It’s hard to imagine… But VBS Kids Camp 2018 at Eastport Bible Church, is over. It was an incredible week, to say the least. And so many great things happened. First off, we had the most wonderful team of adult leaders and teen helpers. For fact, we could not run our program without these amazing people.
Secondly, our very own Esther Heine concluded a 30 year streak of being our VBS Director. 30 years. 30 years of leading and teaching and helping and doing many, many other tasks that all contributed to children learning more about Jesus. We are so thankful for her and for her years and years of service.
And now, for one of the best stories to come out of VBS this year. And that would include these kids having a growing love and desire to help other kids.
For the past seven years at VBS we have done a “Change for Children” campaign where we ask our students to collect their pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters and then bring them in to donate towards helping orphans in Burkina Faso, West Africa. They learn that this money goes for clothing, food, education as well as teaching these children how much Jesus loves them.
In our more recent years we’ve collected around a thousand dollars each summer. Which is A LOT of money in change. Well this year, something about our program resonated beautifully with our students. These two in particular (and probably others) told me that they emptied out their own personal piggy banks to donate all of their money for the orphans. How amazing is that?
There was growing excitement throughout the week, because in addition to collecting change, we tell the winning team that they get to slime their team leader.
This year, our team leaders were Brian and Jules. And amazingly, unlike other years, both Brian and Jules actually wanted to get slimed. So they encouraged their teams to bring as much money as they could, and the kids responded in the most amazing way. Jules’ team literally filled a 5 gallon bucket to the brim and she ended up being our winner for the week.
After our closing program on Friday, we gathered our kids outdoors for the sliming.
Jules was a wonderfully good sport.
And I doubt very much that the kids will ever forget her memorable sliming.
And for the record, we set a record this year. After VBS Kids Camp was finished, Jules and I took the money to her bank to use their change counter. It took an hour and forty five minutes and the change collectors had to be emptied out three times (they were separated by coins, so it was only the pennies, quarters and dimes that had to be emptied). In addition to the U.S. Change collected, we ended up with a British penny from 1853, about a dollar in Euros, a lot of wheat pennies, quite a few coins from all over the world and….
$1856 in change!!! Added in was a generous $200 donation from one of our parents and so our grand total was:
$2056
Which is a lot of money, especially when you think it all came from a group of about 130 kids who had a deep heart to help other kids (and to slime Jules). This was totally an incredible blessing and outcome from our amazing week of VBS Kids Camp. A huge thank you to everyone who helped to make our week a great success!!!
Laura Herr Photography 