This year's Vacation Bible School at Covenant Presbyterian was, as always, a great adventure. But this year we explored just how connected the church is to the rest of the world. The theme this year was "Around the World in 4 days!" and we used that theme to visit the countries of Haiti, Northern Ireland, Brazil, and Nepal. Each day we took the time to explore one of the countries through it's music, arts & crafts, and snacks & games. We also learned a bible lesson connected to the work of the church in that country!
The mornings began with the kids coming to the Train Station—and the fantastic train display created by Jason Hogan really helped set the tone for the mornings. All the kids were impressed by the train and got into the idea of trains and travel because of the enormous red train front Jason made (although my train whistle added a bit as well, if I do say so myself). Every kid started out the day making flags and coloring maps of the individual country, along with answering trivia and a special craft particular to each country. Then, we broke up into groups by age and rotated through the different activities.
John Coble ran music, Ernie Hess and Julie Johnson told the Bible story lesson for each day, Alan Colussy and Beth Hogan ran the arts and crafts station, and Deborah Walton of Camp Covenant and Jennifer and Abby O’Callaghan ran the snacks and games for each group. Many thanks go to the volunteers who helped guide the groups through each activity, and the ones who provided the wonderful snacks from each of the countries.
What I found wonderful about this particular VBS was how much we discovered about all the connections the church has to the rest of the world, not only Covenant, but the Presbyterian denomination as a whole. Each day we learned about a mission of the church, and obviously on the day we discussed Haiti, we showed pictures and told stories about the things we’ve done in Nan Mango. Jim Ingvoldstad wrote a great letter to the kids, telling about the children of Haiti. But we also discovered some other connections as well, between our congregation and Nepal, Brazil, and Northern Ireland. Next time you see a Covenant VBS-er, ask them what they learned!