Merciful Love Family Fellowship

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

2012-02-11T21:23:00.002+08:00

Starting our unit on the Beatitudes. We explained that the parables we’d just finished learning were “made up” by Jesus to illustrate certain truths. But to illustrate each beatitude, we would use historical, true stories from the Bible.

The first story was about King Nebuchadnezzar, a man who needed to learn how to be poor in spirit.

We told how the Israelites had been so disobedient that God had to punish the whole nation by sending them into exile to Babylon. (“soldier” with sword drives everyone once around the room) Among them was a young man named Daniel (baseball cap) who loved God, but had to be exiled along with everyone else. The king of Babylon, a very powerful man, had a dream one night that was very troubling. He “told” the dream: He saw a huge tree (on flannel board). It bore lots of luscious fruit (kids stick flannel fruit on tree). All sorts of animals rested in its shade (kids stick on animals), and birds nested in its branches (kids stick on birds). But then an angel of the Lord appeared (child with halo) and said, cut down this tree! (Angel pulls off tree & sticks on stump). It is going to sit uncared for in the field for 7 periods of time, until it knows that God is the one in charge of the world!

Well, the king wanted to know what this dream meant, so he asked everyone. Daniel says, I know! He says, I am sorry to say this, but you are the tree, and God is going to cut you down and you will be abandoned by everyone for 7 periods of time, until you learn that God is in charge, not you. Daniel begs the king to acknowledge God now, and perhaps avoid this punishment. But the king just thanks him for his explanation.

A year goes by and nothing happens, so the king has forgotten all about the dream by now. But has God forgotten? No! So, one day the king is walking on the roof of his palace and exclaiming over how wonderful he is to have made Babylon so great. The angel appears and says, “That’s enough, King Nebuchadnezzar! You are going to be punished until you learn that God is the one who makes nations great!”

Immediately the king has something like a stroke and loses his mind. He is driven away from the palace (by the soldier), and lives out in the field. He has to eat grass like an ox (shredded seaweed). His hair (a mophead) and his nails (some great gorilla fingers I found at a dollar store not long before Halloween) grow grotesquely long.

Finally after seven years, he is restored to his right mind. Right away he acknowledges that God is indeed in control. And he is restored to his kingdom.

Our game was called, “How long until the tree falls?” We put a “tree” (some fake flowers in a vase) in the middle of a large cardboard circle laid atop about 15 building blocks. Kids took turns pulling blocks out from under the circle with a pair of tongs, trying not to be the one who made the tree fall. Played it twice.

For craft time (or “handwork”), we talked about how Nebuchadnezzar’s nails grew long because no one took care of them. But that some ladies grow theirs long on purpose, and paint them to look pretty. So the kids painted their mom’s nails.

There weren’t quite enough moms to go around, so I got my fingernails painted too. Wing Yan was convinced she was supposed to paint my FINGERS, so I helped as best I could to confine the polish to my nails. Good thing, too. I had bought a variety of tiny sample bottles, and the one she chose was full of glitter, which did not want to come off even with lavish application of polish remover. Still can see traces of it six days later!

I got to lead the Bible study again. A highlight for me was when we acknowledged that most of us are not quite so proud as King Nebuchadnezzar; by contrast we often feel stupid, useless, helpless, etc. I asked, so according to this truth that Jesus was trying to teach, do we need to overcome these things before we can enter the kingdom of heaven? One woman—one who usually doesn’t say a word—immediately spoke up and said, yes, we do. I said, a lot of people think that’s true, but what does this Bible verse say? Does it say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, because when they overcome their poor self-esteem they can belong to the kingdom of heaven?” No! Jesus wants us to know that even though we might feel stupid and unlovely, we are still blessed, because He does love us, and welcomes us into His kingdom. Everyone got real quiet all of a sudden. “Salvation by grace” suddenly became a little more wonderful than they’d realized, I think. Precious moment!

Chinese New Year

2012-02-06T21:49:00.003+08:00

Okay, here's the tassel fringe we did for January 22:
The following Sunday, we didn't have our regular program, just ate Chinese New Year snacks and chatted. A wonderful, needed break from preparation, for me! And without this chat time we never would have heard from dear Mrs. Ng that she had led her father to Christ before he died just a couple of months ago! Praise the Lord!

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

2012-01-28T21:01:00.000+08:00

Our final parable for this unit was the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. As is true for many of the parables, it is very short in the original, so we had to do some embroidery to make it more visual.

We began by introducing our Pharisee. Before we began, our storyteller of the morning asked, shouldn’t he have phylacteries or something? Great idea! We even happened to have one lying around from a long-ago craft time, so used that. Now this Pharisee was very zealous for God’s law. He would never take a bribe: someone comes up & waves a $100 bill at him (yes, we have them aplenty here; they’re worth around $12 US) and asks if he could help his business go smoothly. He gestures, No, No! Our Pharisee pursued justice. We had two sisters start arguing (they are good at this!), and he said to each in turn: you have some fault, and you have some fault. And had them shake hands. Next: he would never commit adultery. He chose a “wife” and then the two walked arm in arm, while another girl started blowing kisses at him. The script said he was supposed to cover his eyes, but instead he started blowing kisses back! Oops! We finally did get him to cover his eyes, but I don’t think he had any idea why. Our model Pharisee also fasts regularly: someone began passing cookies out to the other kids but when they were offered to him, he had to do the “No, No” again. I was proud of him for managing to do that! He does like his cookies! Finally, he tithes everything he gets. Someone gave him a bouquet of 10 plastic flowers. He cut one off and stuck it in a vase in front of the offering box.

Next we introduced our tax collector. This fellow, we said, had a hard time finding a really good job. (I stole this from the parable of the unjust steward). He had tried doing road construction—beating at the floor with a cardboard pickaxe—but he wasn’t strong enough (dumps the pick, wipes his brow). And he hated begging (going around the room with a tin cup labeled “alms”; no one gave him anything). Finally, he got a job with the hated Roman government as a tax collector. The salary wasn’t great, but he could easily supplement it by padding the tax bills. Which he didn’t feel real good about, but a guy’s got to live, right? (Changes label on cup to “income tax” and now everyone has to put in some coins.)

So now today is the Sabbath, when everyone goes to the temple. The leader asks if anyone would like to pray. Our Pharisee stands up and thanks God for keeping him holy, not like SOME people (points at tax collector). Our tax collector prays, too, but he doesn’t stand up or speak loudly. Simply hits his chest a couple of times and says, forgive me.

We ask everyone, which one of these prayers was more pleasing to God? Indeed, Jesus closed this parable by saying that he who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. We also held up I Peter 5:5, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Our game went really long, but I hope it was worthwhile. First, each person, like the Pharisee, had to say something they were really good at. Then we went around again but this time they had to say something they wanted to change in the coming year. Some kids needed a lot of coaching, but eventually everyone participated to some degree.

Craft was those long fringes that Pharisees like to have on their garments to show how pious they are. The only picture I took the whole morning was of the scarf with all the tassels attached. I’ll add that later when I get it uploaded…

The Good Samaritan

2012-01-21T15:25:00.005+08:00

How can you not have fun doing this one? Because I wanted to emphasize the question that prompted this parable, we started by introducing Jesus and a lawyer. There were enough individual characters in this story that they all “needed” a prop to help keep them straight. Jesus wore the white vest we use for Him in all the stories. The lawyer, since he was so smart, got a graduation cap. He already knew the two most important commandments, which we held up for review, but he also knew they were hard to keep perfectly, so he was hoping to make it easier. So he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus replied with this parable.

There was a man (wearing a jacket) who needed to walk to the city of Jericho. On the way, suddenly some thieves attacked him! They stripped off his jacket, and beat him half to death—with balloons to help prevent things getting too real, ha! Then he was supposed to lie there on the floor, but it was easier to just let him sprawl in a chair. Soon along came a priest (in a red cloak) who looked at the injured man and walked widely around him. Next came a Levite, or “priest’s assistant,” in a necktie, who did the same thing. But then there came along a Samaritan—one of those punk guys a good Jew wouldn’t even talk to, wearing a sideways baseball cap and bouncing along on a stick donkey. He (she) took pity on the injured man and stopped. She took some bottles out of her carry-bag and poured some of their contents (air rather than wine & oil) on his arm & head & then attempted to bandage him up. She managed the arm but decided the head was going to have to be left as is. Then she helped him get on the donkey and led him off to one of the side rooms where they “spent the night.” Then in the morning, the injured man stayed inside (I think he would have stayed in there the rest of the morning if we hadn’t remembered to get him out when we started the game!) while the Samaritan came out. She gave a couple of coins to the innkeeper (in a bibbed apron) and told him to take care of him with that money, and she would bring more later if necessary.

When Kevin led this parable three years ago, he sent some photos of kids “bandaged up” in toilet paper. Looked like fun, but I thought it would be even more fun if for our game time the kids had to bandage up their parents! So that is what we did.

Then for a craft, we had collected ten different items that might be good to have in a first-aid kit. Each kid got ten small squares of paper with the name of one item per square; their assignment was to draw the items and put them all into a box in the middle of the table marked “first-aid kit.”

I was glad to have been assigned to lead the Bible study this time, as I wanted the chance to bring out something I had learned from this parable a few years ago. I think it’s important to notice that the parable was meant to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” and not “How much must I do for needy people in order to fulfill God’s commands?” And did you ever notice that Jesus doesn’t make a point of criticizing the priest or the Levite? And here’s a question to ask yourself—could it be that neither the priest nor the Levite had any first-aid items with them? And as far as I can tell from the story, they were walking, not mounted. And another question—did you notice what the Samaritan did not do for the injured man? He did a lot, to be sure, but he apparently needed to get going the next day so he had to leave him in the hands of the innkeeper rather than stay and nurse him back to health. He didn’t have to do absolutely everything to be Jesus’ model neighbor. The real point of the story is that this man did not stop to worry about who it was who needed the help he was fully able to provide. I think we’re not expected to do everything for everyone. (Did you notice that this parable is directly followed by the story of Mary and Martha?) However, we are expected to do what we can for anyone.

