You may know me as Kasey Robinson, but 1,000 little people, I am Larry Liberty.
The last two years the Kids staff have asked me to be the “Spirit Stick” for VBS. That means I get to pump the kids up and award the spirit stick to the team with the most spirit – and make their teachers day miserable because they have been riled up right before they take them into their breakouts.
This years theme was “Big Apple Adventure” and they gave me a Statue of Liberty costume and a torch to play the role of the spirit stick. Well the costume was a dress and the torch had tuile so when I the tight fitting dress on with the torch I only lacked the vibrant lipstick that would have helped me fit in with the New York cross-dressing scene.
So on Sunday night, after getting home from the What if the Church/Global Day of Prayer event, I watched around 20 youtube clips to create a quasi accent and find some phrases I could use through the week.
Not knowing what to do about the outfit, I decided to play it by ear the next morning and head to bed since the long day and hot sun had pretty much made me brain-dead and worn out.
While in bed, the night before VBS started, I came up with my character, Larry Liberty – the brother of Lady Liberty. Our children’s director hooked me up with a Flavor-Flav like clock and I wore the Liberty crown from the costume to complete the ensemble. Now that Larry Liberty was born, I had to figure out how to tie his character into each teaching.
So each day I would watch the video as the kids watched and with 5-10 min before I would come out, I would create my story for the day.
Day One: Larry Liberty Introduced
We introduced the Larry Liberty character. I interacted with the host and told my story by asking if anyone had ever heard of Larry Liberty? Of course, no one said yes. So I then began to complain that everyone knows Lady Liberty because she sits on the “water” (said with the New York Quasi Accent) and people come to see her, but no one comes to see Larry Liberty. I then tied the story into faith and got the kids riled up.
Day Two: Larry Liberty Learns Love
I staged the torch in the audience and came in low on spirit cause I couldn’t find my torch. After finding my torch I told the story of how Lady Liberty lost my sunglasses but after watching the video I now I know to love her and forgive her. I obviously had to weave in “Forget about it” in the conversation.
Day Three: Larry Liberty Learns Trust
I took this story from a situation I had the night before. It took me 4 hours to install a fan all because I skipped one sentence in the instructions that told me to install the fan brace with the opening facing the floor. Four hours later I’m climbing into bed worn out only to get up the next day and have to be Larry Liberty and do my normal job.
After seeing that the video was on trust, I created a story on the fly that Larry Liberty got a new torch but couldn’t get it to work. After calling Lady Liberty, and having Lady ask Larry to trust her and read the instructions, Larry installs the batteries facing up instead of down and the torch worked. The word for that day was “Situation.” (Don’t worry I didn’t show my abs)
Day Four: Larry Liberty Learns about Loving Others
I brought in a piece of pizza, hoping to figure a way out to say “Pizza Pie.” And I did. I came up with a story of how Larry Liberty drove by Casey’s (because a store named Casey’s has to be a great store cause that’s a great name – Yeah, I did say that) and I bought a Pizza. I was “standing on line” to get a Pizza Pie and the lady in front me bought a couple pizzas but on the way out dropped the pizza. I then gave her my pizza. When she offered me money, I said “forget about it.” I just wanted to do it cause I cared for others. I then looked at the host and said, “You know Bree, when I helped others, it gave me some (pause and look at the kids – which was captured by my buddy Matt) Spirit.” Then the kids went wild.
It is so much fun making a kid laugh, but I am so glad I’m not called into children’s ministry. My hat is off to all the vols and leaders who do this weekend after weekend. Bless you all!
Tomorrow is the last day and we are ending VBS with an all family evening celebration beginning at 6p. We have carnival games and blow-ups, food, large rides and the evening celebration. I can’t wait to hear the number of kids who started a relationship with Jesus. I will be shameless if a kid can come to Jesus.
