Neighbor VBS

"What is Bible school FOR, anyway?" inquired a curious little girl while chatting with me at the summer lunch program where the Bible school kids had come to eat.

I told her things like learning about God, hearing Bible stories, making crafts, and playing games. But what struck me was how her question "what is it FOR?" and the answer "to learn about God" is the same no matter how old you are.

We had a very intergenerational VBS at Vanderwilt Park this year. In fact, you could argue we didn't have many kids. There were three who fell in the "normal" VBS age. But we had a mom who brought her itty bitty boys, and we had my grandma and her sister, and we had a crew of other amazing helpers, and everybody there from 2 weeks old to 4,264 weeks old learned something about God through this encounter.

I, for example, learned for the umpteenth time about God's goodness- during a week with such divided ages,  He sent us an early childhood specialist and a speech language pathologist to play with these little boys while the older ones did Bible study.

Kids of all ages enjoy VBS :) 

We learned about flexibility. They've been doing some work on the park, and so we avoided vast open spaces of dirt, and then moved a few times through the time to account for construction folks noisily building dugouts nearby. No matter where we were, we found shade and simplicity.  We decided to forgo the canopy again this year, and it worked just fine (no rain!)

My grandma brought crafts. Here kids are making toys that can be donated to the animal shelter. Notice the dramatic sky that did not rain on us! 

We learned that pizza ministry is powerful ministry. A wonderful woman from church has volunteered each year to bring us pizza on the last day. Boy, do we all feel loved when there's a tradition like this!

The most important thing is we were together. We had no question about "who is my neighbor" when we got to the Good Samaritan story- it was us. It was each other. We had snacks together, and sang drowsy music together Wednesday morning when everyone was on the sleepy side, and enjoyed cuddles and caretaking together with the littles. Having a foundation like this enables us to go out and share that sense of being a neighbor, of feeling God's love and the community of others, with everybody.

Relatedly, this week, we got an amazing donation from Osky's Central United Methodist Church (my home church.) Their VBS had been the week before, and they graciously chose MUMM to be the mission they supported. They invited me to come speak about what we do, and it was so powerful to watch this future group of world-changers care about those in their own community so other kids could have VBS just like they do and could go to camp just like they do. Many, many thanks to this community of faith for all the love and support of MUMMs (and me)!