A week with the Saints!

As I have recently come to understand the importance of catechizing the youth (because I realized just how badly it was done for me), my friend Theresa and I decided to help out at VBS two week ago. We had a great class filled with kids who have just completed or are going into 2nd grade. I guess we're lucky because out of 15 kids, only 3 of them were trouble makers.

Anyway, since the VBS program that was chosen for this year was kind of Protestant biased, it was decided that to Catholicize it up a little bit, every class would learn about a saint every day.

Seeing the picture of Papa Benny at the RECONnecting to the TRUTH blog this morning, I was reminded of the excellent fun Theresa and I had dressing up as the saints for the kids. I was reminded of this because of Papa B.'s miter which I had quite a good time re-creating out of poster board. I remember how not fun C.C.D. and sometimes even VBS had been for me as a kid and I think part of what has to be done is to get the kids laughing and excited about it like the Protestants seem to be able to do so well. It is possible to make religion, even doctrine, fun for kids if you really try. Thanks to Theresa for going along with my idea of dressing up.

Monday: The Holy Family

Thank God the doll has closed eyes. You can tell the kids that they have to be quiet or they'll wake up the baby Jesus!

Tuesday: St. John the Baptist

I made the kids pull out Bibles and taught them how to find books, chapters and verses (no one ever taught me to do it, so I figured if I didn't teach these kids, who would?) and told them to turn to Matthew 3:4 and tell me what St. John the Baptist wore and what he ate. They thought it was disgusting when I showed them pictures of what locusts look like. I told them I wanted to bring them some locusts to eat, but there was a shortage so I had to settle for worms... gummi worms!

(my sign says REPENT!!!... taught the kids what 'repent' means. I have a bottle of honey in my other hand and a locust picture pinned to my leather belt.)

Wednesday: Blessed Damien of Molokai... got to fulfill two of my dreams at the same time... being a priest and a missionary!! I showed the kids a picture of leprosy. They were astounded that Jesus and Damien loved people and wanted to help them so much that they were willing to spend time around people with it. Theresa was my Hawaiian leper. We both put on some leprosy (i.e. colored pieces of paper) and told the kids if they came near us they'd contract it too. Some of them wanted it. So being good Catholics, we shared our leprosy patches.

Thursday: St. Mary Magdalene and the angel from Jesus' tomb. Yes, Theresa's 'gown' is a lace table cloth.

Friday: St. Peter. I had quite the fun time being Papa Benny. I'm kind of upset though that my stole is all gold instead of red and gold. I was trying to match the picture of him that I'm holding. Though he's not wearing a miter in that picture, I certainly wasn't going to let the opportunity to make one for myself slip by!! The thing hanging from Theresa's (oops, I mean St. Peter's!) belt is a 'fishing net.' And, yes, there is a stuffed fish inside it. Super thanks to Sue and Janet for lending me my pectoral cross. My wig is made of white yarn.

I wore a 'replica' (i.e. I painted an old pair of sneakers red) of Pope Pius VII's shoes. See how nicely they match?! Unfortunately though, I couldn't get my shoe laces to be gold because I was using gold glitter gel that takes forever to dry. It wouldn't have worked on the laces. I got the crosses though! The kids thought it was funny that Popes wear red shoes. They also liked learning about the Pope mobile.