Parable of the ten pounds

2012-01-14T21:56:00.002+08:00

Our volunteers from Hong Kong got to lead this week, and they did a super job. For our story, did you ever notice that although the story talks about the master giving a “pound” (or, as we chose to say, one piece of silver) to ten of his servants, we only see what happened with three of them? So we said he gave the money to “some” of his servants, and made that number be three. Then they were to go multiply their money. Somehow a parent ended up being the first servant. She “decided” to make her money by buying some little stampers at 2 for a silver piece & then selling them for 2 silver pieces each. So on the first round she ended up with 4 silver pieces. She wisely decided to hang onto two of them—if she lost the rest, she still would have doubled her money—and just buy four more. Then she starts out yelling, who wants to buy my stampers? I cried, I do! So she comes over and says, the price has gone up, they’re up to 3 silver coins each! Ha! That wasn’t in the script, but I loved how she was getting into her role! Anyway, I said forget it & she had to sell them at 2 coins each so ended up with a total of, surprise surprise, 10 silver coins.

What about the next servant? He figured the market for stampers was getting saturated, so he spent his silver coin to buy a shoeshine kit (a shoeshine brush). Then he shined shoes for a silver coin per pair. So five different folks had to put their feet up for him to brush, & then pay him one coin each time. He was really enjoying himself, collecting all these coins for such easy work!

The third servant was so afraid to do anything with the money that her sister had to come help. Together they “decided” to take the coin and put it in a little bag that one sister could wear around her neck so no one could steal it.

Now the master comes back, and of course he praises the two industrious servants and scolds the third.

Since today the adults were not having a regular Bible study but were having a thanksgiving-for-the-past-year sharing time, I didn’t want the parable to end here with the impression that the kingdom of God was about making money! So our narrator held up the big ear again and said, let him who has ears to hear, hear! Just like these servants were given a silver coin each, we have all been given the gift of the gospel. (One of the servants then distributed to everyone a picture of a gift box with a tag reading “gospel”). Our Lord and master does not want us to keep it to ourselves either, but to multiply it by sharing it with others so that they too can be blessed.

For our game, just as one silver coin became many in the hands of the faithful servants, the job for each of the two teams was to take one large sheet of paper and tear it up so that it became many pieces. Everyone understood this one and participated willingly! The girls beat the boys, 180 pieces to 108, or thereabout.

We followed this same theme for the craft. A fan when closed looks like just one rectangular piece, but then you open it out and see it “become” five blades that together can make you feel comfortable on a hot day.

I had so much fun just watching everything that was going on, I forgot to take pictures of any of the action. But here at least are what the fans looked like:

The Friend at Midnight

2012-01-06T21:02:00.002+08:00

This was a shorter and simpler story than some. We have two foldaway cots in a storeroom at the dorm/church, so to start out we introduced this fellow and his wife, and his two (doll) children, who were ready for bed. They set up the cots, boy on one cot, girl on the other, children in between and all covered with a large blanket. Then we introduced his friend who would like to go to bed herself, but couldn’t because another friend (two friends; the one wouldn’t cooperate without her mom accompanying her) had just arrived after a long journey (two trips around the room). Were they hungry? Yes. So since she had nothing in the house to serve them, she went to her neighbors’ for help. Of course in the parable it’s the husband who does all the interaction with the persistent knocker, but our “husband” was enjoying the nap break too much, so our “wife” (the drama queen) did all the talking, and played it up quite well. But of course eventually got up and got some bread for the knocker.

What kind of game requires persistence? A tug of war! If you give up & stop pulling, your team loses!

For craft we made hourglasses out of cut-up & taped-together water bottles. I wouldn’t try and boil an egg by them, but they were fun to play with anyway!

Bible study was interesting. Trying to get them to imagine how they would react in the sleeping friend’s shoes was a little hard. “Wouldn’t happen. They could just go to 7-11.” Then when I asked if anyone knew why Jesus told this parable, the immediate response was: “To teach us that we should help friends in need even if it’s inconvenient.” So if we learned nothing else, we learned that Jesus was trying to teach us to be persistent in prayer. We used an object lesson as part of the Bible study. We re-wrote the parable, having one of the women come and knock on the door and ask for three loaves of bread. I said, okay, hang on…went and got a basket and put three small rolls in it. Looked at it and said, if her friends are hungry, this bread isn’t going to be enough. Let me at least put some butter in with it…and some jelly. Let’s see, what else? Here are some leftover chicken wings from last night…they should have some fruit…oh, and my wife bakes such delicious cookies, let me get some of those…okay! At this point we had the woman at the door say,” I give up, she’s not going to give me anything,” and leave. So then I go to the door with this basket of goodies and—hey where did she go? Point being, sometimes answers to prayer take time because God is planning something better than we imagine. Don’t give up or you might miss out!

Christmas 2011

2011-12-31T20:47:00.005+08:00

A full house today! Including Mr. Poon from downstairs (see the October 2009 post "from Noah to Abraham") who came for the whole morning, a first! He was chosen by popular demand to be our Joseph. Okay, it’s very possible that Joseph was quite a bit older than Mary! (Maybe not THIS much older though!) So we introduced Joseph and his fiancée Mary. Then a friend comes to Joseph and whispers, “Hey, did you know that your fiancée is already pregnant?” Mr. Poon, who had never heard the whole Christmas story before, had a huge reaction. “What am I supposed to say to that??!” But then of course an angel comes to him and tells him not to be ashamed to marry Mary, because the child was conceived of the Holy Spirit and would be the Savior of the world. So they have the wedding.

Then, when Mary is big with child (pillow under the dress), they have to go to Bethlehem to register for the census. They walk there but can’t get a room at the inn (folded table with “full” sign), so they have to go to the stable(folded table with picture of ox & ass in stall). The baby is born (out with the pillow, turn around with baby doll in arms), and to avoid putting the baby on the dirty floor, they put it to sleep in the manger. At this point Mary, a bit embarrassed by the proceedings, holds the doll by one leg and dumps him from about waist height into the grass-filled box on the floor. Poor baby Jesus! We all sing “Away in a Manger.”

Next there are some shepherds in towel headdresses keeping watch over their picture of a flock of sheep. Angels appear to them and tell them the good news of the birth of the Savior (here we were supposed to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, but the leader missed it). The shepherds decide they better go see for themselves. We sing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” They find the stable and kneel down to worship the baby (or at least the two shepherds that are capable of kneeling do so). We all sing “Joy to the World.”

12-year-old Melissa Chu led the game, and she did a wonderful job of explaining how it was ironic that the child born King of the Universe would be born in a stable, when he should have had the red carpet rolled out to welcome Him. That we would walk the red carpet in his honor. Of course just walking down a red carpet hardly qualifies as a game, so we made it more fun by making a hoop out of the “carpet” & each person had to keep moving the hoop along in order to keep walking on the carpet. Originally I thought I could do it with just red fabric, but I found it was not real practical. I ended up pasting it along a long stretch of cardboard pieces—had to stretch the material to make it long enough for a decent hoop & kept praying that the glue wouldn’t come loose under the pressure. Duh, I could have just done this with red cardboard and saved myself a lot of hassle. But the shiny red velveteen certainly was prettier.

We had a visiting American friend who couldn’t understand the Chinese explanation & no one translated for her. She wondered WHAT was going on when, after watching the Christmas story, suddenly everyone was taking turns walking in this big hamster wheel…

Craft time was simple; everyone was given various figures to make up a crèche scene which they were to glue on to a large sheet of paper to match the example. (At least it would have been simple if I hadn’t misplaced half the glue sticks…)!

The Great Banquet

2011-12-20T16:41:00.002+08:00

Originally we were going to tell this story a week ago. But that day there were too many other activities going on in Macau & when it came time to start we only had two kids; our “policy” is that we have three before we trot out the whole program. So instead we all went out for tea. One other family (with two girls) made it in time for tea, another (with one boy) came so late that we were done already! Need to think of changing our name again to “Latecomers’ Family Fellowship” (only one syllable’s difference in the Chinese phrases). Sigh. I kind of appreciate the break myself; this puts me an extra week ahead in preparation. But I feel bad for our helpers from Hong Kong who were going to lead the story for the first time.

So this week, we had some other volunteers from a different Hong Kong church. We didn’t have them lead anything as they don’t know our kids & had no prep time either, but I was very happy to have them help out during the game & craft & then the free time.

This parable was lots of fun! The king announces he is preparing a wedding banquet for his son. So first a servant helps him set a table with a white tablecloth, candlesticks, and bowls & chopsticks. Then the king sends out the servant to tell the invited guests that things are ready. The first person shows him a deed for land and says, sorry, have to go look at my new property. The second says, oh but I just bought an ox and I have to try him out with the plow! So we put our cow horns on another kid and the apologetic guest puts a harness around him and leads him off to go plowing. The third says, but I just got married, so I can’t come! She put on a tissue wedding veil and her ”husband” (mine!), a huge paper bowtie. (The Hong Kong volunteers were taking pictures; I sure hope they send us some!!) So the servant goes back to the king and says, nobody wants to come. The king says okay, then, we’ll invite the poor, the lame and the blind! First a couple of “poor” were dressed up in ripped clothing, and escorted to the table. Next, one using crutches and another a cane, and another one ended up being carried (under some protest) to the table. Finally, the last two kids were decked out in black-paper-covered glasses and led to the table.

Next, the servant explains, you are very welcome at the king’s table but he wants you to dress up in special garments to honor his son. Our “wedding garments” were party hats. I was half counting on at least one kid refusing to wear a hat, but they were all very cooperative—however, we were actually one hat short. Fortunately the one left without a hat is intelligent enough to respond to a whisper that we know she is not rebellious, we just need her to act the part. Otherwise she might have gotten her feelings hurt when the king comes in to personally distribute cookies in everyone’s food bowl but the one without a party hat is scolded for her lack of respect and thrown out of the party without any food!

The poor girl—she was also the very last to get a cookie in our game time, which was kind of like musical chairs. There were enough chairs for each person, so when the music stopped they first all sat down, but then had to get up and check whether their stool had a “wedding garment” (this time, a small paper bowtie) stuck to the bottom of it. Only one did. That person got a cookie and then he/she & one “undressed” stool were taken out of the game. We kept playing until everyone got a cookie. Everyone liked this game just fine! One girl kept trying to sit on two stools at once though, to double her chances. Turned out she was second to the last to win!

