She is the calm in the midst of the storm, smiling and outwardly serene but her eyes are everywhere making sure her volunteers have what they need, that each child who comes in the door has a name tag and finds his or her group leader.
At her church, she’s the VBS director and she explains she’s been doing this job for more than 15 years.
VBS is important because it is a chance to plant the seed, she explains. Though we may never see the results, we know it’s there.
Each year she emphasizes to the VBS staff that their job is to love the kids, and she and the other directors will take care of the rest. You don’t know what that day will mean to a kid you meet, she says with a quiet authority.
And she gets especially animated when talking about the crafts. To her, crafts are vital. They are the only tangible thing you really can hold onto after VBS is over, she explains. And she says that a bit softly, almost wistfully, as though remembering something.
Her passion and commitment for VBS go back a long way. She is one of those kids who didn’t get to go to church, but whose parents allowed her to go to VBS. VBS is how she learned about God.
She knows that VBS changes lives because it changed hers. And she now works to spread that life-changing love to all the kids that attend VBS at her church, a church that this year stepped out to test a new VBS program for Standard Publishing.
As a teacher, as a director, as a church – or even a publishing company –many of us take VBS seriously because it has proven over and over again to successfully introduce families in our community to Jesus Christ.
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