Bible Stories, Crafts and Cookies at VBS

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” (Forest E. Witcraft) 

Did you go to Vacation Bible School when you were a kid? Have you ever volunteered your time to teach kids Bible stories or help them tie dye shirts or make pencil holders out of soup cans? Could be you made a new friend like these two have done. 


Back in the day, so the older members of our little church used to tell me, they had Bible School for two weeks for three hours in the afternoon Monday through Friday. They went around with a big truck and gathered up every kid in the neighborhood and when the classrooms inside the church were unbearably hot with so many kids crowded in them, they had Bible School under the shade tree in the yard. They fed the kids Koolaid and cookies and taught them to store the Word of God in their hearts. 

I don't remember the two week Bible Schools, but I do remember the three hour during the day sessions. And I do remember the fresh faces of the kids eager to hear the Bible stories and make something neat to take home to show their moms and dads. I remember singing "This Little Light of Mine" and "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart." I remember giving that whole week to Bible School from preparing lessons and getting craft ideas ready. I remember all the other ladies in the church and some of the men were ready to do the same. It didn't matter that the beans in the garden were ready to pick or that they needed to make a few gallons of tomato juice. At VBS time, they were there to give their time in order to share the Gospel with a child. 

Sweet children's face march through my memory as I think back on teaching Bible School for over forty years. I'm not all that good with crafts. Sand jars are usually my and the kids' favorite. Did you know you can make great "sand" for those sand sculptures with plain old salt and colored chalk. Just pour a little salt out on wax paper and let the kids rub the chalk on it. The more they scrub the salt with the chalk, the darker the color will be.

Some of the other things we made were wind chimes out of bamboo sticks, yarn octopi, a gumball holder, picture frames of all sorts, a necklace of the Ten Commandments rolled up as tiny scrolls and threaded on a string, shirts painted or dyed in interesting and often very unique ways, and concrete garden stones. That's just to name a few. I guess the most unusual thing I ever did with a class was let them paint cow bones. I gathered the bones out in my field from long dead cows and the boys I had in my class that year got a kick out of making them into some sort of very strange creatures. You're probably going "ewww!" But the bone art was actually pretty neat. 

But what I always liked best about Bible School was telling the stories. So many great stories in the Bible! Elijah calling down the fire from heaven. Daniel in the lion's den. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace. Jesus calming the storm and walking on the water. The little boy and his five loaves and two fishes. I could go on and on. I love telling the stories in the Bible. I guess that's why I enjoy writing Christian fiction so much. I get to include some of those stories in with my stories.

So how about you? Did you ever go to VBS and make some new friends? I'm thinking you probably never painted cow bones, but you probably painted something and had fun doing it. Oh yeah, and our kids used to love playing kickball. 

Thanks for reading.    

Old Time Sunday Afternoons

 

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.~ Ernest Gaines

 

I got to eat breakfast with writer friends Lonnie and Roberta Simpson Brown at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest on Saturday. Roberta writes ghost stories. While she looks like somebody's sweetest ever grandmother, her stories might not exactly be the kind of stories grandma would tell you - especially right before you went to bed. At least not if she didn't want the kids to be crawling in bed with her to keep the ghosts away. Roberta is  known as the "queen of cold-blooded tails" by her friends. You can check out her and Lonnie's books at Roberta's website. She'd be the perfect storyteller to have sitting around a campfire with you if you wanted to have chills crawling up your back and to keep checking over your shoulder for something going bump in the night. Her husband, Lonnie, also writes some of the stories, so when they go on the road to a book event, they go as a team.

 

Breakfast isn't much of a ghost story telling time. So we were talking about less scary things like how things used to be back when we were all quite a bit younger. Lonnie said he used to spend Sunday afternoons counting the cars that went by their house. That made me laugh because while I don't remember counting the cars, I do remember noticing every one. And we knew who was driving each of those cars too. A different car, one we didn't know, was reason to wonder what that driver was doing on our road. Sometimes we didn't even have to look at the cars to know them. We could tell by the sound of the engines. Lonnie said they'd know Uncle Willie was coming before he topped the hill.

