Saturday, July 25, 2009

"Rome: Paul and the Underground Church" Our VBS Week

Whew! It's been a very busy week, but oh so good! This was our annual VBS week. Our theme this year was Rome: Paul and the Underground Church.

There was a ton of preparation that went into the planning of VBS and then even more time went into decorating various areas of our church building in order to make it Rome-like. It looked awesome and the kids loved it. Believe it or not, many kids liked the super-dark cave where the "Christians" that were worshipping "underground" were. It was a classroom that had it's windows darkened and black felt and plastic over all of the walls. It was extremely dark. My friend, Sue, and I were the ones in there doing the "drama." We had battery operated candles and even a sound machine that we turned on in order to imitate trickling water. The effect was really cool.

We're rejoicing that we had a great turnout this year. We had more kids the first day than we did on our highest-attended day from last year. I think the majority of those kids were in Marshall and Shaylen's class. There were approximately (give or take one or two)15 kids each day in that class (4 year olds-1st grade). Of those 15, only three were our church kids: Marshall and Shaylen and another little girl. It was good for Marshall and Shaylen to meet new friends!

Taigen was the apostle Paul this week, chained to a Roman guard (Brutus). He would tell the children important messages to then convey to those of us in the Underground Church. It was amazing how much of his messages the children would remember and were eager to share with us! What fun! Our VBS director did a fabulous job organizing everything. All in all, I think things went smoothly.

The closing program will be Sunday night. The classes will get up and sing, quote verses and explain what they learned this week. We are also eager to hear how much money was raised in the kids' penny offering for missionaries who are working in areas of world where Christians are still being persecuted for their faith. Hopefully Taigen will be able to get a video of Marshall and Shaylen for us to enjoy. I'll be at the piano so I'll be eager to see it as well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! Did you use a "curriculum" for this VBS or did you make it all up? Which messages did Taigen present? He looks great in that costume...so does your Roman guard! You guys didn't miss a detail did you?!

Hope that your days will slow down a little now, even though this kind of busy is good.

Love you,
Stephanie

The Coffee Press said...

We used a curriculum. We had to alter it quite a bit from the "touchy feely" group discussion thing, but using the drama to instruct the kids went VERY well and they remembered so much all of what was taught. I was impressed. We'll hang on to it for future use...so maybe look for these items in about 6 years. VBS IS a big deal here. They go to great lengths and it is done well. I'm so thankful to be a part of it. Tonight is the closing program...y'all pray for us!

js said...

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a great week! I will refrain from saying too much about Taigen's dress. ;) Seriously, I am glad the drama seemed to make an impact on the kids.