VBA - Vacation Bible Adventure 09 - Amazing!

South Valley Community Church on Lemoore goes all out when it comes to VBA!

I have never seen a group of people work so hard to give kids such a fun 1 week experience!

Months of planning and design have gone into preparation for this year's theme:

"Enchanted Tales of Transformation."

1 month of weekends go into making the parts.

1 weekend before goes into assembling the Castle, Shrek's Hut,

and the forest with a waterfall.

Everyday before VBA begins, some volunteers are working from 6 AM to 9 PM!

There are 3 bridges on campus,

a spinning air conditioned Vortex to walk through to get inside the castle.

There's a winding tunnel slide to get to the Bible Story room...that is after you climb the stairs, cross the swinging bridge to get to the roof of the classrooms!

Kids shoot into the room through the tunnel! Great Fun!

Over a hundred people show up 2 Sunday's before VBA

for the beginning of assembling the parts of the castle

that will be on stage for only 4-5 weeks.

Here is the framing for Shrek's Hut.

One of my jobs was foam control!

I volunteered to sweep and bag the leftover foam held in by the barriers.

Here is our Pastor Jeff spraying cement onto the rock carved foam to make the waterfall.

Later, Shrek's hut and the waterfall unfinished.

More Castle together. This is the Friday before VBA! But it is finished by Sunday. (I forgot to take pictures.)

Here we are at the Tuesday, Pre-meeting and prayer time.

The kid music team is on the stage ready

to pump up the kids with words, actions, and smiles!

(Kids told me that they want to do that when they get big!)

After songs, Pinocchio flies from the balcony on the suspension wire to land on the stage.

(The night before it was a fairy to the castle.)

Kids wonder who will be flying in the next night!

Here we are at Shrek's hut, complete with an outhouse on the left.

A big deal about Shrek is his bad smell. Many Jokes every night!

Here we have 4 evil people who have kidnapped Princess Butterfingers.

You may recognize Jafar, Captain Hook, Sleeping Beauties wicked witch, etc.

The characters seem authentic and memorable to the kids.

They recognize them readily and BOOO appropriately!

Costuming is fabulous for all the drama characters.

For those who recognize Garret, he was eager to pose for this picture during a snack time.This is my group, The Thankful Trolls!

In June, I made this cloth banner and a matching bag to hold all the Coins, name tags, etc.

Here is a shot of my group. There are 40 kids in this group tonight!

(There are many groups of 40

because 510 kids showed up the 1st night, and they just keep on coming! Yea!!!!)

So after sliding into the Bible Room,

here are just some of the characters that tell the stories.

Of course, they are in a jazzed up fashion that the kids love to giggle at!

The 2 flat screens are used, there are 2 TV cameras

and there is a spotlight person every night!

This is Lot and his Wife with 2 angels.

(In the end, She turns into a pillar of salt! Smoke, light flashes, and darkness end the story!)

Last night, the king wanted to get Balam and his donkey.

Toward the end, Balam was not kind to his donkey, so God made him talk!

But in the end, All characters were on the stage

in a Chorus line singing, "Why Can't We Be Friends." Funny!

Here is just 1 shot from Crafts. They are decorating a Picture album

that they can put pictures of their friends and family in.

They had many choices of materials to use to decorate with.

They came out beautiful!
All games have included Water! They encourage the kids to get as wet as possible!

The wettest kids get coins to spend at the store.

There are about 80 kids in this group.

There are 5 stations.

They will run this activity 5 times each night!

Maybe 6 with the preschoolers!

This is only a glimpse of the happenings.

Here are 3 video clips to give you a glimpse of the plays and music.

In the end, the kids are memorizing Bible Verses and good actions:

Be Humble, Be Wise, Be Kind, etc.

The saying for Transformation is:

God Loves us! We blew it! Jesus Saves us! We must Choose it!

Easy!

We all need to learn this transformation!