CLIFFORD – Chair of Christian education Jennifer Devlin and a crew of volunteer leaders organized a week of Vacation Bible Club for 27 children aged four to 12 from Aug. 12 to 16 at Knox United Church in Clifford.
With passport in hand, they travelled through videos, stories, songs, games, crafts, and snacks to locations around the globe to explore the mission work of The United Church.
Audrey Garrett and Sharon Prieb greeted everyone at registration with helpers Sara Gibson, Addison Winn, and Lydia McIntosh ready to help.
On Monday Beth-Ann Weppler led the group through an exercise to learn how the Canadian Foodgrains Bank responds to feed the hungry. The children prepared the ingredients to make cookies with Leigh McIntosh, and created festive baskets for their take-home caramel popcorn.
On Tuesday Beth-Ann Weppler taught the group about Ryan’s Wells built in Africa to allow villagers to access water through a pumping system. Kathryn Rehorst helped them learn how to conserve water while brushing their teeth and washing their hands. They decorated rain sticks, adding rice, beans, and corn to sift through the labyrinth of nails, played games with water balloons, and learned how to balance and carry buckets of water on a bar across their shoulders.
Wednesday, Helen Newman talked about the typhoon relief workers in the Philippines. The children learned the story of Noah and the Ark. They decorated cement stones with the help of Carman Weppler. Anne Matthews inspected the building of houses made out of marshmallows and spaghetti, mini mallows and toothpicks, Lego blocks, and wooden blocks. Making kinetic-like sand to take home proved to be a fun and messy activity.
On Thursday, Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes were filled for the children of Haiti. Children created wallets out of duct tape, laid on a mattress of woven milk bags created by Reinhard Lange, caught money blown by a fan to purchase goods at the market, made snowman decorations, and dressed human Christmas trees.
On Friday Janna Dodds helped the club imagine a destination wedding in Jamaica. Elaine Field handed out instruments and the children played music and sang, turned water into pretend wine, created tinfoil pictures, decorated piñatas and filled them with oodles of candy.
Caregivers and siblings were welcome to join the party on Friday to enjoy an ice-cream sundae.
Highlights shared
On Sunday, Beth-Ann Weppler and the children shared highlights of their daily journeys with the congregation.
During the morning, Jennifer Devlin presented Michael Newman and Lydia McIntosh their own Bible to read and in order to learn more about God through the scriptures.
The children’s mission throughout the week was to help others.
During the offering, donations were collected in support of the Mission and Service Fund.
