The Twelve Delightfuls

This week brought me to Farmington, Iowa. While this has often been home base as I travel to other southeast Iowa locations, it’s the first year I’ve done VBS at the church here. Throughout the week, we had 15 different kids- small for this church, but this was the same week as swim lessons and another church’s VBS. Rumor had it they were having a drawing for a bike. Now that’s an idea for attendance! Next year we’ll plan better. (Regarding schedules, not bikes.) 

Surfers of all ages loved the Snappy headbands.

True confession time: While of course I would love it if we had forty kids at every VBS, I also really love the days we have seven. This is also the reason I prefer teaching in a small school. When there are seven, I can call everyone by name the first day. When there are seven, I can teach them to build origami boats without it devolving into chaos. When there are seven, it is akin to going to a small-group Bible study vs. going to Sunday morning worship- there is something more intimate and inclusive when you cannot be anonymous. While it’s easy to get discouraged by low turnout, it’s important to remember that it’s about people, not numbers. 

My favorite kid story from this week was when someone referred to the disciples as the delightfuls. They are pretty delightful, aren’t they? We had a pretty sharp bunch of kids. While we were talking about the creation story, I had one almost fourth grader who kept raising his hand to tell me, “I have a metaphor about that!” and proceeded to wax poetic about trees. 

This weekend, I got to go speak at Reinbeck United Methodist Church about Change a Child’s Story. The former teacher who had invited me to come literally skipped to my car to welcome me- now that’s hospitality from a delightful disciple. :) They had a box of books in the back of the sanctuary, so that was a good start to things. We talked about many different ideas of what they might do for hours to help struggling readers read those books. The wheels were turning when I left. It’s always great to see an active church planning its next project! 

Being in northern Iowa also allowed me to go visit my friend Alyssa and see the Waterloo Writing Project in action. I was so impressed by this group of young writers (3^rd-10^th grade) who come together to write, share, and support each other's work. They meet in an old church building, and this beautiful place should serve to remind us as a church what we're here for!

Shine bright, stars!