streamlined process.
So Paige and I made it out of Des Moines (despite my Family Circus cartoon style of navigation) on our way to VBS at Vanderwilt Park. The radio, oblivious to my destination, kept cheerfully reminding me that today was the hottest day of the year so far. Great.
When we got to town, I was greeted by my grandma, a wonderful woman who does not having "boring" in her vocabulary. Lately in her work at the thrift store, she had found some books with Shakespeare plays, and thus she greeted me, "How comest thou, travler?" She had already been over to the park, cleaned the restrooms, helped set up the canopy tent, and had breakfast ready for the kids. And I knew I was home.
We had 8-10 kids pretty consistently join us at the park. This is one of my favorite weeks, because we
get to enjoy the great outdoors and my church family and family family volunteers are awesome. We make our own community there in the park. It made me think of when we delivered presents to some of these same kids this Christmastime, and a little boy saw us in his doorway and said, "It's from my church!" Now several of these kids do go to a church (many get picked up on a bus from a town about an hour away, which is a whole other story), so maybe that's what he was talking about- but I definitely consider our singing, storytelling, conversations, and community there to be just as much "my church" as any steepled Sunday morning building I know.
Naturally, being outside presented some distractions- it was majorly hot for a couple days, rained for another, and somebody's pet cat came to visit us right in the middle of Moses talking to God in the burning bush, but overall, we had a great week. It worked out beautifully for us to be able to walk up to a free summer lunch site at the school, and the last day, our helper and resident Way Cool Musician Spencer took his guitar, harmonica, drum boxes, and
jingling johnnies up to lunch with us so everyone could jam.
Now this was just the mornings. Evenings, Paige and I went to Beacon, where we were surrounded by fantastic helpers from their congregation. We had about 20 kids, including a really stellar 3rd/4th grade class (all boys except for one girl) who memorized the longest verse to share at the program. One family of boys said they wouldn't be there the next day because of a ball game- but the next day came, and there they were! They had decided they would rather come to VBS instead. How cool is that!
One of the helpers did woodworking and made cross necklaces for Paige and me. It's clear he really loved the kids and enjoyed being there to help. How wonderful to get to meet so many different people and hear how God is working in their lives!
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