VBS 2022 highlights

 We had a wonderful VBS this year at our church. My whole family served this year, no more kids in VBS! That was different... My oldest daughter and her husband were in town for 4-5 days and she even held workers' babies in the nursery at VBS! We had SO much fun hanging out with kids all day but we are exhausted! I'm thankful for the amazing week that we had, and for the time to relax this week. 

My husband played guitar and led the band again. We played live music, which is always a bit of work for him, but the kids really do enjoy seeing their helpers and leaders on stage. He had a bigger band this year, with an extra electric guitarist and a cellist, alongside the usual bass & electric guitar, keyboard, drums, and 4 singers/ dancers. The music was so great! The kids learned the daily song each day during snack/music time with the 4 singers/dancers.

My son served as the games' leader for the second year in a row. His friend from church was an assistant leader, as well as a crew of 8 other teenagers/ young adults. They did great and it was very organized outside!

My 15-year-old was a leader assistant in the 2nd-3rd grade group. She had lots of fun with them, knew their names, got to know them, and was sad at the end of the week because she will miss her new friends. She made them thread bracelets and gave them out to 35-40 kids! She was an asset to our crew, for sure! She was also in the VBS band as a singer/ dancer (pictured above ^^).

My youngest daughter (age 13) helped this year with our Pre-K group. She wasn't so sure that she would like it, but she did. She had a good time with the little guys. She led the games group outside. She also helped them learn the motions for the daily songs. She also worked in the sound room on the projector, posting the words at the correct time when the kids/ group was singing.

She is playing Red Light, Green Light with bags of clay (above), and Duck Duck Goose (below).

As the director, I had fun wearing different silly hats each day. I wanted to be easy to find in a crowd since we had about 350 people on our church campus every day! I had a good time wearing them, and the kids often commented on my different hats.

The kids LOVED the flamingo hat, so many said it was silly and "Why are you wearing a flamingo hat?" I said, "Why not?! It's fun!" It did get heavy and warm on my head after a while.

Here is a friend wearing my hat...

Another view of the flamingo hat...and of the red hat with a flower.

Here is the green golf-type hat, 

I also wore a cheeseburger hat...

...and my Disney Cinderella ears! 

I also did the skits with my daughter, Mallory. The pictures are all from the back of the room, but you can get the idea. (Sorry they're blurry!) I wore my oldest daughter's black graduation gown and a big, blue top hat with silver snowflakes on it. I was "Professor Spark" and we did mini science experiments. I had a good time doing them, it brought back my drama days in middle and high school.

One boy told me that he knew it was me on stage because of my shoes! So attentive to details!

We had 260 different kids come to VBS and had over 100 volunteers for the first time ever! Usually, we have about 75-85 volunteers! We had 8 children accept Christ, which is a total blessing that I (we) 

had a small part in it! I was the emcee on stage again and acted in the skits with my daughter. 

Here is a picture of our yummy-looking snacks...

This was called "glitter glue," and it had fun-fetti cake mix, whipped topping, and vanilla pudding mixed together. I never had a taste of it, but everyone said it was delicious!

Lastly, here is my oldest daughter holding a sweet babe in the nursery.

 Here is our theme verse...

Ephesians 2:10 

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Psalm 104:24
How many are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

Matthew 21:9

 The crowds that went ahead of Jesus and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Sparks Studios VBS

 We have our VBS this week, and we are so excited about it! Our theme this year is "Sparks Studios". The theme is all arts-related, including drawing, painting, cartoons, drama, music, dance, poetry, pottery, photography, and more. Our decorations crew did a great job planning it all out, gathering supplies, and getting it decorated in a neat way. I think our church sanctuary looks amazing!

God called me to be the co-director (with our children's pastor) again this year, and we began meeting at the end of February to start planning. We met 6 or 7 times to plan who to recruit for volunteers, the t-shirts we wanted to order, the pre-registration process, and more.

We always divide the kids into 4 groups, and this year we divided them into four sub-groups too. It has worked well so far, but the first day is always a little bit jumbled. 

