No Skillets Were Thrown Here Today.

 Today Sparky and I went to Macksburg United Methodist. We were a week too late for National Skillet Throwing Day, held here in town annually, but maybe next time. 

We had13 kids and several grandmas and moms join us on this sort of rainy Saturday morning. I was happy to see the place was already castle-like when we arrived, and one helper came with some big cardboard shields to help us get into a knightly mindset. Our craft helper brought homemade bubble solution and also homemade play-dough (hair conditioner and corn starch. Smelled great!) We roasted hot dogs at lunch. 

My picture does not do it justice, but we entered castle doors. Hi, Sir Knight of the Window!

We did a one-day event from 9:00-2:00, doing a more-or-less normal VBS day schedule, then lunch, then a repeat of the morning with a different story. If a week-long VBS seems daunting, doing a Saturday is a great place to start! You can learn a lot in just one day, though we did have a request at the end from an upper elementary kiddo- "See you next summer- and next time make it longer!" He was also pretty excited to hear that there was no age limit- you're never too old for Bible school. 

Cherie will be glad to hear that we had fun with the science today. The kids loved making the Jesus walking on the water pencil flippers and were especially excited that they could use them as actual writing utensils as well. 

My favorite kid quote of the day, though, came when we were making the seismograph. I was setting up the soda bottle with attached pen. Seeking some student input, I asked, "How do you think we could measure the waves with this?" (I was hoping they'd see the piece of paper nearby and connect the dots.) A four year old raises her hand. (Alright! Young confidence, right!) Her response? "If you don't know how to do it, I don't have a plan!" :-D 

I really love churches next to cornfields. If you look closely, you can also see the wind farm in the distance. To me, this is a lovely reminder that even in these crazy times, even if pews aren't as full or if ministry needs to look different than it used to, rural churches are most definitely renewable. 

We're baaaack!

Well, everything's back in the van, I have a hand-colored picture of Sparky the dragon, and the chorus for "Hey, hey, Goliath" is firmly entrenched in my head. Week one of VBS- complete.  

A knight's armor...in edible form. Why yes, that is a Pringles shield of faith and cheese puff shoes of peace. 

I was happy to spend my first week back on the post-pandemic Bible school circuit in Newton. If you've ever wondered if Mobile United Methodist Missionaries serves only United Methodist churches, the answer is no! We'll hang out with anybody who wants a hand sharing God's love in their southern Iowa communities. This week brought me to a community VBS joining First Lutheran and United Presbyterian, and I could not have asked for better help. We had somewhere around 25 kids join us for at least some of the week, and some older sibling teenage helpers were worth their weight in gold. 

We are using Cokesbury's Knights of North Castle curriculum this year, and we were all pretty excited to realize that the fellowship hall where we were holding opening and closing time looked pretty castle-like all on its own. This proved to be an even better location when the other church lost air conditioning in its sanctuary the week before VBS, so that worked out splendidly! (Thursday set heat records and there was work on the roof, so we were a little more inside than we had originally planned.) 

With small groups, I tried out some more of the active learning stories from the Bible lesson book. We had a lot of fun with that as well as practicing our Bible-handling skills by looking up the stories. This is a great time to get to talk with kids and see what they're understanding. In my preschool group, for example, we got to learn that a stable is not that little piece of metal that holds papers together. :) 

It was nice to get back into the swing of things again- the quest continues!