Contributed by Whitney Holley
Anne Schmidt, Amy Ferrell, and Melinda Wedding have collectively been members at the Fig for at least 26 years. I thought they would be great people to tell us what it means to be involved with Vacation Bible School, which is fast approaching (June 16-20) click here for more info!
Vacation Bible School is our chance to seek and serve Christ in our littlest persons. By the end of the week, the campers have spent 15 hours working, playing, eating and singing together. They bond with each other and with the VBS staff. They have learned and considered their own faith and morality in a fairly intensive way. Most children sign up every year and it’s such a pleasure to be with these kids from year to year and watch them grow up and mature.
There are so many ways to make this event successful! If you want to help but aren’t sure how, just ask! If you can’t help during the week because you work or have small children, you can help decorate on June 14th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. We also need people to provide snacks for the staff during the week. We also appreciate your prayers and encouragement. There is a job to fit every talent so anyone with a love for kids can find work to do.
Our church has made an incredible commitment to supporting all of our families at Transfiguration. Gaye Lynn makes special accommodations for our children with special needs. We have some VBS participants who are on the autism spectrum and they require and are provided a quiet room and extra adult support (we have done this as needed). We have a great number of children with food allergies. Gaye Lynn has gone to great lengths to make sure that those children are both safe and feel included and a sense of sameness. We try to provide a program where everyone walks away feeling loved and valued as a member of our church family!
Ah one last thing — each year we have a service focus for the week. This year we will be supporting the Stewpot by providing funds and materials for summer survival kits for the homeless. The kids from VBS will actually have an opportunity following VBS to tour the Stewpot and handout the summer survival kids to clients at the Stewpots. Pretty awesome, no?