Because we had the volunteers here, the parents were able to have their longer Bible study starting right after the story. It worked out well that they were gone during craft time; the project was to make invitations not to a banquet, but to a Christmas Eve Open House we’ll be holding this Saturday at our home. So when the parents finished, they were presented with the completed invitations! I had written out the details earlier & copied then onto parchment paper; we glued these onto a red card and made a lacy border. They were pretty and the moms were surprised!

2011-12-09T17:11:00.002+08:00

Parable of the Net

I confess, I chose this parable for this week because of the ease in thinking up the game and craft part! Planning the story was a little harder, and it did turn out pretty short.

First, everyone in the room got stickers, mostly fish, but a few crabs and lobsters. Originally four of the “fish” were to become “fishermen” but we had a smaller crowd than usual so went with two fishermen. They got on stools and started to “row” out to deep water. In the deep water, all sorts of sea creatures (everyone with a sticker—i.e. everyone) were swimming around. So they fishermen got out their big net (a bedsheet with strings safety-pinned to each corner) and draped it over all the sea creatures. Then they had to haul them to shore. One of them was supposed to hang on the the net strings while the other rowed, but somehow that got missed. So the story was even shorter, ha. Once they got to “shore,” the fishermen’s job was to sort out the crabs & lobsters, which were “unclean,” and go dump them back in the ocean. Only then could the fish be put into baskets (sit on the sofas). To finish the story, to make it clear that this wasn’t just a “fish tale,” the narrator was to finish by saying, this is how it will be at the end of the age, when the angels separate out the unclean from the righteous, and only then can the children of God enter the kingdom of heaven. But we could just imagine how this would get missed in the general noise & hubbub that is always part of our morning. So, as she was saying this, another volunteer held up a large poster of an ear, prefacing her remarks with, and Jesus said, let him who has ears, listen! It helped!

Like I said, the game was easy. I just brought in my little magnetic fishing pole & plastic fish. Simple, but everyone enjoys it.

For craft we made fish, starting by covering a marble with a small piece of clay & then pulling out fins, tail & fish lips. Add small googly eyes and glitter for “fish scales” and there you have it. Fun and cute!

2011-12-09T16:49:00.005+08:00

Parable of the Lost Coin

Yikes, falling behind again! On Sunday November 27^th, we did the parable of the Lost Coin. Of course in the text it is very brief, so we had to go some to make our morning skit out of it:

So there was this woman who was saving up silver coins for some unknown reason (probably it was her dowry, but, ssh, don’t tell!). She had to do all sorts of different things to earn the money, such as walking a neighbor’s dog (Lai Wun didn’t want to keep the mask on her face, but hey, around the neck worked), or delivering newspapers (passing one out to everyone in the room), or watering flowers for another neighbor (I liked this one best—the “volunteers” squatted holding their flowers, then when the “woman” held her watering can over them, they stood up/grew). Finally, on her birthday, an elderly relative (my gray-haired husband) gave her the last coin she needed.

As she earned different amounts of coins for these different jobs, they were crossed off on a picture of 10 coins put up on the board. This was so we could keep the treasure box with only eight coins in it, untouched in its niche until we needed it. She goes to put in the last coin and then counts the total—what? Only nine coins? What happened to the 10^th? So she gets the broom and starts sweeping under furniture to see where it might have fallen. I had thrown a couple pieces of candy under one sofa, so she did find some “treasure” but not her coin. So she has to ask some of her friends to help her move the sofa and look behind it. While they are doing this, I make a little “adjustment” and then sat in the recliner & put my feet up—and waited for someone to notice that the “lost coin” was stuck to the bottom of my shoe! (I can’t remember which website I found that fun idea on. I really should give more credit to different sites. Okay, starting as soon as I remember.)

Finding lost coins was the obvious game theme. The kids were taken out of the room one at a time; while they were out a chocolate coin was hidden in not-too-hard-to-find places. When the kids came back in, the rest of the group had to give them verbal instructions like, behind you, to the right, look higher, etc. They all followed the directions very well. After all, there was chocolate at stake!

For craft we made these little “brooms” out of pencils and bristles cut from a small whisk broom. One of the few crafts the kids have ever taken home, I was very pleased with the reception it got!

2011-11-21T17:22:00.003+08:00

The Unforgiving Servant

I was afraid the meaning of the parable got a bit lost in the shuffle last week. So this week we helped drive it home a little by “bookending” it with Jesus’ conversation with Peter. Peter, who knows that love is an important commandment, and has probably heard some people think three times is already going the second (third!) mile of forgiveness, asks Jesus if they should forgive others as many as seven times. Jesus answers, not just 7 but 70x7. We had someone do the math for that on the blackboard. Then Jesus and Peter sat down while we reported the parable he told to illustrate what he’d just told Peter.

Our king, in his crown, sat on his throne reading his accounts ledger and noticed that this one servant owed him an enormous amount of money. He writes $10,000,000 on the blackboard. He calls the servant before him and tells him it’s high time he pays back the money. He says he can’t yet. The king tells him to go get his wife & children & come back, so the servant has to go choose someone to be his wife and children. They come before the king & he says, since you can’t pay, I am going to sell all of you as slaves so at least I’ll get a little money out of you. The servant kneels and begs the king to give him time and he will pay it all back. The king knows this is impossible, but he takes pity on the man and decides to forgive his whole debt. The family goes home very happy.

And yet the very next day, this fellow meets another servant who owes him $100 (writes that on the board). He demands repayment, and the fellow servant says he hasn’t got the money. Servant #1 says, pay it or I’ll have you thrown into prison. Servant #2 kneels and begs for more time. Servant #1 says, forget it! And two “soldiers” armed with swords come to drag him (her) off. At this point servant #2 bursts into tears at being so roughly handled. I was a bit callous, perhaps; this girl has been very volatile lately and it’s hard to take her tears real seriously. So I went right on with the story, saying, obviously, servant #2 is very unhappy about this, so some other servants go and tell the kind what happened. Immediately the older sister of the crying girl appoints herself one of them; she marches up to the king and starts shaking her fist at him and yelling at him in her non-verbal but vociferous style. (Hey, this isn’t the king’s fault! He’s on your side! smile) The king calls servant #1 back before him and says, I had mercy on you, shouldn’t you have had mercy on others? For that, you are going to jail for the rest of your life! And the soldiers haul him off.

Jesus and Peter stand up again & Jesus says to Peter, this is why we must keep forgiving others; otherwise your sins will not be forgiven either.

For our game, we offered a shining example of forgiveness: a bop-bag, whatever you call those things, the ones that keep “forgiving you” (popping right back up for more) no matter how many times you punch them in the nose. Each child got to punch it while counting out seven times. Our crying servant was still a bit sulky and not wanting to do it; her sister worked very hard to persuade her. Finally she was willing to try it when someone turned it around so she wasn’t hitting something that had a face on it. She can be sweet!

For craft time, we talked about how a life with a heart full of forgiveness is very beautiful, like a flower is beautiful. But—and we showed a sample picture—a flower with only one petal isn’t very pretty, is it? Even forgiving seven times—a flower with only seven petals isn’t that pretty either. So we encouraged them to stick on as many petals as they could.

I got to lead the Bible study time this week. We started by discussing the parable and at first no one was managing to apply it to anything but money & they were all saying, eventually you just give it up and it’s not that a big deal. How about other things that are not money? They couldn’t think of anything bad enough to be hard to forgive. What? Am I the only one who ever struggles with this? Too hard to believe! So I brought up the example of a husband walking out and taking up with another woman. Whoa, now that got the discussion going! Hard to harness it and get back to the Bible and the application! Which was NOT “so go out and forgive whoever you’re mad at” which is how I’ve always tended to read this. But it had struck me while I was preparing, that (duh), the real point of Jesus parable was to compare the huge debt we owe the “king” to the relatively limited ways others sin against us. Application being, when it’s hard to forgive, remember how much you need God’s forgiveness. We closed with I John 1:8-10.

2011-11-19T14:23:00.002+08:00

Back in the Saddle

It’s wonderful to be back at Merciful Love after our six-month home assignment. Attendance and enthusiasm are high! Now if I can just scrape off a little rust here.

When we were gone three years ago, Kevin led a series on the parables of Jesus. Unfortunately, the notes he left behind weren’t easily reproducible, so Grace hasn’t been doing any parables beyond a first one, on the Sower, during the two months since finishing the Acts curriculum I left behind. She’s been so busy doing some fantastic pastoral work with individuals, that on Sundays she has used whatever materials she could find with help from others. I am thankful that she is okay with my taking over the Sunday planning again as I would really like to get the whole package updated and user-ready for—(? don’t ask!). Which means I will eventually have to go back and write some filler stuff, but for right now I’m just managing week by week. With the Lord’s help!!

Anyway, enough of this. Our first Sunday back was just a welcome party, but this past Sunday we plunged into the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). We introduced a couple of new characters at the beginning of the parable; besides the owner, we assigned two adult “foremen” who would be in charge of keeping the hired laborers on task. Task being, pick grapes one by one off of some bunches at one end of a long table, wash each grape in a basin in the middle of the table, and then put it in the proper red- or green-grape box at the other end. We made a paper clock that one of the girls happily set to the different times—6:00, 9:00, 12:00. 3:00 and 5:00—when the owner went out among the group to choose one or two more kids as laborers, agreeing with them for one silver coin each (show coin, get a handshake). Then a bell rang at 6:00 and everyone had to line up from the most recent hire to the all-day ones. Each got their silver coin & then the first two hired were encouraged to whine about not getting more. (Encouraging whining! Oh dear!) :-) Finally wound up with a short dialogue emphasizing that this was in fact not unfair.

I’m not sure anyone understood the meaning of the parable, especially since the Bible study time was a “special” one where the parents watched a testimony video & discussed it while the kids were doing their game and craft. This is a new thing we’re trying once a month when a team of three usually comes from Hong Kong to help out. Only one came this week though!

Anyway. Our game consisted in each child drawing a card assigning them a different simple task, but each one getting the same reward. Then for craft time we made clocks “like the one used in the story.” Well, sort of!

