For 5 years now, the Young at Heart (YAH) have traveled to Old Fields Baptist Church in West Virginia to do Vacation Bible School (VBS) and block parties in the community. We used The Big Apple Adventure curriculum from Lifeway, where the children learned to connect with Jesus and step out in their faith. We played “The Big Apple Adventure” song every day and this song emphasized, “Connecting faith, with love, with trust, with others, with L.I.F.E.” This was one of the children’s favorite.
There were a total of 8 team members this year. This was an amazing team. Everyone worked together so well. All team members were well prepared and organized, everything from Bible study, to crafts and to recreation. Everyone was very dedicated and you could just see how much they loved serving the Lord. This goes to show, that no matter what your age is, you are never too old to go on a mission trip. The team members were encouraged to stretch and get out of their comfort zone, and this was exactly what they did.
When we arrived on Sunday afternoon, we went to our 2 sites where we would be conducting our VBS’s, prayer walked and passed out door hangers inviting the children to come. The door hangers not only had information about our VBS, but also had information on it about Old Fields Baptist church. Our VBS’s were held on Monday through Thursday at each location. Our morning VBS was at a trailer park (Scott’s Trailer Park) in a cornfield. We had approximately 14 children in attendance every day, with new children attending every day. Our afternoon VBS was at Yellow Bud Apartments. Here, we had approximately 17 children in attendance every day. Once again, the Lord sent more and more children every day.
On Monday evening, we assisted Old Fields Baptist in preparing almost 125 food boxes that would be picked up Tuesday morning by people in the community. The YAH were very excited about helping the church with this extra project. Dan Howard, pastor at Old Fields Baptist is very involved in his community and provides food boxes every Tuesday, once a month. On Tuesday morning when we arrived at the church, there was a line out the door for people needing food boxes. Several team members stated that you never know how blessed you are, until you see people who need the very essentials to live, food.
We concluded our week in West Virginia with a block party at Yellow Bud on Thursday night. The kids were talking about the block party all week. We had face painting, duck pond, prizes, bubbles, ballooning, ball toss games, an inflatable, hot dogs, chips and soda at the block party. There was a very large turnout for this event.
We thank everyone for their prayers while we were gone and the many contributions that were made to the West Virginia trip. Through some these contributions, we were able to provide each child with a Bible, as well as, some of the parents who attended VBS with their children. The Lord provided safe travel, good health, and nice weather all week. As a church, we are truly blessed to have the YAH feel led to serve and what a privilege and blessing it is to serve along side of them.
For His Glory,
2011 WV Team
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