Pax Domini

This year our church did the VBS program by Pax Domini. According to our awesome Deaconess Intern Angie they will have a 7 year rotating program for churches to buy and each year's program will be built upon the previous years'.

We did the first year's program this year and it was titled "In the Name" and the theme was the Trinity and understanding who God is.

The curriculum is in black and white and has tons of classical art for visual teaching devices. It did not have a graphic to make T-shirts with, so we got permission to use one of their images and I doctored it up in Photoshop (That's it up there).

We made stained glass window panes for the craft (and if anyone from PD reads this and wants my input I'll be glad to give it, teehee) which turned out really awesome, and believe it or not the kids really really wanted to do it. In fact we had a girl who is not a member of our church come to VBS and she was late one day. She was really upset that she missed her opportunity to work on her craft so she took time out of her snack to come down and work on her project! She was really proud of her work and so was her mom.

They started the morning out each day with a chapel service, which Olivia really loved. They learned the hymn "God the Father, Be Our Stay" which Olivia loved to sing little key phrases from all week long. Those phrases were, "humble hearts," and my personal favorite, "Evil One!" In fact she spent most of the week asking me, "Sing Evil One, Gain?" So I memorized a new hymn as well.

There was a puppet show to help illustrate the lesson for each day, each lesson building off the day before and explaining a person of the Godhead. There was only one day of the puppet show that I didn't think was great, and that was not because it didn't teach the children well, because it did, but because the jokes weren't very funny. But it's hard to makes jokes about the Word becoming Flesh and dwelling among us, so I give them some slack.

The information was solid, the craft was fun, the kids enjoyed themselves, and everyone's faith was strengthened. I had 3 of the older kids tell me that they liked this better than the Concordia programs that we've done in the past because this one "wasn't cheesy" at all. It was fun, but it didn't treat the kids like they were too stupid to understand their faith.

Overall, I was really impressed. Especially as a parent who was leaving an under 2 year old for the first time in a structured school setting. I was surprised to find that she didn't care at all if I left her to sit with her class for a 15 minute long church service.

Olivia talked about Bible School all week and she still brings it up occasionally this week too. She had a blast, and I'm grateful that she spent those 5 days hearing the Grace-filled Word of God.