The Journey Begins....Again: Vacation Bible School

A couple months ago, my friend Kayla and I decided to talk to our pastor about having a Vacation Bible School at our church. Vacation Bible School is not something that is very common in Ecuadorian churches. In fact, our church had never had one before. The response was overwhelming. Within a couple weeks we had about 25 volunteers committed to helping. The problem was that we only had 1 child signed up. Kayla and I drove around in the orphanage van to hand out fliers to restaurants and stores in the neighborhood. We then also decided to open up the VBS to a local ministry called Pan de Vida (Bread of Life). This ministry works with the poorest people in Quito. The children are often times working on the street selling candy or gum or performing in intersections in the hope to get some small change. In a few days we went from 1 child to 60 children. I had a group that was volunteering at For His Children for the week and I spoke to them before they came down about helping out. They had just finished their own VBS at their home church so they happily agreed to bring down their leftover craft supplies to help us out.

It was awesome to see God working throughout the week during the program. We had volunteers of all different ages and backgrounds, languages, and cultures; from different churches within Quito and really from throughout the world. The kids enjoyed Bible time, music, sports and snack, and crafts. Compared to most VBS programs, ours was pretty simple. It was put together in about one month and we had limited resources. The joy though that these kids felt was evident. For a couple hours, they were able to just be “normal” kids.

After living here for awhile it’s easy to become hardened to the needs you see around you. God has really opened up my eyes to the needs of so many children in this city.

I saw one of the Pan de Vida children the other day. He asked, “When do we get to go back to church?” I think it was a success!