Vacation Bible School

The Praiseship Galatic Blast lifted off from Sudbury United Methodist Church at 9:00 AM EST this morning. It is a much anticipated and long-prepared for mission! We began our planning back in January. After worship yesterday, our enthsiastic Mission Command Staff and I spent several hours turning our Chapel and Church School space into the flight deck of the Galactic Praise and outer space.

Our first day went well - the usual hitches; everything took a bit longer than we thought on the first day. We had one bumped lip on the playground and one child in the wrong grade. But we sang, prayed and made crafts together and explored the wonder of our Creator God as we heard the story of the Creation.

Vacation Bible School holds such an important place in my own faith journey. My Nana Windsor ran the three-town Vacation Bible School in her tiny corner of Vermont. From the time I was in the third grade until I graduated from high school, I taught the kindergarten class with my Nana. I did not know it at the time, but my vocation was being formed in those summers. VBS programming was no where near as neatly packaged and glitzy - we developed our own curriculm from the Bible and our projects consisted of mostly papertowel rolls and clothespins, but somehow, the love of God I experienced there found its way into my soul and sharing the biblical story of God's love for God's people became my life's passion and work.

It is hard when we sit down with children - most of whom are unknown to us -for a week of exploring together. As teachers and leaders we wonder just how successfully we will convey the story, what the children will learn and what they will remember. We feel RESPONSIBLE for how well it goes. And we should take our responsibility as teachers of the faith seriously, but our job is only to plant the seeds. God is responsible for the harvest - and we may NEVER know how the faith stories of those we meet this week will turn out.

But because story is such an important means of teaching and learning for me, I want to share one with you of my VBS experience growing-up with my Nana. There was a year when our theme was the Book of Daniel. We had this one little girl in our group who was an absolute TERROR. She was loud, she was uncooperative, she was downright rude in places. She interupted, wouldn't sit till and was disrepectful. We all wondered why she was there and how she could possilby get anything out of the experience.

The biggest story of the week was the tale of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel Chapter 3) who were thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar. At our end of the week performance for the parents, we asked the children to tell us the names of these men. And at the top of her lungs, our TERROR shouted out,"Shadrach, Bushwack and Amigo." Well, it got a laugh from the parents, but my Nana and I were despondent figuring we had done our job badly.

Many years went by. My Nana died and I officiated at her funeral. As I was greeting folks after the service, a well-groomed woman with three children came up to me. I didn't recognize her as family and she seemed young to be a friend of my Nana's, but she smiled and said, "I am sure you won't remember me, but I was in your VBS class many years ago and it changed my life. I fell in love with God. I went to seminary and became a UCC Pastor and my children are being raised in the Church. I never got the chance to thank your grandmother or you." I replied that I was so glad and would she please tell me her name. She laughed, "My name won't mean anything to you, but do 'Shadrach, Bushwack and Amigo' give you a clue? We dissolved into laughter as we hugged each other. And I could feel my Nana smiling down from the heavenly choir.

You just never know what will happen to the seeds you plant!!!

Faithfully,
Elizabeth