Fifth Anniversary

2011-09-04T05:19:00.001+08:00

I haven’t posted for months because we’ve been in the US for months. Still in the US, but we enjoyed a video Skype call with Merciful Love last Sunday for their 5^th anniversary. So good to see all their faces! Things have been going well. Grace Tung has added some “Praise Aerobics” to the roster of activities. She’s also begun a weekly Bible study with two moms (one a believer, one not yet) on Thursday mornings. The second mom also brings her 30-something daughter who is not actually mentally handicapped, but has some issues that make her fit in well. The daughter has professed faith in Christ and from what we hear she has shown great improvements in her ability to interact with others. We heard that her brother—whom we’ve never met—attended the 5^th anniversary Sunday! I can only imagine that is because he has been impressed by the changes in Kam Ip’s life. That is so exciting! I can hardly wait to get back (two more months yet)!

Grace sent some pictures from the Bible story, though she apologized for forgetting to take a group photo. She suggests waiting to take the official 5^th-year photo until we return—what a nice idea!

Easter Sunday 2011

2011-05-11T05:59:00.002+08:00

In tidying up the storeroom in anticipation of our home assignment, I was glad to come across this "resurrection dial" I'd made our first year. It was nice not to have to make it over again. Here are the cover and underside of the dial:
But we started our story with the picture of the crucified Christ still hanging on the wall. Then we had "Joseph of Arimathea" go and ask Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that he could bury it in his own grave. It struck me as I was writing this story—I wonder if crucified criminals of that time were generally just dumped in common graves, not given any kind of proper burial? So it was rather important that Joseph did this; otherwise where would be an empty tomb? Anyway, Joseph took the crucifixion picture off the wall and put up the "resurrection dial" on our blackboard/easel with it set on day one, and the door open so all could see the wrapped body inside (which is a bit blurry in the diagram). Then he got a friend to help him push the "heavy stone" over the opening. Then some soldiers came with Pilate's permission and put a seal (sticker) across the edge of the door.

That was the first day. The second day was the Sabbath: we had someone come up and turn the handle so the number 2 was showing on the dial. What do you do on the Sabbath? Nothing, you rest. So nothing happened that day.

Then it was day three, and we had someone move the dial to number 3. That day, several women got up very early to go and see the grave. But on the way there, suddenly there was a great earthquake—I shook the easel while standing in front of it, and pulled the door open on the dial. So the women get there, and they can look inside, and they see that Jesus' body is not there! But then an angel in a halo appears and says, "Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? Jesus is risen!" The women are excited and run back to where the other disciples are. They tell them that Jesus has risen. Mostly they are not believed, but Peter and John go look for themselves. The women come with them. They look in, and John is convinced and shouts, "Jesus is risen!" But Peter says, "I'm not so sure." They and two of the women go back and sit down, but one woman stays behind, crying.

Suddenly there is a man behind her, wearing a jacket that covers his head so she can't see his face. He asks her what is the matter. She says she doesn't know what has happened to the body of Jesus. He says, "my dear daughter," (I decided not to use the name as we've had too many Mary's to keep track of already), and takes off his hood. Mary sees it is Jesus and she is overjoyed. She hugs him and then runs back to tell the disciples she has seen him herself. Once again, they don't believe her. But "that evening" (about five seconds later), Jesus himself enters the room and they see that he is indeed alive. Everyone greets him with delight, hugging and high-fiving.

We talked about how the woman did not recognize Jesus when His face was hidden by His cloak. How about us? Would we recognize our moms if their faces (and bodies) were hidden behind a sheet? We had all the moms line up behind a sheet help up by two volunteers, shifting positions between each child's turn. The child would feel through the sheet and try to guess which one was their mom. Most got it right, but not all! I love it that Mrs. Chu crouched down so she seemed to be the shortest (instead of one of the tallest), and her intelligent daughter was fooled!

Easter and butterflies always go together, so we made these butterflies with their clothespin feet.

Pilate’s Dilemma

2011-05-08T04:28:00.005+08:00

I'm back in the US now, finally with a little breathing room to get caught up on some of the "backblog". On April 17^th, we did the story of Jesus' sentencing by Pilate. We introduced Jesus and talked about how everyone liked him but the religious leaders. Introduced the priests, who talked about how they hated being told that they were sinners when they didn't think they were, and how if everyone followed Jesus they would quit paying the priests to intercede for them with God, and they would lose out. So they were looking for a way to arrest him. Along comes Judas, one of Jesus' disciples who accepts a bagful of money to lead them to Jesus.

Jesus prays in Gethsemane while Judas and the priests plot His downfall in the background.

Judas and a couple of armed soldiers come up to Jesus. Judas kisses Him (that was the stage direction, anyway. We got just cheek-to-cheek) & the soldiers drag Him away. Judas then has a change of heart and wants to repent & give the money back, but it's too late. He throws the bag down and disappears into a side room & the people are told he kills himself.

We skipped all the back and forth between Pilate and Herod as being too complicated, and not adding anything to the point of the story. They went straight to Pilate and stayed there. This was a series on New Testament women, though, so we did introduce Pilate's wife, who sent for Pilate right in the middle of the trial & told him not to harm Jesus, because she'd had a dream about Him & He was innocent. So Pilate doesn't know what to do. He doesn't think Jesus is guilty either, but the crowd is getting ugly. Aha! There's that custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover. He picked the nastiest guy in the prison to have the crowd choose between him & Jesus, figuring they would surely release Jesus.

Actually, our Jesus (in the "trademark" white vest) looks meaner than our backwards-capped Barabbas…

But they don't choose the way Pilate hopes. He's still too afraid to go against the crowd, so he tries to at least shift all the blame onto them by having a basin of water brought, and washing his hands before everyone. Then the soldiers haul Jesus away, and we just put up a flannelgraph picture of Jesus on the cross to show that He was indeed crucified.

For our game, we talked about how Pilate's wife remembered who she had seen in her dream, even though we don't always remember our dream. The game then was to look briefly at a picture of a person ( Xeroxed from the flannelgraph set), and then see if they could find that figure among the many blu-tacked along the walls. For some of the kids, we let them take the picture along to match; we made the smarter kids work their memories a little harder.

For craft time we made these pretty crosses out of ribbon and dismantled clothespins.

April 10th

2011-04-27T23:49:00.003+08:00

Yes, I know, I am way behind here. Actually the topic of April 10th is the main reason for this!

Our regular once-a-month volunteers from Hong Kong kindly watched the kids while all of the adults went out to a nearby park for uninterrupted conversation. The plan was to go to a little café in the park, but there were no seats available, so we just found a little nook where there was enough room for all of us.

Topic under discussion: the fact that Bruce and I leave for a six month home assignment on May 2^nd. (Which is why I'm so behind. Getting ready for home assignment presentations plus writing/translating/gathering materials for at least the first couple of months has been extremely intense--and it's not over yet!)

We do have a pastoral worker coming from Hong Kong, and she already has her Macau work visa (That was fast! That was God!), but is still raising support and will not arrive before we leave. We expected some anxious comments about how this was going to work, but everyone seemed really laid back about the whole thing. I think maybe nobody realizes how MUCH work I put into the preparations each week—ha! Still, we were just as happy to have them expecting things to go on as usual, than for them to assume things were going to fall apart.

I sure love these people!!!

The volunteers taught the kids some origami while we were out…

A Beautiful Gift for Jesus

2011-04-08T15:54:00.002+08:00

First, for a brief review, we saw how last week Jesus (sitting on nice chair) was asked by the mother of James and John to give them seats at His right and left hand in His coming kingdom (one child sits on either side of Jesus). We reminded everyone that they didn't understand what Jesus was trying to tell them about His coming death. But that today's story highlights someone who did understand.

Jesus and several of His disciples are once again seated at a table for dinner. This time, a servant did wash their feet for them. Mrs. Chu took an (empty) basin and (dry) towel and started wiping everyone's feet. At least two of the kids thought that meant they had to take their shoes off. So to our servant added the additional task of tying shoelaces.

But the woman highlighted in the story wanted to do something special for Jesus too. So she "ran home" and came back with a pretty jar, empty but purportedly filled with an expensive perfume. When she "poured it out" over Jesus' head, we gave a good spray of air freshener into the room, to emphasize that the scent of the perfume filled the house. It worked—some latecomers arrived just then and mom's first comment was, what's that fragrance?

We had our Jesus really enjoying the anointing experience—smoothing his hair & smiling. But then one of the disciples complains that the woman was wasteful; that if she didn't want the perfume she could have sold it and given the money to the poor. The woman looked embarrassed. But Jesus said, "Don't criticize her! I appreciate what she has done for me. You can give all the gifts you want to the poor after I am gone, but I will not always be here to give gifts to. And this gift is extra special. When other people are anointed with this beautiful perfume, they are already dead and being prepared for their burial, so they don't even know what is happening. This dear woman has anointed me for my burial early enough so that I can appreciate it! Thank you so much, daughter. It means a lot to me." He gave her a little kiss and that was the end of our brief story.

As soon as the people in our story smelled the perfume, they knew what it was. Are we also able to recognize smells right away? That was the question to be answered during our game! We had prepared 11 baby-food-sized jars with a range of "fragrances," (chocolate, peanut butter, alcohol, garlic, lemon juice, peppermint, catsup, coconut, vinegar, soy sauce, & plain water), and due to a Chinese holiday we had only a total of 11 adults and children besides myself. So each one got to draw the name of one of the fragrances and then come & smell different jars until they found it. Decided to make it a little easier by only giving each person three jars at a time from which to choose theirs. Fun.

For craft time each one received a glass bottle with different designs drawn on them in permanent marker—flowers, butterflies, hearts, whatever. They painted them as desired with tempera paints. Pictures when I go back and take them…

An Ambitious Woman

2011-04-02T17:43:00.002+08:00

As Jesus nears the end of His life, He tries to explain to His disciples more than once what lies ahead. The first time, we had Jesus say he was going to be beaten (he picks up a rope and demonstrates) and crucified (he takes a disciple's hands and pretends to pound nails in) and would die (he pushes the disciple back down onto his chair). The disciples don't understand. They all keep walking, (walk one round of room), until now they're really close to Jerusalem. Jesus so wants them to understand and feel with Him. He tries to explain again. He says he is going to be beaten, do they understand? One child who says yes is chosen to demonstrate with the rope. He is going to be crucified, do they understand? Another child is chosen to show his understanding by stretching out Jesus' hands and pretending to nail them. He is going to die, do they understand? Another child mimics dying. But on the third day, He will rise again, do they understand? This time, no one understands. Finally someone says, must be a parable, and they all nod their heads. So Jesus is left without anyone to truly understand and sympathize with Him.

