Vacation Bible School 2016

The kids and I participated in Vacation Bible School last week and it was so much fun! I'm so excited to tell you about it.  

The theme that the staff of the Fort Rucker Religious Support Office chose for this year's VBS was Joseph's journey from Prison to Palace.  The whole week would be about the life of Joseph as he was sold into slavery by his brothers, taken to Egypt, thrown into jail, eventually became the second most powerful man in Egypt, and then was able to see his brothers again and forgive them.  

My mom used to tell me the story of Joseph as a bedtime story.  It's one of my favorite stories, and I was excited to share it with my children.  Charlotte and Lydia were old enough to participate in VBS, and since I was volunteering Derrick and Veronica were able to be in the nursery.  It was really fun for the five of us to go to the same place every day.

But before we get too far, we have to go back in time 10 years to the summers of 2005 and 2006.  Those were the summers that I worked as a Youth Conference Counselor at Snow College.  That second summer in particular still holds the title as "best summer of my life." 

A typical three day cycle would go something like this, Welcome a group to Snow College, play some games, take them to their housing, meet up with them at the water games area, play more games, take down water games area, meet up with group for dinner, if the Manti Pageant was going on the group would go to that.  If not they would play evening games, then I'd say goodnight to my group and go home.

The next days I'd meet up with my group for breakfast, then ride up with them to the Badger Creek Ropes course, spend all morning taking a small group through the ropes course, have sack lunch with the group, spend afternoon finishing ropes course, ride back down the canyon and hopefully get a shower before meeting up with the group again for dinner.  Then I'd go to a fireside with my group.  If I really liked them I'd stay for the fireside, if not I'd go into the lobby and hang out with other hosts.  Sometimes we'd use that time to curl our hair and redo our make up in the bathroom.  After the fireside I'd take my group to a dance with all the other groups.  On days like this it wasn't uncommon to work 15 hours.

One the third day I'd eat breakfast with my group and then say good bye to them.  There would be just enough time to run over to pick up my new incoming group and start the cycle over again. 

Despite the non stop schedule I was in heaven.  I loved working with teenagers and helping them have a fun time.  I loved that it was cool to be goofy.  I loved that we could learn about religion, but not in a boring way.  And I loved watching all the interlocking pieces of the activities work together to create an amazing experience for over 300 people every day.  

I've always looked back on those two summers as a special time that probably never could be recreated.  I tried to do it again during the summer of 2007 when I was hired as a Youth Conference Counselor for Utah State.  But I quickly found that, in typical Utah State fashion, all the heart and fun was missing from the program.  I quit after one week.  I never did anything like Youth Conferences again. 

Fast forward ten years to a few weeks ago when  I volunteered to be a Tribe Leader for the On-post Chapel's Vacation Bible School.  From the very first orientation I started to feel a little bit of that old Youth Conference Magic coming back. I was excited about things I hadn't even known I'd missed.  Things like:

Wear the same color shirt for 5 days in a row. - Heck Yes! 

Keep track of 15 kids for three hours a day. -  How hard could that be? I once was in charge of a group of 107 teenagers and adults BY MYSELF for three days.  

Rotate through a variety of activities every 30 minutes. - Easy!

Teach kids about the Gospel in a hands on way. - That's the best way!

Becoming a Tribe Leader was a lot like coming home.  I was able to rediscover a part of myself that I'd forgotten about.  And so before VBS even started I was already so happy to be involved. 

I poured a lot of that happiness into working on my classroom.  The chapel has a whole bunch of props that they take good care of.  These props are used for variety of things such as scenery for Christmas and Easter activities as well as VBS.  Nancy, the lady in charge of VBS, showed me all the things that were available.  She even suggested which ones would be the best for my tribe.  I was assigned to be the tribe leader for the tribe of Simeon.  Simeon's logo of sorts was "the city gates" so Nancy showed me all the "city" themed things. 

A few days later I had Brandon come over to the Spiritual Learning Center (or SLC) and help me move the big scenery into my room.  Then a few days later I came by myself and decorated the room.  I wanted to do a good job since I was a new volunteer.  I wanted to show that I could pull my weight. I ended up creating one of the coolest rooms ever.  Let me take you on a tour. 

The entrance to my room was this awesome arch.  

 You'd go through the arch and enter a garden courtyard.

 My room was actually incredibly tiny.  But that weakness was really a strength because it meant I could transform the entire room. There were a whole bunch of back drops to choose from.  I picked one with a city in the back ground and put that up on three walls.  This helped cover things like a TV and three white boards.  Then I positioned the large Styrofoam walls around the room and secured them too the walls with duct tape on the back.  Nancy told me these walls were 11 years old and so they needed to be treated nicely.  In the spaces between the Styrofoam I used brown butcher paper to look like turrets.  And below that I placed paper that had an rock wall design printed on it.

