Pastor Warren sends this update from Cambodia…
Wednesday in the village of Snor was filled much energy, smiles, laughter, singing, and joy with the children of Snor, as we held two half day sessions of VBS. It was certainly the highlight of the week.
The theme of our morning session was ‘The Lost Sheep’, which included an interactive skit and fun costuming for our sheep. With the heat already rising to high levels early in the morning, it made it a bit warm for wearing sheep costumes for our team. The children especially had fun ‘helping’ the shepherd find his lost sheep. After the skit each child was given a paper cut out of a sheep and they wrote their name on it, and attached it to the back of a paper sandwich bag, which was transformed into a sheep hand puppet. We taught the children the song ‘I just wanna be sheep’, and they loved raising their sheep puppets in the air to say “bah bah bah.”
Following a short teaching time, we decided to play a game called “Follow the Shepherd.” Dressed as a shepherd, I invited the children to follow me in a parade through the village to follow and do whatever the shepherd would do, from chanting, arm motions, to just plain hopping around. Admittedly, there was a moment, where I became a bit turned around in the village and got a little lost myself. ? Thankfully, I was able to find a way through to the next house and continue our parade. As I was nearing the end of the parade, as you can imagine, in the heat of the day, I was kind of slowing down. But all of the sudden, the children began chanting behind me, which vaulted my spirits, giving me enough energy to kick it into another level. There is a video on Facebook showing this, that you might enjoy. After our parade was completed, the children enjoyed a healthy snack, and had to go home to take a break from the heat.
Our afternoon session was different, in that we spent more time on crafts and games. We also began with another interactive skit about Jesus walking on the water. This included the children waving blue and white paper ribbons to represent the waves, and they also shook bottles filled with stones to create a stormy windy sound. Our team thoroughly enjoyed being in the middle of the children who were very enthusiastically providing visual and audio effects. From there we broke out into games which included a parachute and beach ball, a chasing the snake game, and bozo buckets. We ended our time by giving the children much time to do crafts and to simply color on some coloring pages. They absolutely loved the coloring pages and created some beautiful pictures.
After spending a full day with the children, I would say that these children have captured the hearts of everyone on our team. They are simply a joy to be with and to witness their pure love of Jesus.
On Thursday, we will be going to another village to conduct the eye glass clinic again. Pastor Samuel tells us that 300 people are expected.
It is a joy serving God’s people in this way.