Then, who comes to greet them but the mother of two of the disciples. She takes Jesus aside and says she has something to ask Him. She says, when you come into your kingdom (she seats him on a nice chair and puts a crown on His head), may my two sons sit at your right and left hand? (she chooses two disciples and seats them at His right and left)

Jesus says, you don't know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I must drink? They say yes. Jesus says, you will drink, but in fact I can't choose who is going to sit at my right and left hands; only the Father can say that.

The other disciples realize what is going on and they all get jealous & start giving James & John a hard time. Jesus says, you still don't understand. He asks, who really wants to be great in the kingdom? He takes one child who raises her hand and says, if you really want to be great in God's kingdom (seats her on the nice chair), then you need to become the servant of all (gives her a towel & has her go polish the shoes of all the seated adults).

For our game, we had a competition to see who qualified to sit at Jesus' (Kevin's) right and left hand, by drinking cups of juice the fastest. First by twos, and each pair was assigned to either right (faster) or left (slower). Then each of those groups drank all at once & the winner of each group got to take the honored seats.

Since our story talked about people at the right or the left hand, we then made for a craft, people from the right or left hand: i.e., surgical gloves. Simple, but fun. Not everyone quite got the idea that the thumb was supposed to be a nose though, so we had a couple of rather off-center faces!

Two sisters, two choices

2011-03-25T14:50:00.002+08:00

The way we do this story, Martha is busy making up a bed in the guest room while Mary is in the kitchen chopping up vegetables. Jesus and His disciples arrive and Mary lets them in & serves them all some water. She never makes it back to the kitchen because she gets too interested in listening to Jesus.

When we did this before, we only had one girl, which worked well enough because then we could choose a mom, who would know how to unfold & make up the cot, to be Martha. This time we had plenty of girls, even though our two neurotypical regulars were absent. So I chose a new visiting volunteer (I love throwing the new volunteers in at the deep end—ha). Well, then the only girl willing to play Mary was Lai Wun, who is the big sister in her family, not the younger sister. There was no way she was going to let herself be demoted to little sister! There was also no way she was going to be able to handle that cot by herself. So we enlisted her mom as a "servant." Whatever it takes! Our Mary was a good sport, handing out empty teacups all around and letting me tease her about not remembering to do so with both hands.

So then Martha finishes the bed and comes down to the kitchen and, where's Mary? Look at this, the vegetables haven't been finished, the meat (some slabs of clay in a plastic bag) hasn't been put in the marinade, the fire (a candle) hasn't been lit—what HAS she done? So then Martha is supposed to try and get Mary's attention by whispering & waving. Mary played her part well; i.e. didn't pay any attention to her but kept looking at Jesus. Then Martha is supposed to come out and tell Jesus to make Mary help. Our Martha apparently didn't want to bother Jesus. She just grabbed Mary by the arm and tried determinedly to drag her bodily back to the kitchen. She was so noisily insistent that most of the adults missed Jesus' statement about Mary choosing the better part. We wound up by saying that the Bible doesn't say how Martha responded to Jesus. We asked what people thought she might have done: flounced back to the kitchen in a huff, apologized and sat down with her sister, or dragged the table out and finished her preparations while listening to Jesus. We all thought she should have chosen #3.

The game was originally a table-setting race, but there were too many kids to do this well, so we just had kids come up one at a time, overlapping as each one finished drawing all the components (plate, cup, napkin, knife, fork, spoon, and bud vase) out of a box and setting up a placemat to match our model. Still a worthwhile & interesting game for all.

Martha of course would have wanted to set a pretty table, with perhaps nicely folded napkins, right? I had planned on two different napkin folding projects, one very simple and one taking a little more concentration. But we were running a bit late so ended up only doing the simple one.

Later I taught the second one to one of the boys (the only one vaguely interested) during the free time.

The Widow’s Mite

2011-03-18T12:51:00.001+08:00

Didn't take a single picture today, oops! Nine kids, including a new one, over six feet tall but fortunately well-behaved!

Another way-extra-biblical story line today. Took a couple of sentences in the passage and let my imagination run wild! Jesus told His disciples to beware of those who were falsely pious but "robbed widow's houses." So we opened with a rich man going to visit a poor widow to demand payment on a loan. She begged for more time. He said, all right, you won't give me my money, I'll just take these chairs instead, and walked off with the only two wooden chairs in the room.

Next we saw the rich man standing by the temple treasury's offering box, loudly ringing a bell for attention. He praised God for allowing him to prosper, and announced that he was giving the required 1/10^th to God. He placed a large handful of silver coins in the box.

Next we jumped to a chance phrasing which actually came right after the "mite" story (did I mention I also re-arranged the sequence for dramatic effect?), where the disciples are pointing out to Jesus the beauty of the temple, its stones and "the gifts". I asked myself, how did they know what were gifts and what were just part of the original temple? We introduced a priest. Along comes a man with a beautiful vase full of flowers. He presents it to the priest who thanks him, puts it on the table next to the offering box, and has the man sign his name on a card reading "Donated by__________" which was then propped up against the vase. Then came a woman with two candlesticks, who signed her name to another card to be displayed with the candlesticks. It was these gifts the disciples pointed out to Jesus, who did not seem very impressed.

But then along came the widow we'd seen earlier. She quietly dropped two small coins in the offering box. Jesus jumped up and exclaimed to His disciples, "Did you see that? Now THAT was truly beautiful!" The disciples asked, huh, what? He pointed out the widow who had given more than anyone else, because she had given all she had. We concluded by having Jesus say, in the eyes of the world she is just a poor widow, but in the eyes of God, she is a princess! And an angel with a halo came and crowned the woman.

Our game involved dropping coins in an "offering box"—a glass jar. The catch was that they had to kneel backwards on a chair, & the jar was on the floor behind it. It was just about the right difficulty. Out of five coins, each child managed 1 to 4. However, for the new boy, we had to move the jar a lot farther away from the chair. His arms were so long he couldn't possibly miss otherwise!

We emphasized that the point of this story was not that you are supposed to put everything you have in the offering box, but that what Jesus really wants is for us to give our hearts to God. So we made simple origami hearts. And then, since the kids don't usually take their crafts home anyway, they placed them in the offering box!

Woman caught in adultery

2011-03-11T11:02:00.002+08:00

A couple of our kids were gone today to a sports competition in Guangzhou, but both of their moms came anyway. One brought her other daughter, as usual, but the other mom came all by herself! A first time; she once said she only comes because her son "makes" her come. I'm thrilled!

So: Jesus is at the temple when a group come leading a woman with her hands tied in front of her. They tell Jesus they caught her in the very act of adultery (so where's the other guilty party, eh?)

They ask Him whether they should stone her like Moses' law says. They really want to trap him. If He says no, they can say He doesn't obey the law of Moses; if He says yes, then He's going to lose a lot of popular support. So what does He do? Perhaps He needs a little time to think—he leans over and starts writing in the ground with His finger. (We chose Man Chun to be Jesus, partly because he needs more practice at leaning over. I had to physically push his head down. If I had this to do over I think I would have slowed action and explained carefully to him that he needed to bend over, as I'm sure he wasn't paying much attention to the narrator saying "Jesus leaned over…" So that he would have had more of a clue as to why I was pushing him down. Not that he got upset, he just laughed.)

So anyway, then he sits back up and says whoever has no sin can be the first to throw a stone. To add more visible action, we had one fellow pick up a large stone (a chunk of concrete from some local demolition rubble), look at Jesus, look at the others—and then put the stone down and leave. One by one the others also left. Then Jesus is allowed to straighten up again and asks where everyone went. "So no one condemned you?" He says. "Neither do I." He unties her hands and says, "Go in peace, but don't sin any more."

We don't throw stones at people nowadays if we don't approve of their behavior. But often we will throw ugly words at people. For our game, we set up four double-sided dolls (all with the sad side showing) around a stool. Threaded through the hole on top of the stool was a block on which was written [恨惡] or "hatred." The kids were supposed to get the string swinging so that the words could knock the dolls down. (I had come up with this as a way to avoid actually throwing the words, as one of our boys is just too enthusiastic about throwing things once he gets started. Wouldn't you know, that was the boy who went to Guangzhou—oh well). It took a lot of patience and coordination, so for some of the kids we turned the stool upside down and it was still enough of a challenge for them to swing the string in the right direction. So that worked out well.

Since Jesus wrote something in the dirt, we also wrote something in the "dirt" (squares of clay), and then made them easier to read by pressing little beads into the words we'd written with toothpicks. In contrast to the "hatred" we wrote the words for "peace."

The Woman at the Well

2011-03-05T21:29:00.002+08:00

This story has a little more conversation than action, which isn't ideal for our group, but a worthwhile story nonetheless.

We introduced Jesus and His disciples, then looked at a map and explained that while many pious Jews would go the long way around to Galilee to avoid passing through Samaria, Jesus chose to walk straight through. After they walked for a while, Jesus stopped to rest by a well (a large bucket) while His disciples went into the town to buy some food. While Jesus is resting, this woman comes along with her water jug. Jesus is glad to see her, because He is thirsty. He asks her for a drink. She says, huh, you're asking me for a drink? Aren't you afraid it would be unclean? Jesus responds, what you say makes some sense; in fact it would make more sense for you to ask ME for water, because the water I would give you would be better than anything you could get from this well. The woman responds, how could you give better water than from this famous well handed down by our ancestor Jacob? You don't even have a bucket! Jesus says, if you drink this water, you will eventually get thirsty again. But if you drink the life-giving water I have to give you, you will never thirst again. Of course the woman wants some of this water. Jesus says, okay, go get your husband so I can give it to you both together. The woman is a bit embarrassed and says, well, I don't exactly have a husband. Jesus says, I know; you've have five husbands, but the man you're living with now is not your husband. Whoa, now the woman is REALLY embarrassed! Time to change the subject! She says, obviously, you're a prophet, so tell me something I've always wanted to know: Since our famous ancestor Jacob himself worshipped the Lord right here, how come you Jews say you can only worship God at the temple in Jerusalem? Jesus says, it's not where you worship, it's whom you worship that is important. (I skipped the spirit-and-truth line as a bit too abstract for the moment). The woman says, oh, it sounds too complicated; when the Messiah comes, He will explain it. Jesus says, I am the Messiah.