One of the walls had an arch in it so I put that up on one of the classroom windows that looked out into a little garden area.  I created another arch over the other window with the rock wall paper.  It turned out looking really cute.  

 I put fake ivy, moss, and leafs onto the walls to make them match the rock wall paper.

The final thing I did was line up all the chairs in a row against two walls and cover them with long red fabric. This looked like a fancy padded bench.  

 Everyone who came in my room was very impressed.  I'll admit, I was impressed with myself too.

And here is a video of the room so you can have an idea of how it felt to be in there. 

My room may have been one of the most decorated, but that doesn't mean it was the only one.  The entire SLC was transformed into various Egyptian style locations.  They idea was that the kids wouldn't just sit and learn about Joseph's life in Egypt - they would experience it.  

This was the hallway with my class room.  You can see the palm trees that were next to my room.  Further down the hall there are some pillars.  It was cool to see these fun things outside every room.

 At the end of the hall was a little animal display with fake animals.  Charlotte and Lydia loved these and were always telling me which animals were the babies and the mommies and daddies.

 Veronica had to get in a picture too.

 This was a boat that was set up in the room for the tribe of Reuben.

 And I think this tent was in the room for the tribe of Isiichar. (But it might have been Naphtali)

 Charlotte and Lydia were in Zebulun. Their room had a fish theme.  There were three Kindergarten tribes with like 15 five year olds in each of them.  But Charlotte and Lydia ended up in one of the overflow tribes.  I think it had a total of 5 kids in it.  That meant that Charlotte and Lydia got the royal treatment.  They had so much attention.  As an added bonus our friend Sarah was one of their teenage tribe leaders.  Sarah is actually in the Primary class that Brandon and I teach on Sundays so it was cool that she was the leader for Charlotte and Lydia.

 Here they are proudly holding their banner.

Sarahs' mom, Becca, is one of my favorite people here at Fort Rucker. I probably would have been a tribe leader even if Becca wasn't going to be one, but knowing that she was going to be at VBS all week certainly sweetened the deal when I signed up. She was in charge of the Benjamin Tribe which was one  of the 5th and 6th grade tribes. We saw each other a few times each day, but we didn't find a minute to chat (and take a selfie) until day four - which just shows how busy our groups kept us.

Becca's husband Shawn is the LDS Chaplin here on Fort Rucker. He was assigned to be a tribe leader with me.  Nancy didn't know that I was LDS when she put me and Shawn together.  I think that's one of those coincidences that wasn't really a coincidence.  We also had a teenage tribe leader who helped us out the first few days.  Our tribe had fifteen 3rd and 4th graders who were super fun and super rambunctious.  They certainly kept us on our toes.  Here's our group photo.

Like I said, those kids kept us busy.  The first day I came home from VBS and took a two hour nap.  Thank goodness Brandon had an easy work schedule this week, and so he could watch our kids while I slept. I don't know if I would have volunteered to be a Tribe Leader if he'd still been in flight school.

I took lots of pictures of the things we did each day, but I'm not going to show you a lot of pictures of my group.  Even through this blog isn't listed in search engines I don't really want to post a bunch of pictures of other people's kids.  I'll show you some pictures, but mostly I chose ones that I took of Charlotte and Lydia or where you can't see many people's faces.  

Here's what we did pretty much every day. 

Every day we would meet in out tribe quarters and do a little activity.  These went along with our theme for the day.  Day one was: God gives us Hope. Day two: God gives us special talents and abilities. Day three: God gives us wisdom. Day four: God gives us forgiveness. And day five was: God gives us families.  This is the activity from day five.  It's a little interlocking family puzzle to show how everyone in our family has a place. 

 We'd only spend 15 minutes in our tribe quarters - which for a little room like ours was almost 5 minutes too long.  After talking a little bit about Joseph and doing our activity we'd go over to the Chapel which was in the building next to the SLC.  We'd have a little program involving doing our tribe cheer, singing some (loud) songs, and saying a prayer. There are five different religious congregations in the on-post chapel program so it was all very non denominational. It was very different for me to be that loud in a chapel.  And wearing my visor in there felt super weird.  I took it off every time we prayed because I just couldn't leave it on.  Overall it was cool to be with so many people who were excited about Jesus and the Gospel.

My group would go to games when the chapel time was over.  These ranged from the kids wrapping each other in toilet paper, playing duck duck goose - renamed heart heart brain, and playing some water games.  Our group always seemed to have extra energy after the games were over so I told Shawn that we needed to make them run before we went to our next activity.  So he started taking them on a quick run before we'd go inside the building.  

Our next rotation was the Market Place.  This was a whole bunch of areas that we could work our way though during the next 30 minutes.  

One place was for Brickmaking.  The kids all got a chance to make a brick out of straw, dirt, and water.  Then the bricks were set out to dry until the end of the week. 

 There were a lot of bricks by the end.

Another place was the carpentry shop.  The kids got a chance to hammer a nail or saw some wood. Another place was the Egyptian Army.  Each day our group was taught another thing about what life in the Army would have been like.  Here they are exercising.

 Another place was the "Farmer's Market" this was where we got the snack for each day. Usually it was something small like three grapes, 8 pretzels, and a drink of punch.  I couldn't believe how slowly my kids would eat that food.  It would be like 5 minutes and they'd still be eating.  I was like, "It's three grapes!  Shove those things in your mouth and lets move on!"

 Everyone's favorite place was the bakery.  There was always yummy bread, brownies (my favorite), cake, or crackers to choose from.  Everyone only got one.  (Unless you were a sneaky leader and came back for seconds when your kids were doing the craft.)

 There were certain areas that taught about life in Egypt.  One of my favorites was Joseph's house.  Every day we had a chance to visit with Joseph.  He would tell us what was going on in his life that day, (ie, today I'm in prison. or today I'm helping distribute grain)  It was a good way to help the kids really understand his life.  It was funny when we had to ask to see Zaphenath-Paneah because that was his Egyptian name.

There also was a beauty parlor where they kids learned about embalming and mummification.  And some days the girls were able to put on make up and the boys learned how to shave.  The shaving cream was really whipped cream to everyone's delight.

This is a picture at the scribes station where the kids learned how to write Egyptian.

Throughout the day I'd see Charlotte and Lydia walk by with their little tribe. We'd had a talk about how I'd be busy with my group and so the girls couldn't come be with me.  They were really good about that and there was only one time that one of them started crying and had to come to me.  They had a lot of fun and loved their little group.

After our 30 minutes in the marketplace were up we'd go to the auditorium for crafts.  Each day they were different.  On the first day they made big necklace type things.  On the second day they made headbands.  They decorated sarcophagus shaped boxes on the third day, and made cool pendants on the fourth.  The fifth and last day they had stamps like hieroglyphics and used those to write words.  Here are Charlotte and Lydia doing their craft on the first day.  

 And here are a bunch of other groups working on their crafts. Everyone would get really into their crafts.  I liked seeing our rambunctious group of kids settle down and focus on doing art.

 Here's my group working on crafts.

After crafts we'd go to the chapel for 30 minutes so the kids could sing some songs.  One song in particular they learned to sing for the parents during the closing program on the last day. 

After music we'd have 30 more minutes in the marketplace.  On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday there were live animals as an option during marketplace time.  These were a big hit.  Everyone loved them.  This little goat even won me over with it's soft fur.

 One day I just happened to be free when Charlotte and Lydia were holding animals. They were so excited about the animals.  Both girls now want baby bunnies.

 Here they both are with baby bunnies.

 Poor Derrick didn't have much fun in the nursery.  Veronica had a good time playing with her friend Peter who is Shawn and Becca's son.  I was hoping there would be more kids Derrick's age, but he was the oldest one in there.  It didn't help that the staff didn't really know what to do with his autism.  (They were okay with it, but they didn't work very hard to help him come out of his shell.)  So poor Derrick was stuck with babies for three hours every day.

He actually faked sick on Wednesday to get out of it. (We didn't know he knew how to do that.)  He laid on the couch and acted really sad.  Brandon didn't have much going on with work and knew it would be okay to take Derrick with him when he did his accountability formation at 9:00.  So Derrick got to stay home that day.  Brandon said that as soon as I left Derrick hopped up off the couch and was perfectly happy the rest of the morning.

Unfortunately, staying home with Brandon wasn't an option on Thursday so Derrick had to go to the nursery. But I made it up to him - at least a little bit. When my tribe was in the chapel for music I went to the nursery and got Derrick and Veronica out for a minute.  I took them out to see the animals.  They both were really excited.  Derrick surprised me and knew that there was a "baby pig" in this crate even though it was really hard to see.  

 They both liked looking at the goats.

 And the chicks.

  But Derrick's favorite was the baby bunny.  He kept asking to hold it.  Veronica didn't want to hold it, but she did give it a kiss while I held it.

Then it was time to go back into the nursery. Derrick was not happy about that. 