I helped write out the poetry for this board, and my daughters helped put up shiny gems.

I helped with this sign by making the camera...

I helped hang up the music notes and clefs...I love the shiny paper on the sparks coming out on the top!

I found this online, traced it onto poster board, and colored it in. It turned out nicely, I think!

It is really cool to see something that you have been planning and thinking about come to fruition. It's almost like a dream! God has been good to us by blessing up with over 100 volunteers this year and over 240 kids... It's the most we have ever had. He is really showing up and showing off... it is exciting to be a part of it all!

Are you involved in helping with a VBS this year? Are your kids attending one? If so, is it Spark Studios too? I'd enjoy hearing about it!

Ephesians 2:10

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared in advance for us to do." 

Psalm 104:24
How many are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

1 Samuel 16:7
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

"Concrete and Cranes" VBS 2021

 This week our church is holding our VBS, called "Concrete and Cranes," which is from Lifeway. When we heard about this theme 2 years ago, my first thought was, "What about the girls?" I read a blog post at Lifeway about that, and they said that with all of the STEM teaching happening these days that they thought that girls would really enjoy it too. And surprisingly, the girls have loved it as much as the boys! 

With a year of COVID behind us, we initially began planning in late February to have VBS all outdoors. We planned to rent some large tents and discussed how we could make it work. Our restrictions relaxed in our county in March, and we decided to do a few more things inside. It is a good thing because this week has been part of our hottest June yet! It usually doesn't reach 100+* here until mid-July, but this year we got those temperatures in mid-June! Our snack and games have still been outside, though.

As the director again this year, I looked online for a way to calm kids down, especially since we usually have over 150 kids in our worship rallies. It is tough to get them all quiet at once! So our tagline this year has been, "Who is our strong foundation?" and the kids answer "JESUS!" and then they all need to be quiet. It has been working pretty well. I've held a stop sign (cardboard) in my hand a few times too.

I'm so thankful for our great crafts crew, who found great ideas to make concrete magnets with rocks and jewels and crosses inside. The kids also loved decorating soup cans today (all cleaned out) with nuts and bolts, pom poms, googly eyes, rick-rack, yarn, and more. The kids have had fun making and creating different things, and I'm sure they'll enjoy what we have in store the next two days too.

Our games crew has been working hard to get kids playing different things, such as fun kinds of tag, dressing up in construction hats, gloves, vests, and more. My son has been leading games most of this week and has done a great job! The kids like him too and have climbed all over him since he is tall and strong.

The Bible leaders have been creative, doing things like having the kids act out the different stories, discussing the WHOLE Bible, and encouraging kids in their faith. Just today we had THREE girls accept Christ-- HOORAY!!!

I'm so thankful for our volunteers, this year we have over 80 people from our church and community helping us. We have several kids that have grown up in our VBS that are first-time helpers now. It is so fun to see! Everyone has been great, getting on their knees and keeping kids involved.

After missing VBS in 2020 (I cried at home on the day we were supposed to start), it is even sweeter to be all together this year. I LOVE hearing nearly 200 kids praising God in our sanctuary. I get goosebumps hearing them singing, "JESUS is everything you need!" There are wonderful truths put forth in our songs, and I thoroughly adore hearing God's name be praised! 

I will leave you with our verse of the week, and other verses we have used...

"I am sure of this that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Matthew 7:24
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock."

Being a VBS leader...

God has really done a lot of work on my heart the past eight months, especially the last three months. In October, we went to our church's ladies retreat in the nearby mountains for a weekend getaway. The theme was "Get out of the Boat" (or something like that) and we talked about the story of Jesus calming the storm and how Peter got out of the boat and walked to Jesus. We talked about the courage it must have taken him to walk on the water and keep his eyes on Jesus, and when he took his eyes off of Jesus, he faltered. We talked about listening to what God is saying to us, is there something that you need to do, something different, and "get out of the boat" in your own life. Is there something that you need to do, which takes you out of your comfort zone, but if you did, God could use you?

