Who Is My Neighbor
“Who is my Neighbor?” A question asked by an expert in the law to Jesus. Jesus' answer was the parable of the good Samaritan. After telling the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus asks “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man…?”, the expert answers, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:25-37.
This was our starting point for our four-day VBS “Who is my Neighbor?”, held on June 16 to 19 at Trinity Presbyterian Church. This is the second time we have used this Lutheran World Relief VBS. It originally was released in 2018, seven years later, many things have changed in the world, but the message of being a neighbor still resonates. Thanks to a Thrivent Action Grant, $250 of our expenses were paid. This allowed us to continue to offer this experience to all participants for free.
Our leaders for the week did an amazing job of keeping our kids engaged in our four stations: Crafts, Hands-on learning, Storytelling and Games. We also had a great time with our opening skits and we closed every day by letting different kids tell their favorite part of their day.
Games are always a crowd favorite, and this year we had three dads leading the games. Two of the favorite games of the week were building with uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows and our last day tradition of water games, including drip, drip, drop; and throwing reusable water balloons.
Crafts made everything from God’s eyes, painted rocks, stained glass windows (with tissue paper and tape), and placemats for our friends at The Storehouse.
Hand’s-On Learning: I could write pages, but I will highlight three activities: One was the Kindness bucket - kids learned about how having positive responses: respect, honesty, kindness, etc; not only helps to fill their own bucket, but also fills the buckets of the person they are showing the positive response to. Of course, the opposite is true as well. This lesson was used several times during the week when a child was being negative, and it was a lesson we stressed on our last day during games, because it can be hard to not throw water balloons at someone even when you know they don’t want to get wet. Believe it or not the lesson worked, no one got wet that didn’t want to.
The second lesson was the banana lesson. Teams were given a ripe banana, told to cut it into four pieces. Once that was done, they were given a box that contained tape, toothpicks, thumbtacks, etc; and the team had to work together only using three items from the box to put the banana back together. Needless to say, it is really hard to put a banana back together, but that isn’t the lesson. The lesson is that we often say and do things that scar others and even if we apologize, neither of us is ever the same. Just like putting the banana back together we can’t expect our relationships to be exactly what they were before.
The third activity was talking about homelessness and food insecurity. We asked each child to bring a canned food item one day and we purchased 200+ pounds of pet food that the kids helped put into quart and gallon bags that were then donated to IAM. In all we donated 180 pounds of people food and 228 pounds of pet food.
Storytelling decided to bring in “neighbors” to tell their own stories about how Helene affected them and their neighbors. Again, these leaders did an amazing job inviting a quilter, a firefighter and pastor/homelessness advocate. The kids made a kindness quilt, and put together hygiene kits for the Rescue Mission, a Thrivent Action Grant paid for the supplies. They also heard the firefighters' personal stories about how God provided during Helene. Another successful VBS! Much of the credit goes to the amazing volunteers, but I think we also have some really amazing kids.
Jill Wingard, Director of Children & Family
