Joshua, God´s Warrior

At first, we planned to do VBS live this year.  We had worked out how to transport children from Huejotzingo to our house, so that the VBS could be outdoors.  However, just after we planned, the Delta wave of Corona virus arrived, and we decided that it would be imprudent to have a large group of children at our home during the week.

Back to the drawing board, we created the list of supplies we would need to give to the children who signed up for the VBS by whatsapp.  We cannot assume the children have any of the craft supplies necessary for the activities.  We also made worksheets and activity pages for each day, careful to plan for activies that the children could do without much supervision.

Prepared with 25 packets of activities for the older age group and 25 for the younger, as well as bags of pencils, scissors, glue and other supplies, we drove around our immediate neighborhood to sign up the local children - and some teens.  Two days later, we printed out another 30 packets, since we had nearly run out in our neighborhood, and drove to Huejotzingo to sign up more kids.  We also had to purchase more supplies.  By the end of sign-ups, later on in the week, we had more than 100 children and teens enrolled.  We have no way of keeping an exact count, because some people from out of state received the videos, and some who enrolled never sent back photos of their activities, so we do not entirely know who participated and saw the videos we sent out.

Doing the costumes and make-up for the videos is always an adventure in creativity.  Using wigs, tape, headbands, hair clips, and face paint, we did our best to create realistic Biblical characters for each day´s message.  Our theme was Joshua, God´s Warrior, and every day one person from Joshua´s life talked about his walk with God.  Moses started out the week, sharing how God used Moses to teach Joshua and how the two of them learned to love the Israelites through God´s strength.  Caleb shared his story on Tuesday, followed by Rahab, then a woman from Gibeon, and then Joshua himself shared his story on Saturday.

The week´s verses were John 15:12-16, and as each Bible character spoke about Joshua, they also spoke about God´s love and desire for relationship with us.  Besides the monologue videos, Abraham and I also made videos explaining the day´s crafts and clarifying the Bible message.

We sent videos of songs and the youtube links as well, so that the children could learn them and sing along.  Abraham kept busy all day, receiving messages from participants and responding to their questions.

Once the VBS week ended, we gave the participants another week to finish their packets and send photos of their pages.  For those who sent evidence of their completion, we printed diplomas and gave prizes of notebooks and fashion dolls or a catching game with mitts.  The children were excited to have their prizes and one family requested more videos
for the kids.  We will send them whatsapp videos of Walk Thru the Bible OT.

Thank you for your financial support and your prayers.  While doing VBS remotely is not as personal as doing it live, we believe God´s message is still spread.  Please pray that those who watched the videos will understand and remember God´s word for them and that those who have not yet watched the videos would watch them.  Pray also that we can continue to have outreach among our neighbors and the people of Huejotzingo.