AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- What do you get when you combine the Bible and a week off of school with singing and worship? Vacation Bible School.
The 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Chapel hosted the first-known VBS in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar Dec. 20 – 23, 2015. More than a dozen military children participated in the four-day event to celebrate their faith in God and join in fellowship.
The AUAB Chapel team built the curriculum for this VBS around the theme of climbing Mount Everest. The Victory Chapel was turned into a winter wonderland, with caves built out of cargo netting, hallways transformed into caverns of falling snow made from dental floss and cotton balls and a base camp established in the chapel conference room.
Over the four-day school, children spent a total of 12-hours learning Bible stories, creating crafts, singing and dancing to gospel music and for many, making new friends.
Missy Rueschhoff, a military family member, shared her thoughts about VBS.
“Every child just lights up when they walk through the chapel doors, anxious to see what you have planned for them for the day,” Rueschoff said “It's a beautiful thing to watch how excited they are to learn about God and scripture.”
“We have been reading the Magic Treehouse chapter books with our kids each night for over two months and they usually can't wait to see what happens in the adventure stories,” Rueschoff said. “One night after they came home from VBS they asked to read the Children's Bible instead of the chapter books. We can just feel the love and the joy in the chapel and it flows over into the kids' lives.”
More than 51 people, many of them parents, volunteered to teach Bible lessons, lead arts and crafts or help in other ways during the VBS event. The 379 AEW Chapel hopes to sponsor VBS events several times in 2016.
VBS started in the small town of Hopedale, Illinois in 1894 when D. T. Miles, a teacher, felt she was limited by time constraints in teaching the Bible to her students. She started a daily Bible school in the summer of 1894. The first Bible school featured 40 students and lasted four weeks.