180 prayer flags!

Hannah O. Koch writes: I am excited to share our recent endeavor at Vacation Bible School this year. Prayer flags!!! We were in a unique position this year to design and create all our crafts for the week and decided prayer flags would be a fantastic project for the children. We modified it slightly to a children's theme by using unbleached muslin and having them already sewn for the classes. The children were able to draw their special prayer with fabric pastels directly on the fabric and then our wonderful volunteers were able to iron them before we displayed them.

 
I started the lesson that day discussing our daily theme "No matter what people do... Trust God!" I then went on the discuss how we usually think about prayer, hands folded, on our knees, talking or whispering, etc. But then I asked them "Did you know you can pray with a pencil? Or a pen or marker?" This certainly made the children think. You could see the wheels turning!

I went on to tell the children that you could write your prayer or draw that special someone you wanted to pray for. The craft team and myself were touched by these special prayers all morning long and throughout the week by sharing them and treating them as the sacred prayers they were.

 

After displaying the prayer flags on twine in the craft room for a few days, we prepared them to be hung outside the church for the closing ceremony! This created a truly unique display of a Vacation Bible School craft like never before.

I would like to thank Vivika Hansen DeNegre for creating such a fantastic idea and Jane LaFazio for helping get the word out about this project. Through sharing this project, we would were able to give 180 children the opportunity to pray in a whole new way!"

 

You can see more images and the story of Hannah's prayer flags here and here.