The woman is amazed but before she can say anything, the disciples come back with some food. They can't imagine that Jesus would really want to be having a conversation with a Samaritan woman, so they ignore her and try to get Jesus to eat. In the Bible story, Jesus doesn't eat but tries to explain to them that doing His Father's work is the best food—kind of like the living water He gives is the best water. And I wrote our story this way BUT did not take into account the fact that when our "Jesus" was urged to eat, there was no way he was going to refuse food!! So we scrambled a bit and let him while saying something like, this food is fine but doing my Father's work makes me even more satisfied. The disciples are amazed and a bit skeptical—talking to a Samaritan woman is the Father's work?? But just then the woman, who has been grabbing all sorts of people from the "audience" to come back with her, arrives at the well with a crowd who want to see who this prophet was who had come to Samaria. Jesus talks to them and they all believe in him (he shakes hands with everyone). So—talking to this woman was a good way to do God's work after all! (I hoped people would make the application that we should invite/welcome anyone, no matter how much they do or don't "fit in," because you just never know whose heart God is calling.

We used a game Kevin Hui created several years ago called "drinking living water". Everyone got a small bottle of a popular drink containing live lactobacillus. The twist to make it fun was that everyone also received a long straw made up of five regular straws joined together. They went two by two to see who could finish their bottles the fastest. Ka Ho (on the left) was the star!

For craft time we made these little "wells" out of craft sticks and cut-up toilet paper rolls. (This is after having made toilet-roll dogs last week. I NEVER throw away the rolls any more when I change the paper at home!)

A Brave and Humble Woman

2011-02-25T21:23:00.002+08:00

We started our story by not introducing Jesus: we just put our "traditional" white vest on the one male present & immediately everyone knew who he was supposed to be. Yes, that was a problem Jesus had when He was on earth. Everyone recognized Him, and wanted to hear Him preach, or ask Him for healing. Sometimes He & His disciples got so busy they didn't have time to eat! So they went together to the country of the Phoenicians for a "getaway." (The reason for His going is not given in Scripture; I give this as a possibility. If Jesus could fall asleep in a boat during a storm, for example, He must have gotten extremely tired sometimes. He talks about knowing when power has gone out of Him, when the hemorrhaging woman touched Him. Did He need to rest and restore His strength for His miracles? Is that perhaps why He was reluctant to heal the Syrophoenician woman's daughter, and possibly open Himself up to more demands, leaving Him unready for the needs of the Jews? All speculation, I admit. But I found it helpful when I was studying the story & hoped others might too.)

Anyway, escaping to this other country didn't help after all, because at least one woman recognized who He was and wanted Him to deliver her daughter from a demon. The Mark version of the story has Jesus and His disciples in a house; the Matthew account sounds like they are out of doors. So we put both in the story. First the woman came and knocked on the "door" where Jesus and a few disciples were sitting drinking tea. One of the disciples goes and answers the door, shoos her away, and comes back and tells Jesus it was just someone knocking on the wrong door. Then the next day they were out walking and the woman starts yelling for Jesus to help her. The disciples say, get rid of her. But Jesus does nothing, either to help her or to send her away. Finally she throws herself at his feet and begs for His help. We had Jesus kneel down and gently explain, if I help you, what would stop all your neighbors from looking for my help? I'm really supposed to be here for the Jews, you know. Spending my time helping people here would be like taking the children's food and letting the dogs eat it, and that wouldn't be right, would it? The woman responds, yes, but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs from the children's table. (In other words, call me a dog, I don't care, just heal my daugahter!) Jesus is moved by her humility and her bold faith, and grants her request.

We followed the "dog" theme for game and craft time. We crumbled up cookies on small plates and had the kids lap up the crumbs like a dog. The adults all ended up trying it too; partly to help persuade one reluctant girl, partly just for the fun of it. It was quite humorous, we all got crumbs on our noses and chins!

Then we made these little dogs out of toilet paper rolls.

Simon and the Sinful Woman

2011-02-18T15:26:00.005+08:00

I thought Mrs. Lei did an exceptionally good job at leading the story today. Unfortunately several people were too late to see it and a couple of others were too busy chatting to watch the skit, so it didn't get the attention it deserved. We had almost enough kids to play all the roles; Bruce ended up playing Jesus. He, Simon, and two others sat around a table set with bowls and chopsticks, all with their feet off to the side up on stools. (All except 2-year-old Marco whose legs were too short—ha). Then we introduced this woman who wished she could invite Jesus for a meal, but her home--and her life--were too messy. But as she looked longingly at the feasting, she noticed that for all Simon's righteousness, he didn't know how to treat a guest. She could see Jesus feet and they were DIRTY! So she went right in and started rubbing his feet with some lotion (anti-bacterial hand sanitizer—she didn't actually put it on, as Bruce kept his socks on). She started to cry over the privilege of doing this for him, and then she wanted to dry them and all she had was her hair, so she used that. All this time Simon is looking at her like she is something the cat dragged in, but it's interesting that he never orders her out—just sits there and passes mental judgment on Jesus for letting her touch him! Jesus abruptly stands up and says he has something to tell Simon. He says, lets say your two friends here owe you money, one $500 and one $50. (We gave them signs to hold with these amounts.) Neither one can afford to pay you back, so you cancel their debts. (Simon rips up the signs.) Which one would love you more after that? Simon says, the one who owed the most. Jesus agrees and says, you are pretty righteous, so you don't love me very much. But this woman loves me very much, because she knows she is a sinner and needs the forgiveness I bring. Then He turns to the woman and says, don't cry, your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.

Simon didn't know how to treat his guests (I mistakenly used the word "tourists" for "guests" when I introduced this game—oops!); it's also important as a guest to treat your host or hostess properly. To practice this, we played "visiting Grandma." One adult was Grandma and sat next to a table with a tea set and a tin of cookies. Each child in turn had to great Grandma by title, kiss her on the cheek, sit down, pour tea, use both hands to give Grandma a cup of tea, and then ask her how she was doing. When they did it all right, Grandma would open the tin and give them a cookie. Again, lots of distracting chatting going on between the adults while the game was going on. Which was too bad, because some of the kids that don't always speak well did a great job & they deserved to be noticed! Sigh.

Craft time was an easy choice: this woman showed her love for Jesus by anointing His feet, which is not the way most of us are going to show love for anyone! A more typical way would be giving them a card—such as for Valentine's Day! I found this great bunny valentine in a craft book; perfect for the Year of the Rabbit!

In spite of the lack of attention during the joint activities, Bruce said the adult Bible study went really well, with more participation from our non-believers than usual! Thank the Lord for what only He can do!!

Raising of Jairus’ Daughter

2011-02-11T13:49:00.002+08:00

Our story was brief this time—we didn't show the interruption of the hemorrhaging woman since we had done that in a separate story. We introduced Jairus & family. The daughter was very sick (we took her temperature with one of these fancy "radar guns"), so Jairus left her lying on her bed (a board across two stools) with her mother stationed next to her. Then he went off to look for Jesus. He pushed through the crowd around Jesus and begged him to come heal his daughter. Jesus agreed and they started off. After walking one round of the room, the servant appears and tells Jairus he might as well send Jesus away, the girl was already dead. But Jesus told him not to be afraid, so they kept going. When they arrived, the mother and several others were wailing loudly. Jesus tells them they don't need to mourn, the girl was only asleep. They stop wailing and start jeering at Jesus. But he goes in and tells the girl to get up, and she does. Jesus gives her to her parents and tells them to give her something to eat. So they give her a cracker.

For the game we focused on Jairus having to force his way through the crowd to get to Jesus. Several adults linked arms to block the way from one end of the room to the other. If the kids could push their way through, they, like Jairus, could get what they wanted from "Jesus" (in this case, a sweet treat). The kids enjoyed the game, but maybe it wasn't so brilliant to encourage them to use physical force to move people out of their way! Our visiting (neurotypical) preschooler was good at sneaking through between people's knees though.

For craft time we made these reversible dolls to illustrate how, like with Jairus and his family, God turns our sorrow into joy.

The week after this story was the fourth day of the Chinese New Year. We always use the first Sunday of Chinese New Year just to chat and munch New Year's goodies. Low attendance, but that was not surprising. I really enjoyed the break from having to prepare anything new. Especially since I caught a bad cold from the cat we're taking care of for a vacationing friend, so it would have been extra unpleasant to go at the normal pace. I'm fine now & looking forward to this coming Sunday!

A Brave Woman

2011-01-28T18:14:00.001+08:00

Today we introduced a woman who, like last week's character, had been suffering for a long time. This woman had had an issue of blood for 12 years. She had spent all her money on doctors, to no avail: we gave our "actress" a small purse with three coins and had her visit three different "doctors" who listened to her heart with a home-made stethoscope and/or took her temperature with a pretzel stick. She was supposed to pay each of them one of her coins but it took a considerable amount of persuasion to get her to part with them. Somehow she ended up with all three back in the purse at the end; I missed how she did that. Anyway, the first two doctors gave her medicine to drink. After drinking the first bottle, we could see that the "blood" (a long red string tucked into her belt) was still there. The second bottle, we said (just to make the story more interesting) not only didn't make the blood go away, it made her throw up. Lai Wun obliged by spitting in her sister's lap—yes, it did make the story more interesting! :-) The third doctor took her money but only shook her head sadly and said, sorry, nothing I can do for you. So by now she was desperate. Then she hears that Jesus has come to her town! She didn't dare ask Him outright for help. After all, she was "unclean," and not worthy of God's care. But, Jesus was so powerful, if she could just touch his clothes, she very well might be healed. So she threaded through the crowd, quickly touched his cloak, and ran away. She did the running away part really well. When Jesus asked who had touched Him, there was no way she was going to be persuaded to come back and tell Him who it was! So Jesus had to go and find her hiding in the corner of the room and tell her not to worry, never to think that God loved her, and that in fact she was healed because God was so pleased by her faith. So, a little different from the original story, but it worked okay.

This woman had sneaked up to Jesus to "steal" power from His body. So for our game, each child had to try to "steal" a piece of chocolate dangling on a string from "Jesus'" clothes. Our volunteer Jesus wasn't very good at dodging, so the game was a little too easy, but this did not disappoint the kids terribly!

