MANNY VITUG
Southeastern California Conference
Almost 600 children gathered at the Loma Linda University church for this year’s Kidsville in June.
Mylia pauses with her craft during Kidsville at Victoria church.
by Lucas Pimentel, a music producer and a member of the Corona church. “The point was to create songs that exemplified the theme of the week: Jesus loves others through you,” Rantung said. “With the music and the motions, we were trying to help the children experience the message through music.” Rantung said he felt blessed to have had this role, because music is what children take with them when VBX is over. “You hope that kids will not only remember the lessons, but actually live them — to keep it in their minds and hearts.” Joseph Oh, associate pastor of the San Diego Central church, reported that 55 children attended their program. He said that when his church was looking at different Vacation Bible Schools to select from, they initially had their doubts about VBX. “But when we went to the training, we really loved what we saw about the program,” Oh said. “I enjoyed the depth the students got.” Oh said that he had been frustrated with VBS programs in the past, because they typically combined the station that told the Bible story with the station that explained the life application, and there was often not enough time to cover all the material. For him, this issue was resolved in VBX. “Because it was broken into two pieces, there was plenty of time not only to tell the story in an engaging manner that the students would enjoy, but also to give them time to process it and think about how it was practical to their lives,” Oh said. Charlotte Jakiel, interim VBX director at the Arlington church, said 75 children attended their program. “It was awesome,” Jakiel said. “The Lord blessed us. It was one of the best years we’ve had, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me that.”
Children listen carefully to stories of service dogs and how they help people.
Churches created prayer stations this summer for children to pray and write prayer requests during this year’s Vacation Bible Xperience.
The North American Division has asked Vitug and his team to plan another VBX program for 2018. When Vitug contacted Jakiel to see if her church would be willing to test-run their new program in 2018, Jakiel said she quickly agreed after such a successful run this summer. Though there were many things churches enjoyed about this summer’s VBX, Vitug said there are still things that need improvement, such as more decoration ideas. Vitug plans to address these needs in the future, as he and his team are already coming up with preliminary plans for VBX 2018. “The 2018 VBX is looking at understanding the role of Jesus as our Savior and how it impacts our responsibilities to the world,” Vitug said.
Avery Botticelli September 2016
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