Our Life As We Know It: PANDAMANIA!!!

So for all of you who did not know...this year for VBS our church did "Pandamania"! It was wonderful. It was quite a bit of work, but turned out amazing. This year I headed up the crafts area. I had a couple of ladies that helped me each day, they were amazing and I could not have pulled it off without them. Unfortunately, I did not get pics of every craft, for multiple reasons. Day 1, we did a Panda Mask (pic to follow), Day 2, we tie-dyed shirts (that in itself was crazy, since it rained all day, and required us to do the dying, rinsing, and hanging outside- among many other things it does not require to much to imagine how it went! ) Actually turned out really well, all things considered (including my first experience with the tie-dying process,..I recommend it to anyone and everyone, very fun, very simple, a little messy though). The ladies were awesome in helping me keep everything organized; had we not been as organized as I wanted, it would have not worked out so well! So kudos to everyone involved, thanks again! Day 3, was the Jonah fish pots (pic to follow, very cute); day 4 was a Panda door hanger, and day 5 was a fan (that the kids could decorate however they wanted. Each day we also had coloring pages (that corresponded to what they were learning about- the focus was around Psalms 139); and we had a "wall art" area in which the kids could color and decorate it how they wanted. Every child had the opportunity to add to it each day. With that, each day new paper was put up on the wall to start fresh. At the end of each day the wall art was displayed somewhere in the church; and by the end of the week we used it to decorate the church walls for the Sunday service.

I also have pics and video of the Sunday Service (hopefully I will be able to post them later). Very awesome, for the week we had up to 80 some kids there, and for Sunday just about all of them came to the service, and brought with them their family and friends...so Sunday, the kids came in singing their song "He's Wild, He's wild, God is Wild about us!" song; then everyone got to learn in short about each day, what each lesson was about, went over the skit for each day, and got to hear the kids sing a song that reflected that day. At the end, our pastor preached the message of Jesus, and the kids led us out with another song. After the service the church hosted a carnival in which the kids got to use up their Panda bucks that they earned throughout the week for anything from being good, to listening, to knowing their bible verse, etc. They had all kinds of food and drinks, cotton candy, popcorn, games, face painting, and the water slide.

Andrew and his Buddy (Aidan)