The woman was supposed to never forget that God loved her, and we shouldn't forget either. So for craft time we made simple picture frames and wrote on the top "Jesus loves" and their names on the bottom. Then we inserted their personalized angels from the December 19^th craft time. I still had the heads leftover from the kids who hadn't come that day, so since Sally was there this time, I made her an angel while they were putting the frames together, so she had an angel too. Of course she had never seen it before and loved it! While some of the other kids were still working on their projects, Sally was gazing at hers with her chin on her hand and a radiant smile on her face. So sweet.

A Crippled Woman Healed

2011-01-21T22:14:00.002+08:00

We took some major "poetic license" here! In order to lengthen the story & increase the participation, we added some hypothetical situations to give background to the theme of the day. First we had the "leader of the synagogue" getting ready to go to the Sabbath meeting. No cooking allowed on the Sabbath, so he had to eat a cold breakfast (a small piece of pound cake, which is considered by some to be Western breakfast food). Then before he went, he needed to make sure his cows were fed and watered. So he pumped some water with the cardboard pump leftover from the marriage at Cana & then led his two handsome cows (steers, maybe!) out to drink. Led them back to their seats & gave them some "hay". Then he could go to the synagogue.

Next we saw another family—father, mother and small son—also eat their cold breakfast and start off. But on the way they encountered a neighbor's sheep with its head caught in a fence. (I have kicked myself for not getting a picture of Sally in the fence—I'll have to ask her to do a make-up pose another day.)

Here it is:

Of course, according to the Law you must rescue a neighbor's animal in distress, so the son ran home to get a hammer & dad took the fence apart to let the sheep out, and then hammered it back together. Then they, too, go to the synagogue.

The next person we see is this woman (girl) who is bent over from the waist and unable to straighten up. She has been that way for 18 years. She is pretty lonely, because people have to practically lie on the ground to talk with her & few people do that. But she likes to go to synagogue, because she can talk to God anyway!

Today, Jesus is speaking at the meeting. Some more poetic license—He is giving a sermon on God's mercy. Everyone agrees with His wonderful message. Then He calls the crippled woman to the front and says, daughter, God wants to show you His mercy today! He lays His hands on her and she stands up straight. She begins to rejoice, but then the leader of the synagogue gives her a hard time. "If you wanted to be healed, you should come some other time, not on the Sabbath! Healing is work & shouldn't be done on the Sabbath!" But Jesus refutes this statement. Come now, He says. Weren't we just talking about mercy? Don't you show mercy to your cattle on the Sabbath, and bring them out to drink? (Synagogue leader looks embarrassed) Or if you saw your neighbor's sheep stuck in a fence on the Sabbath, wouldn't you have mercy on it and help it get free? (family looks embarrassed). God shows us mercy every single day, after all, and wouldn't He want to show mercy to this dear woman today? And give her the best Sabbath "rest" that she has had for 18 years?

The game for today was originally written to be a relay race, but it quickly became obvious that just doing the running—with hands clasping the ankles—was hard enough for almost everyone that just doing it individually, without competition, was challenge enough to make it fun!

The woman in our story stood up straight and tall for the first time in 18 years. How tall are we when we stand up straight? Craft for the day was making individual "growth charts" which were simply measuring tapes stuck to sheets of paper. Then we measured everyone. Unfortunately, I had not anticipated that we would have a new visitor this morning—a 4-year-old boy who was considerably less than 4 feet tall. The only measuring tapes I could find went up to only five feet, and we have several boys taller than that. So I had cut the tapes short, and had 20-80 cm become 120-180 cm. Everyone easily fell within this range except our new little boy, who wasn't all that thrilled to be there in the first place. Mr. Lei worked hard to figure out how to measure him anyway. Thanks Mr. Lei!

I led the Bible study which centered on the idea of mercy. I assigned "homework" which was looking for ways in the coming week to show mercy to someone who doesn't "deserve" it. We're supposed to report back this coming Sunday. Hope we will have at least some people who did the homework!

Luke 7

2011-01-13T22:10:00.003+08:00

Since this is supposed to be starting our unit on New Testament women, the main story is meant to be the widow of Nain. But that is too short a story to make much of a drama out of, so we started with the story before it in Luke, about the healing of the centurion's servant.

First we introduced Jesus, then we divided the rest of the room into "Jews" and "Romans" who generally kept separate from one another. But there was this one Roman, whose servant was sick (centurion puts him in recliner with feet up & covers him with blanket), who had good relationships with the Jews. When he heard Jesus was in town, he asked some of his Jewish friends to ask Jesus to heal his servant. They do & he says okay & starts to go with them. But one guy runs ahead to tell the centurion that he is coming. He sends him back to Jesus to say, please, don't take so much trouble for me; your power is so great, you can just say the word and he will be healed. Jesus is impressed and says "he is healed." The servant immediately gets up and starts sweeping the floor.

Then we have some people saying: "Did Jesus really heal him, or was he going to get better anyway? And, "Well, He healed him, but He only does this for people who are important and do good works." Thus we introduce the next story that highlights both Jesus' healing power and His willingness to serve nobodies.

Jesus is walking along and sees two men coming along the road carrying a funeral bier (a board with a doll on it, covered with a blanket). Behind them walks a widow (wearing a black scarf) & no other family, so Jesus knows she is very needy. He stops the procession, pats the widow on the shoulder to comfort her, then puts his hands on the covered figure and says, sit up. The doll sits up (with help), and is given to the mother. Everyone is amazed and they sing a praise song. (The "widow," a real widow, actually, who is usually quite shy, made her doll-son dance with the music—that was cute!)

When the centurion's servant was healed, he sat up. When the widow's son was brought to life, he sat up. So of course our game was a sit-ups contest!

Some of the adults gave it a try too. They couldn't all manage sit-ups, but some could do other kinds of exercise!

Craft was more "headwork" than "handwork" this time—an English word-search with words from the widow of Nain story. The definitions were added in Chinese, but the word-find was only English. The kids do work on English in school (whether or not it's very useful), but they had a hard time with this. The parents found it fascinating though!

I liked what Bruce brought out in the Bible study time, about how the centurion asked for (and received) healing for his servant, but how Jesus raised the widow's son without her asking for anything. Many people today ask for healing and then rightly thank Jesus for it, but how often are people healed & it's also Jesus but because they didn't ask they don't guess it was He? Unfortunately we ran out of time to discuss the problem of those who ask for healing but don't receive it. I did at least try to emphasize in the closing prayer that this is a legitimate question that I wish I knew the answer to. But that we ask anyway, because who else is there to ask? Ourselves?

The Ideal Woman

2011-01-11T21:29:00.002+08:00

The ideal woman is not I. I don't imagine the Proverbs 31 woman would have gotten behind in her posting because she wasted a couple of days moping around after her cat died.

Proverbs 31 is of course not in story form, but it still lent itself nicely to our Sunday morning program. In theory we were supposed to be in the New Testament by the New Year, but there are SO MANY Sundays before this year's unusually late Easter, that I sneaked this in.

The way we did it was to first select the number of "volunteers" needed for each verse, then have someone read the verse (or verses) before having the kids act out the scene:

vv 10-12—"she is more precious than jewels"—boy puts necklace on girl

v 13—"she seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands"—girl knits.

v 14—"she brings her food from far away"—girl goes around the room with shopping basket buying fruit from different people

v 15—"she rises while it is still night and provides food for her household…"—this was unplanned but a funny touch. Lai Wun was our star actress; she had gotten into the knitting scene as if she really knew what she was doing. Wing Yan was our next volunteer, and she did okay as far as lying down on the sleeping mat with her "husband" and then letting him sleep on while she got up. But then she was done & wouldn't set the table like she was supposed to. So Lai Wun jumps up and starts doing it for her. Well, the verse does continue "…and tasks for her servant-girls"!

v 16—"she considers a field and buys it…plants a vineyard"—girl buys box of dirt from boy and waters it

v 17—"she…makes her arms strong"—girl lifts weights

vv 18-19—"her lamp does not go out at night…her hands hold the spindle"—girl tucks boy into bed then sits up with sewing

v 20—"she opens her hand to the poor"—boy begging with tin cup, girl drops money into cup

vv 21-22—"all her household is clothed in crimson"—girl dresses boy & then herself in red jackets

v 23—"her husband is known in the city gates"—boys sit in a group, boy wearing the red jacket shakes hands with the others

v 24—"she makes linen garments and sells them"—girl goes around the room selling articles of clothing to different people

v 25—"she laughs at the time to come"—girls make remarks about cold weather/bad economy, girl says, no problem

v 26—"the teaching of kindness is on her tongue"—two boys fighting, girl breaks it up

v 27—"she…does not eat the bread of idleness"—boy sits in recliner, girl sweeps floor

vv 28-29—"her children rise up…her husband, too, and he praises her"—several people praise girl & give her a crown

vv 30-31—"give her a share in the fruit of her hands"—girl takes basket & goes around the room while people put garments, fruit & money in basket

This woman had a lot to balance! So for game time, we had a relay where the kids had to balance a tray with cups & bowls using one hand. A couple of the kids didn't get the one-hand bit right, but a couple of them insisted on doing it over and trying it one-handed, and they did it! Great job, kids!

Our craft followed verse 13—they used yarn and worked with fairly willing hands to create these pictures with it.

The adult Bible study took an interesting twist. Some of the women came to the conclusion that this woman's husband must be a lazy good-for-nothing who just let her do everything! I don't think that was supposed to be the point of this passage!

The Three Wise Men

2010-12-30T16:38:00.001+08:00

I didn't get any pictures this time. I was telling the story & was just too wired from the busy weekend. Oh well, we had a good time anyway. We introduced our three wisemen ("wisepersons"), all wearing neckties to illustrate their status. They were looking at the stars stuck to the ceiling fan through a telescope (two telescoping paper towel rolls). Then suddenly this very large star appeared, held up on a stick by one of the girls. Interesting, most stars travelled in some kind of orbital pattern (ceiling fan turned on slow speed), but this new one was going in a straight line. They decide to follow it, so each takes a tote bag containing a towel and a wrapped gift, and set off following the star.

