Lucy's Go 'N Grow Experience

Lucy finished her first "Grow 'n Grow" this week at our chuch's Vacation Bible School. I was volunteering with the older kids, but I got to catch her in action during the opening and closing session each day, which was held in the worship center with everyone together.

The main lessons taught throughout each activity were:

*Take it in and live it out

*Live my life on what really counts

*Choose to see you the way that God sees me (I really like this one!)

*Live my life unselfishly


Here she is sitting with her group of three-year-olds:





Leah did a great job with the worship team!


Making her craft: "Mom!...I'm a big girl now, stop checking on me!" (and I wasn't checking on her; I was just greedy for photos for a blog post ;-)


Goofy girl during circle time:


And this was the memory verse that the kids learned and repeated several times each day:


Great verse, for sure! And here's the coolest part of this Go 'N Grow experience for me as Lucy's parent...

So, yesterday's breakfast reading book was "This is the House that Jack Built", and Lucy made a connection that tickled my heart for sure:

I was reading aloud the first page:


Lucy focused in on this part of the illustration - where the house is on a slab of rock - and said:

"Look Mommy, he built his house on the rock!"

Pretty cool, huh? All I had done was read aloud the words; I didn't mention anything about the illustration; quite honestly, I never even noticed the foundation of the house to begin with ;-).

I'm so grateful for all the staff and volunteers who helped make Go 'N Grow a success this year, for making it special for my child, and clearly, making an impact on her three-year-old little mind. It just warmed my heart. And I'm just so proud of her, silly as that sounds, not because she understands the metaphor of what it means to "build your house on the rock" -because obviously she has no concept of what a metaphor even is, and clearly no understanding of what that even means :-), but that she remembered something from her experience and connected it with something totally unrelated.

Brings to mind this verse:

"And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourself wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up." -Deuteronomy 6:5-7

And this is why we 'repeat them again and again to our children,' and why it's so worth it to pour our energy into things like this. Because they do listen, and when you least expect it, they might just surprise you with what they're learning! So delightful!