VBS and Two Must Read Links for Writers!

Couple of VBS tips for ya, in case you are in the same mode…get to church early the Sunday you plan to announce the need for volunteers and go through the pews putting neon dot stickers randomly under the seats. Then at announcement time, tell everyone to check under their chairs to see if they’re the lucky winners that get to “help” with VBS this year!!! Then run, don’t walk to the nearest exit!   I actually can’t complain, I’ve got my crafts, snacks, story, song, game and missions all lined out…it’s just the organizing of all the details!

Second tip: in the month leading up to VBS have a standard workshop night–we’re having ours every Tuesday night from 6-8 pm…a come and go time where anyone can drop in and be put to work coloring posters, painting backdrops, getting the crafts ready etc. This is a good way to involve people in your church that already know they won’t be in town or available to help during the actual week of VBS.

Have to share our mission project, we’re so excited about it! The general consensus at our church as regards a mission offering for VBS is “don’t ask the kids to bring money”…um, okay. But–little whine here– I really have good memories of the boys against girls offering wars or the time we all brought shoes to be donated to an overseas orphanage… So we started mulling over our options. What could we do that would appeal to the kids, and give them an opportunity to make a difference? Long story short, we are going to collect boxes of crayons and sheets of star stickers to be sent to Burundi, Africa for the over 16,000 children that will be participating in VBS this summer. Another church not too far away from ours does this every year, and we’ll just send our collections with them. Each African child will receive one color to last the entire week of VBS. The stars are attendance stickers to be put on the homemade crowns they’ll construct the first day. The woman who explained this mission to me said that over half of these children come to know the Lord during this week in VBS. Burundi used to be a part of Rwanda…these children know a lot about loss of loved ones and living in the midst of war. I can’t wait to take this on!

Okay for anyone writing or interested in expanding your horizons: Yesterday in asking for help with my ms at ACFW, one of the members, Mirtika, who critiques for contests and an online magazine gave me a link to her blog and said I could share it. The entry is called BEFORE YOU ENTER THAT FICTION CONTEST: Mir’s Non-Comprehensive Tour of Trouble-Spot Tip-Offs. Also while there check out her links…there is one for Ten Writing Mistakes that is worth reading also. I printed out both actually! Sigh. Who knew there was so much to well, writing! Or writing well! Mir has a hilarious way of doing both and I appreciated that she “showed” how to fix the common mistakes, she didn’t just point them out as problems!

Now I need to go quit procrastinating…maybe I can play around with some VBS clip art as I surf the net!

Have a great day!

Mary