 

Then he said another of their past times on a lazy Sunday afternoon was leaning on a fence rail and watching the cows graze. That's how come we have a cow picture tonight. I don't think I ever watched the cows graze, but the little calves running around are pretty cute. Back in the day, things were considerably slower out in the country where people like Lonnie, Roberta, and I grew up.

 

Sundays were different. After that wonderful Sunday dinner that your mother fixed and put in the oven before leaving for Sunday school, most of us took the day off. Sometimes people went for a Sunday drive. That was when gas was around a quarter a gallon. Folks would drive down all the country roads and see what the neighbors were up to. Or maybe you'd go visiting relatives.

 

That's what happened around my house. We went to our cousins' house or they came to ours. Cousins can be the best friends. We'd be outside in the woods as soon as Sunday dinner was over. The grownups would maybe play Rook or just talk away the afternoon. In the summer, the men might make ice cream in the White Mountain ice cream freezer. Neighbors would drop by to sit on the porch and pass the time of day. You kept a swatter handy to kill the pesky flies. My husband would have been off fishing when he was a boy and then back to church after getting the cows in early to milk. And even on Sunday, there were always chores to be done, animals to feed, wood to pack in during the cold months, water to carry into the house.

 

We didn't have electronic toys. We had grapevines in the trees instead of swing sets. We made mud pies and went wading in creeks. And we chewed on sweet grass and watched the cows graze. But those were good days. What about your Sunday afternoons? What did you do when you were growing up on Sundays? 

Counting My Blessings on Thanksgiving!

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American. ~O. Henry

Thanksgiving is a great time to pause and think about our blessings. Family is certainly a blessing that has me counting. And grandkids are easy to name in that number. One through nine for us - all beautiful children who can make this grandmother smile. But I'm also thankful for the rest of my family too. My husband, my children and their spouses, my mother and my dad - though he's been gone over 20 years - my sisters, my in-laws and all the others in my extended family. That's one of the good things about living in the same place forever and having family that has done the same. So many great connections and family who are not only related by blood but by love and common experiences. 

My country church

I'm thankful for my church family and for a pastor who is able to open up the Bible and reveal its lessons and truths to me. I'm thankful for the Lord and the many times He has blessed me and forgiven me. I'm thankful for all the everyday blessings of life - blue skies and rain, flowers and trees, hummingbirds and snowbirds, breaks in the traffic when I'm merging onto a busy interstate, a car that starts when I turn the key, a child's smile, a baby's first giggle, a dog's wagging tail - just to name a few. So many little gifts of life to enjoy and appreciate. 

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

Coming February 2012

So this Thanksgiving Day I want to be conscious of my treasures. I can't leave out the blessing of being able to live my dream of writing books and seeing them published for readers to share my stories. Each book a blessing. Each reader a blessing too. I thank all of you who have read my books or who peek in here at my journal from time to time. I am thankful for each of you. And for a new book to come in the new year and for the unknown blessings it may bring me in the months to come.


Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. ~Native American Saying

So may you have a blessed and happy Thanksgiving Day with many unknown blessings headed your way. As always, thanks for reading. Oh, and for those of you who didn't know the way I didn't know, saleratus means baking soda. A saleratus biscuit is a soda biscuit - the kind my mother used to make every day for breakfast.  

