Awesome Fun at "Amazing Wonders of Aviation" at VBS

If it’s summertime, then it’s time for Vacation Bible School again. As a volunteer this year at Del Cerro Baptist Church during their VBS, I relish my own memories of doing all those crafts and songs, eating all those fun snacks and memorizing the Bible verses.

But I think these kids have it made with this year’s VBS. The theme is Amazing Wonders of Aviation. As I’m sitting there in the pew watching the videos along with the kids from preschoolers to 6^th graders, I learn some pretty incredible things and get to be a kid again, clear through Thursday night.

The fun facts in the “Amazing Wonders of Aviation” include some that I had never heard before. The tale-tellers in the videos take us in their planes to some of the world’s greatest wonders. Like the Arctic in Alaska, where temps can hit sixty-one degrees Fahrenheit. Below zero, that is. But forget the myths about the Eskimos living in igloos with penguins running around. They live in trailers up there at the edge of the world. The only road in is by plane on an icy strip configured as a runway, and the taxi service is a snowmobile driven by one of the native Eskimos. The nearest Wal-Mart is 600 miles away, and it is very expensive to live there. It’s fish for dinner, but no chicken or sausage because the cost of food is just too high. It’s also very remote, and that’s why missionaries are needed up there. Good thing there is a runway.

Other awesome places that the aviators get to visit and tell us about in the videos include the Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn and Victoria Falls. We kids—yes, me included—learn that the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, a mile deep in some places and a18 miles across at its widest point. The Matterhorn takes our breath away with its height of 14,692 feet, and the Victoria Falls, located in Zambia and Zimbabwe, are the world’s largest waterfalls.

The crafts in this VBS are cool. This evening, the 5^th and 6^th graders made aviator goggles; the younger kids made a paper-plane balance toy. And the snacks are out of this world. Tonight everyone dove into the vanilla cupcakes topped with frosting and M & M’s.

The fun lasts all through Thursday evening, when there will be a free family BBQ, a chance for the family to join in the classroom to find out what the kids learned, and a slide show presentation of their antics and adventures. There will also be a final mad dash for the store where the kids get to “buy” stuff with their “bucks” they earned from their teachers. The fun, by the way, is free and is welcome to any and all children from now through Thursday, from 5:30 to 8:30.

The church is located at 5512 Pennsylvania Lane in La Mesa. Call the office at 619-460-2210 if you have any questions.