Day #3: Prayer pays off

Thankfully, God gave us mercy and provision for day three. Again, we had three different teams in the morning doing three different projects. The first group went with Peter back to the Community Center to help out there, although it turned out that they were unable to do what they had wanted us to do (fix up the library’s garden) so the team ended up spending time with the kids at the daycare. It was a terrifying last-minute switch for the scheduler in me, but I trust that God rearranged things for a reason and it was awesome for the team to spend time with the community kids, playing on the playground, playing basketball, and talking to them and inviting them to VBS.

The second team went prayer walking through the neighborhood, as suggested by one of the leaders at Grace Church after the challenges of the previous day’s VBS. “Send them prayer walking. This neighborhood needs as much prayer as we can give it.” So we walked through the neighborhood and prayed for the businesses, homes, and public spaces in the community, asking God to bless the people of the community, give it His protection, and asking that He make Himself known to them, either through us, Grace Church, or through however He wants to reach the people of Feltonville.

The last team went to South Philly, to Pastor Will and Sarah and continued to help clean up the park in Point Breeze (it’s a big park!).      

After the lunch, Becky and Debby met with the individual VBS groups by “job” (games, crafts, Bible, rotation leaders A, B, and C, etc) to give some more personalized advice, get a midweek check-in, and help reorganize and move extra people from less intense rotations to more intense rotations in an attempt to help minimize the chaos if the previous day’s VBS. It was a good chance to give everyone some breathing time and extra planning time for the day, especially the crucial day where the gospel message would be shared at Bible time. 

After that, we met with our third speak for the week, Chrisi Brown, wife of Pastor Mike Brown (whose house had gotten robbed the previous day). Chrisi shared her testimony with the teams, and her experiences (enlightened and challenged by the previous day’s events) of living and raising a family in the city. She talked about her experience of being bi-racial, growing up in Wisconsin, and moving to inner-city Philly and seeing first-hand what urban ministry was like. She shared with the teams her experiences with racism, challenges she and her husband faced living and ministering in Philly, and the importance of loving people and seeing them as God sees them. After having some much-needed worship time and prayer time for the upcoming hours of VBS, we had dinner and did our last-minute preparations for VBS.

A crew at craft time

The third day of VBS went incredibly well. We had our highest number of kids that day, of all the days we were doing VBS—around 70. This included a staggering number of teens, coming to the teen and pre-teen class that was led by some of the leaders from the church. By the third day, we had around 20 teens attending VBS. Becky and Debby were especially astonished to see how God had brought in so many teens, and they saw it as a sign of how much the church needed someone to be able to dedicate their time and begin a full-time youth ministry. So, if you’re reading this, Becky and Debby’s prayer request is for God to send someone to their church who has a calling to youth ministry and is able to dedicate their time to ministering with the Feltonville teenagers.

Opening and Closing time. Those are the teens on the right.

In addition to that, God used the energy and love of the teams to reach so many of the kids. It was an amazing day of VBS. The teams were able to balance the fun and seriousness of VBS, lead with smiles and energy, and engage with the kids is a meaningful way. Bible time was focused and calm. Craft time went smoothly and offered lots of opportunities to talk more informally with the kids. Games were fun but not over-the-top crazy. The dancers led with a contagious enthusiasm in the opening and closing time. Considering our numbers and the overall smoothness of everything, in contrast to how things had gone the previous day, I can do nothing else but praise God for having his hand on the teams, the kids, and the evening of VBS.

Games!