Tuesday, July 6, 2010

VBS: Day 1, Week 2 (and Welcome, NY!)

On Saturday, we welcomed a group of 62 from Naumburg Mennonite Church in Castorland, NY. They came cheerfully to serve, despite the heat and cramped sleeping quarters! Yesterday morning they whipped out VBS preparations in record time, and then some of them hit the streets to beautify the neighborhood.

Some local flavor for lunch--Mexican!



We have a bus for the week! Our challenge this past year has been finding a volunteer with a CDL to drive our bus, but one of the NY leaders has a CDL and is making good use of it.


This is the eye-catching sign that one of the youth members painted.


We've got kids! Between 50-55 came for opening night.
Some of our "regulars" came, along with quite a few new faces.


Bus driver Darrell Miller is doing a grand job of driving in circles as we round up kids. Our system is to drop off volunteers at 6 locations throughout the Projects to gather the children, and then the bus circles around again to pick up all the children -- a process that takes a good hour!


This game involved "crossing the Red Sea" without getting wet by the water gun shooter.

The singing site where they learned to sing Bind Us Together with some cool hand motions.


We received a LOT of watermelon through the food bank, so guess what's for snacks?



Snacks is a great place to make a new friend!


At the Bible story site, kids learned about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.


We're trying something different this week -- classes for youth girls and guys.


The kindergarten-1st grade class:

Around 20 volunteers went off-site yesterday evening to lead VBS for PICK (Phoenix Inner-City Kids), another local ministry with an outreach similar to ours. This morning, some members of the group volunteered at St. Mary's Food Bank and St. Vincent de Paul, while others did water games with children at Edison Park (near the apartment complex where we are picking up children this week). Tonight, it's more VBS at both locations!

No comments: