Sharing Our Home In Him; 8821.8 Miles From Home: Flexibility, Flexibility, Flexibility

Day 1 - Check!

It is hard to know where to start. If you have done a Vacation Bible School in the states, there are so many things you could compare it to. I laughed at my dad when we were discussing it, "How many kids were there?", "How did you advertise?", "Did you get to talk to lots of the kids?", "How was it different from the USA Vacation Bible School?" Such pastoral questions. The thing is, the traditional American Vacation Bible School is thrown out the window and we start from scratch. It was a discussion we had while leaving the village today that is an interesting thought to keep in mind while I share our day with you today. We discussed that in America, we are often trying to develop a faith. They have the seed planted from early on, we teach the stories they may or may not have heard before, but we are establishing that seed and helping it grow. The difference here is that we are the ones planting that seed, and we are doing it in a completely different language and format than they are used to. Our group definitely learned to do things on the fly and figure out things on the go.

VBS was split into three different groups. Singing, crafts, and the story. The story obviously plays into the other couple stations and all are fed off of each other. After a station, they rotate and go to the next station, etc. Everything is worked through with translators. I was in the craft station today. Majority to none of them know English so even small things like good job, do you need help, different color was all foreign to them. Also, many of them do not know what a crayon is or what it done. We physically had to hold a crayon to the piece of paper to show them that it colored and made their white paper colorful. It was very very basic. Also amazing to me was that we handed out one crayon to each child. We explained to them that they could switch crayons with their friends to get more color. They shared AMAZINGLY well. They would switch with each other and were so happy just to be able to color. Again, the incredible simplicity of it all. It was such a blessing to know that we were there teaching 175 children about the Savior, and the same Savior we teach about all the way across the world. There were about 175 children today and the pastor said to expect more tomorrow since people will tell their friends and more will come.

Music stations are hard with a language barrier. Not are you only dealing with language, but also melodies. American melodies and African melodies....not even remotely close. Rhythm was slightly thrown out the window. But the kids enjoyed learning something new and it was great to get them to experience something new.

The story today was The Good Samaritan and the story was told sentence by sentence, and then translated into their language. We had comprehension questions at the end. Since of the language, it is hard to understand what is going on all the time. But it is so cool at the end when you are doing questions and they are all so excited about what they are doing, they are all excited to answer questions, and when they get them right it is such a neat feeling to feel that you instilled that in them, despite the differences and that we maybe feel like we are struggling or not doing as well as we could be.

If some of you really do want to know the answer to some of my dads questions.

-There were 175 children.

-Advertising is not something that happens here. It is word of mouth through the village, or they see a person driving a car, follow it, show up and see they get to do crafts and sing. This is why they expect more people tomorrow since the children will tell their friends and other people they see.

-Talking to the kids was difficult. They do not know much, if any, English. I did ask the translator simple phrases and was able to tell the children, "good job", "do you need help", "different color?", "cross", "heart", etc. This was so great and the kids were much more comfortable when you were speaking with them in a language that was familiar to them. Even if it was basic.

Overall, it was a great day of VBS and i'm excited to see how it goes again tomorrow!