VBS Begins Sunday - Get It!

Vacation Bible School, SonQuest Rainforest, began tonight with 78 kids (4 years old through 6th grade) in attendance. VBS this week focuses on Jesus' parables, and tonight we learned that God's Word shows us how to do what is right.

We met Sean tonight in the opening, and he started to tell us about his trip to the Amazon Rainforest, but then because we thought that was boring, he used his time traveling watch to take us back in time so that we could see the adventure unfold. We saw how Sean wondered off alone, against the professor's direct instructions, and only Antonio was able to do the work that the professor had asked. We'll find out some more about what happened to Sean and the others tomorrow night. Also in the opening, we dropped our donations into a bucket under a pump to remind us that our combined giving is going toward digging a water well for a community in Liberia, where fresh, clean water is scarce.

In class we met our teachers for the week and learned a Bible verse.

I have hidden your word in my heart.
  - Psalm 119:11

We also talked about the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23) in which Jesus uses the analogy of the need of good soil to grow plants to show us what it takes to grow healthy and strong in our own lives. Snacks arrived just in time. We decided that we "get it."  Crafts, music, and recreation all confirmed this theme in different ways.

In crafts, we made "Dirt Buddies." We got some good soil in a small pot, put some eyes and mouth on the side, and planted some grass seed. If our soil is good and we do a good job tending our seeds, we should get some nice "hair" for our buddy!

Recreation involved a game in which we tried to toss some seed packets onto a sheet, where the packet might land on good soil, rocky soil, or dry hard soil. We scored points in the form of seeds for landing our packets on the good soil and avoiding the rocky or hard, dry ground.

We learned a couple of new songs tonight, and some fun hand motions to go with them. Besides the song "Get It!", we found the "SonQuest Rainforest" theme song to be both easy to sing (and shout!) and it covered the basic ideas that we're going to hear about the rest of this week.

SonQuest Rainforest (Get It! Get Found!)
SonQuest Rainforest (Get It! Get God's Love!)
SonQuest Rainforest (Get Praying! Get Going!)

Hopefully, we'll all be back tomorrow night. If we bring enough new friends with us, we might win a chance to turn Miss Lisa into a human chocolate fudge sundae!