Haiti VBS Resources

For the last three summers, we have taken groups of 12-19 high schoolers to Haiti to partner with churches - primarily VBS, with a little bit of sports ministry thrown into the mix. All three trips combined, that only puts us at a month with our feet on Haitian soil, so we are far from experts!

Feel free to use anything and everything that might be useful to you or your group!

PRINTABLE RESOURCES:

Language booklet : we handed these out during a training session about a month prior to the trip - early enough for ambitious kids to get a jump start on learning and late enough that the books weren't lost before we even left the country.

They contain vocab specifically tailored to a VBS situation, and were well worn by the time we got home!

(Print pages 1-4 two pages to a sheet, and then pages 5-8 two pages to a sheet on the back sides of the already printed pages to make a single fold booklet.)

Packing lists for boys and girls : after two years of vague packing instructions and kids realizing somewhere along the east coast that they had forgotten X or put Y in their check bag when it needed to be in their carry on, we went with the world's most detailed packing list.

What to pack, what to wear, where and how to pack it - the works.

The packing list assumes a nine to eleven day trip, a VBS focus, and that each student is bringing (up to) 1 personal item, 1 carry on, and 1 checked bag. Many of our students end up sharing a checked bag between two or more people, as they are primarily used to transport crafts for VBS and consumables for the mission compound - toilet paper, zip top bags, etc.

Clothing guidelines are the slightly conservative end of what is requested by the mission.

Journal Prompts : Only pseudo used in country, as our church also sent us with non-location specific journal prompts. These contain an entire year worth of journal prompts or questions to think about.

Designed to promote appropriate introspection and scaffold the processing and reentry curve, these also provide space to write down the practical things - like names and places - that all of us, leaders included, assume that we are going to remember.

Because, honestly, by the time we get home, we are sometimes lucky to remember our own names!

One or two word answers make the entire sheet take less than ten minutes to record, but the questions could easily be pared down to meet the unique needs of your group. The top and bottom few questions on each page tend to be the core processing questions.

Groups that don't deal with anxiety issues could cut out the grounding or "sensory" type questions; while groups without food sensitivities, eating disorders, or kids who just flat out forget to put food in their mouths could easily skip the accountability questions about what and where they ate.

Use it however works for you!

(These were printed in the same manner as the language booklet, but four to a page instead of two, and then cut in half  hamburger style, assembled, and stapled to form a quarter sheet booklet.)

Parent Letter : these were given to students on the final plane ride home as a resource to be used with their parents as needed.

The two page letter lays out some of the neurological basis of culture/reentry shock from a trauma based perspective and gives some parent tips for handling reentry stress in their children. This year's trip was actually so calm and even keeled that I almost didn't hand it out!

I am all about arming kids with information, though, so we handed it out anyways, and most of the kids read it shortly before landing.

Feel free to change details as needed to match the setting of your trip. Bringing kids back well supported can be almost as vital to their future spiritual and emotional health as sending them prepared. The more that their leaders can help them understand what is or may be happening in their hearts and brains, the better equipped they are to "finish well."

Memory Verses : this is a simple set of memory verses that a few of the kids and leaders worked on prior to the trip, mainly built from similar pre-ministry trip sets that I was given in high school.

 Gratitude Log : graphic design at it's least intense. This is a ridiculously simple gratitude log. (It starts on a Thursday, because the student who used it met with me before small group on Wednesday.)

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Distract matrix : because, my beaver side likes to take everything that my golden retriever side sees and organize it into charts and graphs.

Part of our pre-trip training includes a personality profile that sorts students (and leaders) into primary and secondary colors. The students share their results and Jessica takes notes. Again, beaver, meet golden retriever. Blue, meet green.

Partially, it helps me to line up the kid that I think I am seeing with the person that they think that they are. Mainly, it gives me a good idea of how they respond to stress.

This page provides a brief overview of each personality type or ministry style, as well as an ever helpful matrix that makes it easy to see each student's likely stress response as well as what is likely to trigger it.

For example: a kid who is yellow and red is most likely going to fight with everything that they have to avoid being seen as guilty of any sort of transgression, and, if they are called out on it, are probably going look for a way to distract any accusers and slip away from the feeling.

So, if one of my yellow/red kids starts causing a scene, I can recognize that as a stress reaction and (ideally) help them work to resolve the trigger. Realistically, (these are high schoolers, not kindergarteners) I can recognize the stress reaction and give them extra grace as they work through it.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

This is an awesome two page summary that breaks down the why's and what's of reentry stress and gives students a decent idea of what to expect.

Byki language learning - free computer download or $7.99 app

Brainscape language learning - free online learning or free app

Simpler parent letter for reentry

Reentry and debriefing ideas for youth leaders

All of the important pieces of the pie.