As sad as it was to have Derrick and Veronica bored in the nursery every day, it was way better than them staying home with me and being bored.  I was having so much fun as a leader and Charlotte and Lydia were having so much fun participating.  Even through we weren't in the same tribe it was a cool bonding experience to go to VBS every day.  Here is a picture we took the day we all had pigtails in our hair.  (Even through you can't see any of them.)

Friday's schedule was a little different.  We didn't go to the chapel in the beginning because that's where we would end the day.  And we only went to three rotations.  The kids were all super squirrely and could hardly listen to anything Shawn or I said.  I got really strict with them.  My happy go lucky camp counselor personality was replaced with my "mom personality."  I found myself telling my group the same things I always tell Charlotte and Lydia.  Things like, "I'm not going to take crazy kids into this room.  So we are going to stay in this hallway until you show me that you can behave and be quiet."

We made it through the first two hours without losing our minds or any kids.  Then we took our group to the chapel for the last hour.  Parents were invited to come see their children sing.

Derrick had stayed home with Brandon again that day.  They came to the chapel and Brandon took Veronica out of the nursery.  I wanted all three of them to participate in this and to see Charlotte and Lydia sing.  I figured that Derrick and Veronica do fine at our church every Sunday so this wouldn't be a problem at all.  However, I completely forgot just how much louder this service was going to be than what we are used to.  

From the very beginning Derrick was screaming loudly.  The clapping set him off, the loud tribe cheers set him off, the music over the sound system really set him off.  He was in full sensory overload - and every one knew it.  If that wasn't enough, Veronica has what we jokingly refer to as "sympathy autism" so she was crying too.

I left my tribe and came over to help.  Eventually we decided the best thing was to split up.  I stayed with Veronica and Brandon took Derrick out.  Veronica calmed down as long as we stood up in the back. Charlotte and Lydia's group got up and sang  little song.     

 They ended up in the back and so we couldn't see them very well, but it was cute.

 My group sang as well.  I assumed that Brandon was stuck out in the hall,  But suddenly I noticed him and Derrick sitting calmly on the other side of the room.  As usual, Derrick had calmed down as soon as he got used to the sound.  I was so proud of him.

The program ended and I rejoined my tribe and Shawn and I led them back to our room for the last time.  They all went to be with their family's and Shawn and I started taking down the room.  As Nancy says, it takes two weeks to build VBS, but 30 minutes after it's over it looks like it never even happened.  We took everything apart very carefully and put everything on the tables that we set back up in the room.  A church from the local community would come that afternoon and pick up the things that they were going to borrow for their own VBS in a few weeks. It was kind of sad to see everything back to normal.

 Then we went outside and got in line for hot dogs and other food.

 We ended up sitting by the other LDS volunteers.  Shawn and Becca were there with their four kids and Elder and Sister Hansen were also there.  Sister Hansen had helped out in the beauty parlor, and Elder Hansen had been with the brick makers.  (And I might have been the one that told them to volunteer.)

 There was a big waterslide (the same one from lakefest) set up.  Charlotte and Lydia had been looking forward to this all week.  Elder Hansen went with them and kept an eye on them while they stood in line.  Later the rest of us made it over there.

 Derrick was mostly content to just stay in the wagon.  I'm glad I had Brandon bring it.

 Veronica liked to stand by the waterslide and get splashed.

 Here's Lydia going down.

 And Charlotte.

 And Derrick and Veronica hanging out.  Brandon had to check back in at work at 1:00 so he took off, but we stayed.

 They girls played on the slide right up until the party was over at 1:00

And then it was time to go home.  Our wonderful week of VBS was over.

The night before VBS started I told the girls the story of Joseph as a bedtime story, just like my mom had told it to me.  They thought it was really interesting. Then they got to spend 5 days experiencing things from Joseph's life. Today we watched the animated version of the story, Joseph King of Dreams, on Netflix.  It was the perfect way to finish our Joseph themed week.

I'm pretty certain none of us will ever forget the story of Joseph or all the things we learned this week. One of the greatest things I was able to witness was how amazing it is when people of different faiths come together to work on a big goal. We put aside our various differences and focused on something that we all believe in.

 Thanks to VBS I made new friends and my existing friendships were strengthened.  It was so fun to say hi to my friends' kids when I passed them in the hall.  And the 15 kids in my tribe each found a way to find a place in my heart.  I really hope I run into them throughout the summer.

As an added bonus I rediscovered a part of myself that has been dormant for almost ten years.  I don't know if "camp counselor" is an appropriate career goal for a 31 year old, but I'm giving it some thought.  (I'm thinking something along the lines of camp director or parks and recreation supervisor.)

Basically, this was a great week that I would do again in a heartbeat.