God gently nudged me that, yes there is something I could do... and I didn't like the idea at first. I felt God telling me, way back in October, that I needed to be the VBS Director at our church this year. The idea made me cry. I do not feel like I have been gifted with leadership. I am a helper. I am happy to get alongside the leader, and help them all day long. But for me to be the one in charge? No, thank you. A friend of mine and I met and prayed about it after the main meeting. I prayed for her too. We prayed about it for several months.

After the retreat, I went home and every devotional, every story, every email encouragement was all about giving something to God and letting Him work in you. In early November, I read a devotional about how God has known you from the womb, how He knows your personality, your gifts, your desires and your call... and about how we can take heart that the call God has given me has been given to every believer, in Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission. I kept praying about my decision. (VBS is a great place to "make new disciples"...)

Another devotional that I read talked about how God in His perfect love doesn't want us to impress anyone, just to show up. Perfect Love says that when you can't carry on, He will carry you. So if don't want to do that practice, that cleaning, studying, sweating, or do that thing that feels like an impossible thing--You can bravely do the next thing, because God's got this thing!
Hmmm... ok, God, I think I'm starting to get the message...

I also read a book by Lysa Terkeurst called "The Best Yes." The tagline of the book says, "Making wise decisions in the midst of endless demands." She talked about the difference between saying yes to everyone and saying yes to God. She talked about overcoming to agony of hard choices by embracing a wisdom based decision-making process. I thought a lot about being the VBS director when I read this book. I prayed about my decision and about obeying God's instruction for today and His direction for tomorrow. I thought a lot about not only finding the time but honoring God with the time we have. I thought about handling the VBS responsibility along with my other current responsibilities-- physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually.

So I finally accepted that this is what God wanted me to do. I told our children's education pastor and he was glad to have my leadership this year. Then over the next few months, things began to happen in his family that made it evident that God needed me to shoulder this burden for him so he could be more available to help his family through the challenges that they were facing. More than one of his kids needed extra help, and his mother went into the hospital overnight. Our head pastor remarked to me several times that he was so glad I was leading VBS this year, how our children's pastor needed that help so much.

I led all of the leader's meetings, following the example of others who headed our VBS in the past. I felt like we were more prepared for VBS this year. I had a good team of leaders, I definitely did not do it on my own. There were several people in new roles, and others who have filled the leadership roles for many years. I am very thankful for ALL of the volunteers that we had. Our pastor worked a lot on recruiting volunteers. I did too, and had some "no, sorry" responses that were a little hard to hear. I had a tough time filling the decorating role, which I have done for the past 5 years. We did get two gals to do the job, and it turned out great! God answered my prayers in the leadership and volunteer aspect for sure!

A sweet few friends sent us thank you notes after VBS. I enjoyed each one. One remarked, "May we never forget the power of hearing 200 children saying John 20:31 together." That is true-- it was a powerful time, to be united as one group, reciting the theme verse. It was a week that I will not forget. It took me several weeks to recover. I felt like I had been thinking about VBS so long, that it took a bit to relax and NOT think about it! It was natural to evaluate it after the week was over. I have some good ideas for things to do next year. Several people have asked if I will lead again next year. All I can say right now is "Maybe, I don't know..." God has not given me direction in that way yet, but I would be open to it. They say the first year is the hardest, right...?"

Giving daily announcements...

John 20:31
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.



Matthew 14:25-33

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”



Psalm 25:1
In you, Lord my God, I put my trust.


Psalm 31:14
But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.”

VBS Game On! decorations 2018

Our theme this year from Lifeway's VBS was Game On! The decorations book had some great ideas, and a fewer, easy-to-do things than other years. I planned three decorating nights at our church in May, and I really appreciated the help that I got from church members! It made the job sooo much easier on me! Everything turned out wonderfully, I was very pleased!

