Colombia: Vacation Bible School

We did three days of vacation Bible school, one in each of the churches we helped at. The fun would commence around 9:00 AM and go until noon when we would send them off with a lunch of noodles with chicken, and then pick back up at 2:00 and go to 5:00 when we sent them off with some sort of snack. All of these times are very approximate, of course. We would start with singing, move to the lesson, disperse for crafts, games, and face-painting, and then reconvene to close and give out food.

El Paraiso
Day one was at El Paraiso. A woman named Vivian sang some songs with them, and then my dad and I taught them the Hallelu song. Jonathon taught the parable of the lost sheep, and then Raqchell helped them memorize a verse from the relevant scripture passage in Spanish. Then they split off to go play games outside or do crafts or face-painting inside. The craft for the morning was making sheep with paper, cotton balls, and googly eyes. We only had six bottles of glue, so getting glue to everyone was a challenge. Eventually Angela (July and Didier’s mom) went upstairs and got some communion cups to put glue in. Then the kids just spread it around with their fingers. It was messy, but it worked. Everyone came back together around 11:30 to close out the morning session. We sang some more songs, did the memory verse a few more times, and then fed the kids lunch.

A few hours later we repeated the process, except that the lesson was about storing your treasures in heaven and the craft was decorating treasure chests and the snack was ice cream. It took a while to track down all the markers and glue, but the craft seemed less chaotic than in the morning.

Overall, this was our most hectic day. It was at the biggest church of the three and the kids didn’t have school that day (it was Colombia’s independence day), so we had a lot a lot of kids. This group also had a wider and older range of ages than any of the other churches. Combine older kids with relatively good living conditions, and you have more energy than you know what to do with. Since there were older kids there, we got to interact with them on more of an individual basis. I sat with some of the 8-10 year old range girls and learned a hand game and got to know a good number of them well enough to know their names and personalities.

Los Alpes
The activities of the day were much the same on the first and second days. Again we started with songs, a story, and a Bible verse and then split off for games, crafts, and face painting. There were a lot of younger kids, so we had to help more directly with the crafts. We only gave glue to the school age kids. We went around with the other bottles to add glue for the preschoolers. We added bubbles to the mix for kids who weren’t big enough to go around the corner to the playground where the other games were happening. After sending them off with lunch, a handful of the oldest kids stuck around for a chalk war. The boys were sort of vicious, especially the one who claimed to know karate, but it was good fun.

After lunch was the second session about treasures in heaven. I added “Yo Tengo Gozo” to my repertoire of Spanish VBS songs. They didn’t need nearly as much help decorating their treasure chests as they did making their sheep, so I got to roam with my camera. Fredo was present this time and sat himself over by the face painters to irritate Rachel. She and Brooke got pretty good at disappearing without him noticing. At the end we sent them off with some juice and a slice of pound cake for each.

VBS at Los Alpes was relatively calm but busy. It was calm because about half of our attendees were preschool-age daycare kids from around the corner, and a lot of those little kids were malnourished and lacked energy. They were adorable and easy to work with, but it was very sad to see how lethargic they were. They didn’t even make much of a sound (except for the few that cried), let alone move often.

Luciera
And now for something completely different. At Luciera, we only had VBS in the morning, but we still did both lessons. We did the lessons and crafts in a room with little plastic tables and chairs. First we sang and learned about the lost sheep. Then everyone did the craft all at once. Once they finished their craft, they could go out in the hallway and get their face painted. When everyone had finished, we all walked to the playground a block away to play for a little bit. We had bubbles, chalk, frisbees, and beach balls. When we came back inside we sang some more songs and did the second lesson and craft. We fed them lunch, and that was all.

At Luciera it felt like we were running a pre-school for the morning. All but one of the children were in the three-six year age range. We all sat at colorful plastic chairs at colorful plastic tables while each adult worked with a small table of cheerful, chatty little children. We held hands in long chains on the way to the playground and giggled and laughed at bubbles and beach balls. It was a relaxing way to end our VBS week. In the afternoon, I got to wind down even more sitting around reading and playing cards.