Today was the last day for VBS and I'm so glad it's finally over! Don't get me wrong. The kids had a blast and the program this year was awesome. However, being a volunteer when you are 6 months pregnant was probably not the best idea for me, LOL. My feet have been swollen the past 3 days. Even though it was a little stressful having to memorize my lines each night and hard being on my feet all day, I really did enjoy myself. Our program this year was Rome (http://www.group.com/vbs/rome/). For some reason, Blogger wouldn't let me link the site because it didn't end in .com. My character was Lucia in the Underground Church. Since I was in MD up until the day before VBS, I didn't have anything to do with decorating. The guy that made the cave for the underground church did an awesome job! I tried to take some pictures but the pictures just doesn't do it justice. If I used the flash, it was too bright and it didn't look as realistic but if I turned the flash off, it just looked black with an orange light from the torch. I will post pictures anyway at the end. I wished I took more pictures because we were all in costume. They were taking pictures the whole week but I'm not sure if I'll have access to them or not. They are going to do a slide show tomorrow night at the 6pm Mass.
Last year, the program we used was the Rainforest. Shawn had fun last year but I don't think he really learned much from it. This year though he was very excited to tell me about the abacus in the grammatical shop and how to use it. He was also very proud of the scroll he brought home that he wrote the Roman alphabet on. He could tell me the bible point each day which I was very impressed with. He would tell me about Brutus each day and the games they played in the Apprenticeship games.
I also got to see how excited the kids were each day. Every day, 2 to 3 "families" would go see Paul and Brutus. Paul would always teach them the bible point and make sure to tell the kids to tell his other Christian friends what he said. When they came to the underground church, we would ask them what Paul said today which would get the kids to repeat the bible point again. Of course we would always get all kinds of other information too, LOL. The script was great. Brutus is a Roman Guard that is chained to Paul so he can't escape. By the end of the week, Brutus is converted to a Christian. On Wednesday, Brutus was sleeping when the kids came in to see Paul. He woke up startled because of a dream and then was embarrassed that he had fell asleep on duty. He was very impressed that the kids didn't try to help Paul escape while he was asleep and that begins his conversion. My favorite day was on Thursday. In the underground church, I had to tell the kids that the Roman soldiers almost caught Marcus but he ran away and I didn't know where he was. I had a lot more dialog and questions to ask the kids and then I hushed the kids and told them that I heard someone outside the cave. That's when we played the soldiers sound clip on the CD. The dialog was actually kind of funny but it still scared some of the younger kids. One of the soldiers wanted to search the cave but the other one talked him out of it because it was dark and dirty and he didn't want to get bit by rats. They ended up walking away talking about finding Marcus. When it was time for the kids to leave, there were several that didn't want to leave the cave because they thought the soldiers were still out there, LOL. Today, I snuck behind Paul's house to hear what was going on and the kids were really excited to talk about the soldiers almost finding them. They all cheered when Brutus announced that he was a Christian now. When they came over to the underground church, they couldn't wait to tell us that Brutus was a Christian. They also couldn't wait to tell us that Brutus had to shovel horse "stuff" at the Emperors stables now. I didn't really get a chance to see much of the Market but besides making some crafts, they actually learned what it was like to live in Rome during that time. There were dramas every day but most of them happened in the Market so I didn't get to see them. Yesterday, I know that someone stole a loaf of bread because they didn't have any money to pay for it and today the Roman Soldiers closed down the Metal Shop because they found out the owner was a Christian.
I think next year our Church is going to do Egypt which has to do with Joseph's journey from prison to palace and is by the same company that did Rome. I can't wait! Here's the pictures of my cave:
The back wall of the cave
A close up of one of the torches. It actually had a flickering light bulb inside and looked really realistic in the dark.
They posted the pictures of VBS on our Church website. Click here and here to see more pictures.