We have a "ticket booth" that our Ladies' Committee uses to sell tickets for their events, and they let me use it for VBS. I wanted it to look like a more authentic ticket booth, so my daughter used a large sponge (found at Walmart) to paint butcher paper with maroon paint, to look like bricks. It turned out very well!

My son and daughter transformed a round, white vinyl tablecloth into a baseball to hang on a wall, using tape and crepe paper streamers.

Two ladies helped me paint this frame to use in crafts, as a sports card frame for pictures.

I made one poster on pasteboard, and a friend made others...

Several church ladies also made tenants with poster board and Sharpies...

I needed a green background to go behind the picture frame. I couldn't find any grassy green tablecloths, bath mats or beach towels, so we I grabbed green fabric and a college kid put tape on it to look like a soccer field!

My hubby and son helped me make a "tailgate" for our food missions...

Several 11 and 12 year old girls made jerseys to hang around, and an older gal painted these tires for the tailgate...

Another gal painted and designed these lockers for me, they looked perfect!

This was a Pinterest idea, and I loved how it turned out!

I painted this board for the ticket stand top...

 We decorated our church auditorium with black silhouettes and nearby school colors under them. The basketball and baseball were on this side. Those are the group signs for the different ages we have (Pre-K, 2nd-3rd grade, on other side was K-1 and 4th-6th grades.)

 Our "concessions" stand complete with banner overhead, popcorn containers and the menu...

 I ordered this great stadium (upper/lower) background from Amazon, and it looked sooo cool! It pulled everything together!

 I had a balls, bats, hockey sticks & puck display on a green tablecloth on our organ....

 The "tailgate" set up with pompoms and a cooler inside, and a paper plate banner hung above it...

The other wall with silhouettes from other local teams... it looked so cool! The football and soccer were on this side.

I praise God for the wonderful team that I had to help me, and the whole week of VBS went extremely well. I'm glad  we made it back from our quick trip to Texas so we could help Tuesday- Friday. I love VBS week, it is so much fun!

This was our VBS verse, and part of our theme song...
2 Peter 1:3
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Another related verse...
1 Timothy 4:8
For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

VBS highlights 2017

We had another fantastic VBS at our church this year. I was not as involved in the planning as I had been in past years, since Rebekah graduated. We were pretty busy with that in May. I did help with a few nametags and small decorating, but my friend did a great job with the decorations this year! I did take pictures and videos the first few days, and was a "floater". I helped in snacks, crafts, with the preschoolers, whatever was needed. I also acted in the skits as "Joy-lyn" to my friend Beth's "Ellie-Mae" character. There were lots of silly space puns!

This year was bitter sweet since my friend Beth, who has been working alongside my hubby and I in VBS for the past 7 years, is moving! We are sad to lose their wonderful family in our church. They are very involved, along with their kids! But we know God has bigger and better things in store for them! While we are sad to lose them here, we are praying for their next adventure!

The theme this year was "Galactic Starveyors," which was a clubhouse, telescope star viewing theme.  So there was a makeshift clubhouse on stage, several telescopes, and lots of stars and planets to decorate! The kids talked all about relationship-- with God's creating people, the broken relationship of sin, how God restored that relationship with Jesus' death and resurrection, and how we can live in a relationship with him each day of our lives. The music was great too, the kids loved "Sin Messed Everything Up", and "Over the Moon." It gave me goosebumps to hear them singing all together, 200 children, it really is overwhelming! They really praised God with their hearts and voices!

 My daughter and my friend Beth's daughter had a great time in class together! Buddies!<3 p="">

 The astronaut pictures that I took of my own kids (along with the 200 others)... they're floating in space! The used this picture in a craft with salt on glue to create a space picture!

My daughter making her space picture in crafts...

 My son was a helper this year in games, and he also played drums in the opening and closing gathering times. He did a great job!

 Thank you to those who prayed for us and supported our work. We enjoyed the time with all of the kids, and we slept well every night, and took some naps too! It was lots of fun leading these Galactic Starveyors!

This was our theme verse:

Colossians 1:15-16
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

Psalm 8:3-4
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?