BIBLE SCHOOL VOLUNTEERS GIVE MORE THAN TIME

Angie Hankins has happy memories of her first experiences with summer vacation Bible school. She was 4 or 5 in Morgantown, Ky., where her grandfather was a pig farmer and Mennonite minister.

Her grandfather used to drive his pickup truck with a camper shell and pick up all the children for Bible school and take them to the church. She recalls how everyone drank water from a pump out of tin cups at the church.

The experience was such fun that her family would always return to her grandfather's farm during the summer for Bible school.

This summer Angie, the mother of two from Fruitland, Mo., gave up a week of afternoons of vacation from her job at St. Francis Medical Center to teach the fifth- and sixth-grade Bible school class at Fellowship Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau.

Why does Angie keep coming back to Bible school?

"Jesus."

Angie's story is unlike the many volunteers at churches throughout the area who teach, present music or help in other ways in their church's summer Bible school programs.

Some churches have already held their Bible schools Fellowship's was the week of June 12 while others are planned later this summer.

Angie laughs that she has gone from teaching pudding painting when she was a teen-ager at First Baptist Church in Jackson, Mo., in Janet Jaco's Bible school class to teaching older children at Fellowship. Pudding painting is like finger painting only with pudding.

She says those preschoolers couldn't decide if they wanted to eat the pudding or paint with it.

Cheryl Crews of Scott City, Mo., said her role as Fellowship's Bible school director was a breeze. She coordinated the activities and schedules and the timing of the programs and studies. She made sure people were in place and that things worked.

It "worked out beautifully," she said. "It was as smooth as an ocean ride." The theme of the Bible school was an ocean odyssey.

She had nearly 30 volunteers teaching and in other aspects of the program.

Cheryl has worked with Bible schools at churches she has attended since the mid-1970s after she became a Christian.

For Cheryl, the journey to Bible school director wasn't the usual path. She was 23 in 1975 when she became a Christian.

She had been a pop and country music singer, performing in California. She was earning $500 a night with tips singing for anniversaries and birthdays and working the Ramada Inn lounges.

After she accepted the Lord, he led her out of her contract with the Ramada Inn and into church work.

Now, she proudly says, she "sings 100 percent for the Lord," performing gospel and Christian music. She learned money didn't count in life.

"I was in dire straits until I met the Lord," she says.

Cheryl's husband, Lonnie, taught the preschool classes at the recent Bible school.

The couple doesn't have any children, but Cheryl says she "has all the children God allows her to have through church and Bible school."

She says, "To know God is touching one little heart is worth it."

Many Bible school volunteers are parents who want their children to learn about the Bible.

Susan Spinks, mother of three, would fit into that category. She was the crafts teacher at the Fellowship Bible school and has taught crafts to all different classes.

She's a product of Bible school as a child, helping with the Bible school at the Emanuel United Church of Christ in Jackson when she was a sixth-grader and later when she was in high school.

She believes, however, she has found her "niche" teaching crafts.

A crafts person outside of church, it was Susan's second year as the crafts teacher at Fellowship.

Why does she help with Bible school?

"To hopefully reach a child who has never heard of Jesus Christ before," she says.

It's her goal to teach, to let the children know who Jesus is and to plant the seed for them to know what to do to become a Christian.

She says that while the majority of children at Bible school have heard of Christ, they haven't grasped why they need Christ in their lives. That's why during the crafts period she talks to the children about Jesus.

Angie said she wanted to teach the older children this year because she wanted a challenge. She had taught the music at Bible school in the past and had enjoyed putting on the final program.

She's a performer, she says, having done special music for the regular church services. This year, however, she wanted to get the response from the older children.

She wanted to bring her brand of enthusiasm to her class, an enthusiasm she remembers from her past Bible school teachers.

And, she says, she wanted to bring the "biggest reward," the "ultimate gift" of Jesus to the children.