If this year had been a normal year, approximately 400 kids would be participating in Steinbach EMC's annual Vacation Bible School program this week.

Melissa Thiessen is the head of the committee that organizes VBS. She says the event was scheduled to run from Sunday to Thursday but, along with many other summer events, was canceled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

VBS Organizer Melissa Thiessen"We had our first meeting back in the wintertime. We totally had lots of things planned, I had lots of volunteers in place. COVID hit, we really had to revisit things, thought about an online version of it but realized kids were doing school online, parents were tired with online. Kids were getting cranky, we decided to postpone it for a year and come back strong next year."

Even as Manitoba reopens, Thiessen says with over 400 kids and 120 volunteers they couldn’t switch gears quickly enough to save the VBS program for this summer.

"We didn’t know who would actually want to volunteer for the event, it was getting tricky knowing what was even going to be open, could we even meet at all."

Thiessen says with no VBS, she and her team had a bit of an unexpected break this year.

"This spring was unlike any other spring for me for the last 9 years at least, having just space to do different things with my family, read a couple more books than normal but always in the back of my mind, missing what I would be preparing for."

In the meantime, Thiessen says they are selling the CD’s that would normally be a part of their VBS program for $10 from 1:30 to 3:30 P.M. Wednesday.