Today, our day started off with some quiet time to do our daily devotions as well as time to pray for our kids, strength, and whatever was on our minds. After the quiet time, we began a fruitful 45 minutes of meditation which included sharing our devotions, singing praise, and praying together for our day to come. We finished all of this around 8am, an hour before the VBS began. With the time we had left, we had a delicious breakfast of McDonald's provided by the Taipei HOC staff. Within the time breakfast ended, kids began to arrive and we were ready to start the VBS day!
VBS began with small group time which consisted of us spending time with our kids and just getting to know them through ice breakers. We also spent some time letting the kids review the bible verse of the day as well as the one for yesterday in both English and Chinese. The kids worked super hard to memorize the particularly long English bible verse of the day (John 3:16)! Then we headed off to the chapel so all 5 small groups could receive the message of the day and such things.
The large group time started off with worship. Today the kids learnt 2 new songs which they really seemed to enjoy (which we also taught at the VBS back home): ABC Submarine and Remarkably Made. Since some of the kids were wondering why we came all the way from the U.S. just to be part of the VBS, Lynn prepared a presentation explaining. She told the kids the parable of the lost sheep: A Shepard had 100 sheep but lost 1, so he herded the 99 sheep and went to search for the lost one. In our case, us, Antioch fellowship, are trying to herd back the lost sheep into the flock back to be with God, where they belong. After the great presentation, we had a skit telling the story of nicodemus which included some underwear and sock tossing (haha).
Afterwords, we spent the afternoon in our rotation groups and each group got to go to crafts, English/games, and science. And we ended with another group worship time.
Overall, the day had some difficulties with our language and cultural barriers but we got to know all the kids so much better. They were all very open to learn about the world of God and we thank Jesus for that!
Walking to the bus stop on the morning
Worship time!
Our skit!