Happy Possibilities

Where do you feel happy? And if you found such a place, how often would you make every effort to go there? This would be a place where you would feel loved and worthy and safe and engaged in life. No boredom there. No hard testing. Except, of course, some of us are happiest when faced with challenges that we have to give our all to meet.
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That's probably why people run marathons. I haven't decided that would be a happy time for me. I love to walk, but running 26 miles is another matter. But my son-in-law and daughter enjoy testing themselves by running in races and feeling the accomplishment of finishing with a faster time than they did in the last race.
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Me, I'm happy when I'm writing and it can certainly be challenging to come up with the right idea that can start the snowball of story creation rolling. At times the idea can explode and lend itself to a dynamite beginning that maybe writes itself but then somewhere along the story writing way will come some writing doldrums. I usually have a few stretches of doldrums when I'm writing - times when I wonder if I'll ever finish this story or even if it's worth finishing. And yet I'm only really happy when I'm somewhere in the process of telling a story.
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Not that I don't get happiness from other things. I certainly do. I love my family and I'm crazy about my grandkids. I am blessed with a life chock full of happy possibilities. Even now staying with Mom so much, there are happy possibilities as Mom and I spend more time together than we have in years. Of course there are also the happy times when I do get to go home and just be me. And part of me - a big part of me - is a writer. That was part of me before I ever met my husband. It can be a frustrating part - a maddening part - a consuming part. But in the center of all of that it can be a happy part.
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I got going on the idea of where to find happiness from our Sunday bulletin today. In the printed material on the back the writer asks, "Where is a good place to find happiness?" And he suggests we might answer "the church." I do hope you expect to find that inner happiness so necessary to your well being in your chuch. I do. But I also know I need to be writing words that will slide one sentence into the next and the next until I have a story going. And then I'm happy - at least until I hit the doldrums. ;o)
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I've been so busy this weekend with the trip to Books by the Banks in Cincinnati and then staying at Mom's and trying to cook for Homecoming meal and going to Homecoming and then back to Mom's that happiness hasn't been much on my mind. More survival or perhaps endurance is the better word. Maybe I'm running those races just like my daughter and son-in-law, but they're private races - races to get everything done and some words written too.
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I haven't even been home long enough to pick my winners for my birthday giveaway, but by next blog post for sure. Oh yeah, and I just put the flower picture because I liked it. It's been way too chilly today as if winter is trying to leapfrog over autumn and so I needed a little bright time. Plus, the area where I took the picture of those Dutchman's-breeches is one of the places I can always find a good dose of happiness while I'm hiking. Church is another, especially on a day like today when we were celebrating 198 years and welcoming so many friends back home.
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Where is a good place for you to find happiness?

Showers of April Activities

Isn't it amazing how quickly the weeks roll by? Here we are in April already. Did any of you get caught on April Fool jokes? My five-year-old granddaughter tried to pull one on me by saying it was going to snow 3 feet. When I looked at her with a bit of disbelief, she quickly changed it to 3 inches. I guess she realized she wasn't going to "snow" Grammy with such a whopper of a story. So I played along on the 3 inches. Getting to say "April's Fools" is half the fun.

April is shaping up to be an extra busy month around here. Our church just built a new fellowship hall which is pretty close to miraculous for our little church of about 50 active members. But we've gotten a lot of help and support from former members and friends in the area. And the building is fantastic. I feel blessed anew every time I go in the door. We'd been having all our "eatin' meetings" down in our small and often damp basement under our Sunday School rooms that were built back in the forties. The sanctuary part of the church was actually built in 1875. So it's old. And no, I wasn't a member then. So this new building is a gift to our church. It's light and warm and on ground level with lots of space for everybody to sit down and eat together. We don't have to worry about what we'll do if it rains on Homecoming Day now. We'll just stay inside and enjoy. So we're celebrating with a Fred L. Knickerbocker Fellowship Hall dedication day the last Sunday of the month. We named the building after Br. Fred who has been our minister now for about 25 years. He was a vocational school teacher for many years besides being a pastor and all his students called him Mr. K. So we're calling the new fellowship hall K Hall. And of course, at our church any time we celebrate we have to eat, so we're having a big dinner with everybody invited. Come on over if you're close enough to know where Goshen is. The way my church in the Hollyhill books looks was based on Goshen, but only the dedicated, loving members at Mt. Pleasant in Holly County are like the people who were going to Goshen when I started attending there at the age of 17. And yes, that was a long time ago, too.

