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Vacation Bible School 2022

10 Oct 2022

Vacation Bible School 2022

A joint initiative between Immanuel Anglican Church, Our Saviourâ€™s Lutheran Church, Eastside United Church, and St. Paulâ€™s Anglican Church.

The 2022 version of our Vacation Bible School/Day Camp was an amazing adventure for the 41 children participating, the 14 tweens and teens who helped, and all of the adult volunteers. The camp was held at Immanuel the week of August 22 - 26 from 9:30 to 3:30 each day.

Our day started out with a large group assembly time, where Holly Hirschfield introduced the theme of the day and got everyone going. There was also a puppet show, featuring puppet DJ Cupcake, with our amazing puppeteer Toby Walker.

The theme for our daycamp this year was Food Truck Party and focused on â€˜Give us this day our daily breadâ€™, with stories of how God provided for his people. After the large group assembly, the children split into 4 groups, with a couple of Teen/Tween group leaders each, and rotated through 4 stations: story time, crafts, games, and cooking.

Each day we were joined by two lovely ladies from Our Saviourâ€™s Lutheran church (Sharon and Donna) who led the children in music time. They got the children all participating in learning the songs â€“ and all of the songs had actions. The songs we learned were: Forever and Ever, 5-2-1 Eat, Mana in the Morning, The Good Stuff, and Food Truck Party.

There were amazing crafts including a tie-dyed apron with a cross, and a placemat. It was a hot week, so many of the games involved water which the kids loved. Cooking included making snacks for the group as well as cookies to share with the congregation and assembling 200 sandwiches to give out at the downtown lunch program. The children even learned their bible verses in sign language!

On the final day of the camp an actual food truck arrived to serve lunch to the children, volunteers and parishioners who were interested. This was a great hit with everyone.

Planning for the week began shortly after Christmas. The core group of leaders at Immanuel (Jenny Williams, Meagan Plumb, Jessica Walker, and Anita Laryea) knew that they couldnâ€™t pull off a full day camp with up to 50 children by themselves, so they teamed up with Our Saviourâ€™s Lutheran, Eastside United, and St. Paulâ€™s Anglican to bring their vision to life. The Food Truck Party curriculum created by Cokesbury was purchased, and this included music DVDâ€™s, videos for each dayâ€™s story, and a trivia question and answer for each dayâ€™s wrap up. Along the way it was learned that another Lutheran church in Regina was running the same program on another week in the summer, so the two teams collaborated, shared decorations and craft ideas, and learned from each other.

The core team from the 4 churches involved are already planning to do it again next year, and also collaborate with the other Lutheran church.

Our camp was again provided free of charge, thanks to donations from Immanuel, Our Saviourâ€™s and St. Paulâ€™s. We received donation from parents to offset the costs, and the net cost shared between the 3 churches was just under $1,000.00