VBS: MENDERS, MENDERS, GOD & ME!

​Last week 26 kids and more than 30 teen and adult volunteers gathered each evening from 5:00-7:30 pm for “Operation Restoration-Mending God’s World." Each day centered around a theme, a way that we can mend God’s world; Feed, Heal, Forgive, Pray, and Rest.

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We began each evening with a Family Meal. We felt it would offer a pause in the day for busy families and make sure that kids had full bellies before the evening’s excitement. Special thank you to Linda Kayser, Tisha Roney and Makari and Alee Walls for planning, preparing and serving our meals each evening.

During Large Group opening kids would sit with their peers and leaders in rotation groups and be introduced to the theme for the day through skits and stories. We also had a lot of fun singing songs like “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands" and “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy.” Thanks to Jill Bjorklund and Kaley Hepp for leading these each night and keeping the energy up!

Each of our three rotations offered activities that practiced these ways of mending our world.

• In Service-Learning kids made thank you cards for Heart of Ankeny Animal Hospital staff as a way expressing gratitude for their acts of healing, and they assembled 69 care packages for Ankeny Firefighters and EMTs to bless their rest.
• In Art kids made hurts and helps figures to practice acts of healing and created quilt squares with pictures of resting activities.
• In Science and Nature kids made a mud foot bath as a form of healing and talked about the tension between people and the need to forgive with a game of tug of war.

Vacation Bible School is way that we can continue to form faith through the summer months. We built relationships, learned Bible stories and songs, served others and had fun together. All were sad for the week to come to an end.

It takes many hearts and hands to make VBS happen, including but not limited to those named here. Thank you to all those who donated items for the care packages, all those who donated time to be a part of VBS, and all those who prayed for us during the week.

We ended each day with a chant.
“Menders, Menders, 1 2 3, Menders, Menders, God and Me! We can mend God’s World!”
May this be our prayer and our intention.

In Christ,
Ellen Rothweiler, Minister for Learning