But that's not all that's going on in April. First I'm having my big event at my local library here in Anderson County on April 13. That's next Sunday. We're going to have a big time talking about my Hollyhill books and how much Hollyhill looks like my hometown, Lawrenceburg or really, any small town. I'm hoping to have some fun with '60s trivia and give out some doorprizes. I went shopping for them last night. Got to give away some Elvis, you know. If you've read Summer of Joy, you'll know why. I'm doing a repeat performance on May 8th at the Paul Sawyier Library in Frankfort. That's a Thursday night at 6 p.m.

On the in between Sunday, April 20, our church is helping a very special couple in our church celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary. Now that's an accomplishment. Loretta and Earl are the sweetest couple in the world and they're still able to live at home. Not only that, but Loretta still cooks a mean meal and is an artist with her sewing needle. You should see some of the dolls she has made. Plus she remembers all my grandkids' names when she's got a dozen or two grands and great grands and even a couple of great great grands. Both Loretta and Earl believe in Bible study and have read through the Bible a number of times. They love to ask Br. Fred Bible study questions. Earl is having some health problems. After all, he is 95. So say a prayer for him that he'll be able to enjoy his big day. The whole family is supposed to show up to help them celebrate and someone sent in the information to the Today Show. So if you're watching and hear them talking about Loretta and Earl on April 23rd, you'll know that they are two of my favorite church people. At Goshen, I have had so many wonderful church people who loved me without reservation.

I'm also going to be on a panel at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival on Saturday, April 19 plus a couple of speaking dates in the next few weeks. I know you'll pray for me. Thank you. I want to be an encourager to the people I meet and especially to those I talk to. I came across a quote while I was doing the bulletin for church this week. I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like this -- Sometimes we cheat ourselves when we just ask for our own prayers to be answered because the Lord may have so much more in mind for us.

Thanks for dropping by. Remember if you want to be in the drawing for an early copy of The Outsider, you need to go to my website http://www.annhgabhart.com/ and e-mail me. Enjoy your week.

Easter Blessings

Happy Easter, everyone! What a great day to be in church with your family around you as we remember the empty tomb! As my preacher, Br. Fred says, Easter is the highlight of our Christian worship. Br. Fred has been preaching at Goshen for twenty plus years, but I never get tired of hearing his great sermons. He should have been preaching in a big church, but life circumstances led him to our little church and we've been blessed over the years to have him teaching and preaching the Bible to us. I know I've learned a lot and it stood me in good stead when I decided to write my Hollyhill books with one of the main characters a preacher. While my preacher can't preach like Br. Fred, he does have the same love for preaching the Word.

Today was an extra nice day at church because both of my sons were there to worship with us along with their families. We packed two pews. Any of you remember back when we had revivals in the summer and the preacher would challenge the people in the church to pack a pew? I don't do it every Sunday, but we managed today. My sons have three children each ranging in age from thirteen to almost two, and so I was surrounded by beautiful grandchildren. I hope you were too. If you're old enough for grandkids. If not, I hope you were surrounded by loved ones of whatever age. Of course at our little church we claim every baby born into our church family as a church grandkid. We all take turns spoiling them.

We came home and had an Easter egg hunt out in the yard. That's not an easy accomplishment with my big old dog and the neighbor dogs wanting to get in on the hunt too. But the kids found plenty of eggs with only a few ending up in the dogs' mouths first. Those were quickly rejected by the granddaughters. Ooeuwie. (I don't know how to spell that, but you get the idea.) My grandson loved it when the eggs he picked up rattled because that meant he'd found one with some coins in it.

So tonight I'm bushed after some marathon cooking sessions and getting up for Sunrise Service (and cooking for breakfast at church, too) and having fun playing with the kids. You know they don't stay little long and a grandma has to make hay while the sun shines. And the sun was shining big time today.

I hope you had a blessed Easter too and are feeling as blessed as I am.