Eventually it leads them to King Herod's palace. They figure this must be because the star signifies a newborn king, so they get in to see Herod and ask, where's the new baby king? We've been following the star that told us he had been born. Oh-oh, Herod doesn't like this news. He has no new baby son, but he remembers some prophecy from somewhere about a star arising from Jacob that will rule. (we had someone read parts of Numbers 24:17-19 from a prepared scroll) But HE wants to keep ruling! So he goes and finds some Bible experts and asks them where this ruler is supposed to be born. They look up and read Micah 5:2—answer: Bethlehem.

So Herod goes back and says, okay, no new baby here, but you can expect to find him in Bethlehem. When you do, come back and tell me where exactly, so I can go pay my respects too. They agree & leave, after which Herod gloats, ha, I can kill this baby and then I can be the only king again!

The star now leads them to one of the side rooms. They knock and out comes one of the girls holding a baby doll. They ask when it was born & she answers, "December 25^th," so they know it must be the right baby. They give mother & baby the gifts from their bags, and they all get a chance to cuddle the baby a little. Then they leave. They know they're supposed to go back to Herod's palace, but they're too tired from all their traveling & it's late, so they pull the towels from their bags and go to sleep on the floor. But during the night an angel appears and tells them not to go back to the palace. So when they get up they go into the other bedroom and re-enter the living room through the back balcony.

Our game was another relay race, based on the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Various small wooden blocks had been labeled with one of these gift names, & each team had enough so that each kid could find & bring a set of three to "Mary & baby" sitting at the front of the room. Somehow, it should have been more fun than it was. I think it would have been better if there had been more blocks to have to paw through, with some having totally irrelevant labels. I was too cheap, I guess. I was able to find a box of 32 small blocks (actually Chinese Chess pieces) for a very cheap price and said, good, I don't have to spend a lot. I could have bought two boxes and it still would have been cheap.

The wisemen brought their gifts in "treasure boxes" but we usually receive our Christmas gifts in stockings, so we made stockings for our craft. The patterns were cut out of plastic report covers which were handily red in back & clear in front. They added a white top made from a folded card with cotton balls stuck to it, punched holes around the edges, then sewed the whole thing together with green yarn, leaving enough for a hanger at the top. The hole punches were not quite heavy-duty enough (even though I'd bought bigger ones—in fact, the small ones that had been a disaster with the crossing-of-the-red-sea craft (May 28) did a better job than the big clunkers—sigh), so there was some frustration. But all was forgiven when I got them all filled with candy during the free time!

We had a potluck scheduled, with food to be delivered at 12:00. They had trouble finding the place and didn't arrive until 12:45. Mrs. Ng had brought some scrumptious homemade dumplings so we polished those off while we waited. Finally the food came—and along with it, a boy & his mom who have been frequently late in the past, but NEVER this late. I mean, if the food had come on time, we would have been mostly done eating it by the time they showed up! How did they KNOW??

Christmas Eve

2010-12-30T16:29:00.002+08:00

For the 4^th year in a row, we joined several other churches to take part in a "Christmas concert" at a local tourist attraction. This year, three things were different.

1. We only sang once instead of twice, so it didn't get to be such a terribly long and late night.

2. We added a new feature, a recorder duet by myself and one of our neurotypical girls who's been learning recorder at school.

3. We had these nifty new t-shirts, paid for by a Christmas gift from the family of one of our sometime-volunteers.

Oh, and 4., we invited a friend, George Dunlop, to take pictures for us, and he did a great job!

Elizabeth and Mary

2010-12-24T16:41:00.002+08:00

One of my favorite stories in the curriculum. First we see Zacharias the priest going into the holy of holies. It's very dark in there (I imagine anyway. It certainly was in the tabernacle!), so we turned off the lights. Suddenly an angel appears! Zacharias is afraid, but the angel says, don't be afraid, your prayers have been answered. Zacharias scratches his head and wonders to himself, which prayer? I pray a lot of prayers! The angel says, your wife is going to have a son. You've got to be kidding, says Zacharias! Is this for real?

The angel is a bit annoyed (I'm definitely taking some license here) and says, I'm God's messenger, I'm standing in the holy of holies, and you accuse me of lying? You want to know if this is for real, then I'll give you a sign: you won't be able to speak your doubts—or anything else!—until your son is born, and you name him John.

Zacharias comes out and people ask him why he's been in there so long. He flaps his arms—there was a bird in there? No, no—he traces a circle on his head—oh, an angel! What did he say? He pantomimes holding a baby. The angel was holding a baby? No, no—he goes and finds his wife, the oldest woman present (60-something, perfect!) and pats her stomach. Oh, she's going to have a baby! Wonderful!

Cut to Mary sitting by herself. The angel appears again, and says, Don't be afraid, you are greatly blessed by God and will have a son. Mary says (again, taking some license), I can't figure out how this could be since I'm not married yet, but if you say so, it must be true! The angel says, you haven't asked for a sign, but I will give you one. Your relative Elizabeth is also going to have a son in her old age. She is already six months pregnant.

The angel leaves and Mary decides to go visit Elizabeth. She knocks on a door and out comes the pregnant Elizabeth!

Her pillow is showing, but everyone got the point and loved it!

When she hears Mary's voice, the baby jumps in her womb. Soon Elizabeth's time comes to disappear into the bedroom & come back out minus pillow but holding a baby. Everyone congratulates her & someone asks, are you going to call him Zacharias junior? Zacharias gets up, gestures No, no, and gets pen & paper, and writes "His name is John." As soon as he finished writing, he could speak again, and praises God.

For our game, we imitated the unborn John the Baptist and "jumped for joy" over a length of string held at higher and higher levels.

Craft time, also a favorite, was folding paper angel bodies, but then attaching prepared photos of each person's head, and pasting on a halo. Since no one takes their crafts home anyway, we then stuck all the angels on a Christmas tree on the wall.

One of our girls put her head on a bit too low, making her angel a bit hunchbacked looking. Later on she asked if she could take her angel off the tree. Why? Because her neck was starting to get sore! She was really worried that she had caused this by placing her angel head wrong! But I said I could fix her neck and "kissed it better." She seemed okay after that!

Esther part 2

2010-12-17T16:28:00.002+08:00

Even with holding the beauty contest last week, this turned out to be a long story. But great drama! We started with the brief scene of Mordecai sitting outside the palace gate and overhearing the plot to assassinate the king. He writes a (seriously condensed) message: (Beware!) to Esther who passes it to the king. The plot is foiled, and the message gets pasted in the king's scrapbook.

Next we see the proud Haman being annoyed by the fact that Mordecai won't bow to him. So he suggests to the king that all the Jews be killed & the king says, sure go ahead. Moredecai sends Esther another very brief message (SOS), but this time she doesn't pass it on to the king. She writes back (Can't!) and he responds (Must!). The narrative, of course, spells out more detail, but no way could we have the kids write complete messages. So anyway, then everyone kneels down to "pray and fast" for the count of three (days). Esther goes to see the king and he welcomes her. She invites him and Haman to a feast for the following night. (We cut this down to just one feast. Saved time & didn't change the basic plot.)

Haman is really puffed up now; he's the only commoner invited to the royal feast. (I am SO PROUD of our Haman. He used to be one of our biggest behavior problems but lately he has been doing so well. He actually got into hamming it up, this time! I love it!) Only one thing mars his self-congratulations: that Mordecai still refuses to bow to him. Hmm…why wait until the day for all the Jews to be killed? Since he's in such obvious favor with the king, why not ask tomorrow morning that Mordecai be put to death right away?

That night the king can't sleep so he's browsing through his scrapbook. He comes across the note written by Mordecai that saved his life, and realizes he has never done anything to reward him, for shame!

So the next morning Haman shows up, and before he can get a word out, the king asks him, what should be done for someone I want to honor? Haman is sure he's the one the king means, so he thinks of something he'd really like: wearing the king's robe & crown, riding the king's horse, and having someone lead him around the city telling everyone how much the king honors him. The king says: Fantastic idea! Go get Mordecai and do that for him right now! Haman has no choice but to comply:

Whew, that was awful. Good thing he hadn't put forth his request!! Oh well, he still has this wonderful banquet to look forward to, right? And wonderful it was!

Afterward the king is so happy he says to Esther, absolutely anything you want, what can I do for you? She says, "Just save my life from the wicked enemy who wants to kill me and my people." The king says, who would dare do such a thing? Esther points dramatically to Haman. The king calls for his soldiers, who pull a pillowcase over his head and lead him off. (Haman really did do a great job, but he couldn't take the pillowcase; that was a bit too much.) The king does away with the order for the extermination of the Jews, & he & Esther live happily ever after. (Yes, I know, the laws of the Medes and the Persians could not be revoked, but it was simpler this way and again, didn't really change the basic plot.)

Our game was to determine whether the king would allow you in to see him, since in our story that was an iffy thing. We had the "king" (one of our fathers) sit on his throne, with an armed soldier guarding the invisible door about six feet in front of him (to prevent the kids from crushing too close and spoiling the idea that not just anyone can approach the king). Then we had each child draw a "Do" card provided from "The Appreciation Game." If they were able to do what it said, they could get in to see the king, who gave them a treat. Everyone passed.

The king wore a crown, Esther wore a crown, even Mordecai wore a crown for a little while, so our craft was making crowns.

Since I wasn't sure I had enough of the gold paper to make a model, I didn't discover ahead of time that the pieces didn't stay stuck to the headband very well. It was getting sort of frustrating until someone had the idea to grab a stapler. Next time, double-sided tape on the headband would be the way to go.

Esther, part 1

2010-12-10T17:05:00.004+08:00

We decided to split the story of Esther into two parts so we could include more details—and, of course, have more fun!

First off we had to place the Jews in Persia, so we had everyone stand, & explained how because Israel had sinned, God had brought enemies against them. Many died (sat down) and the rest were carted off to exile in different countries (walked once around the room). We introduced two who ended up in Persia: Mordecai and his young cousin Esther.

Next we introduced King Ahasuerus, who liked to party and show off his wealth. At one particular party, he wanted to show off his wife as well. So he sent a servant to tell her to put on her crown and come let everyone see her beauty. But the queen took the crown from the servant, put it on her head, and said, "I'm the queen! If I don't want to go, I don't have to go!" The king discusses this horrible loss of face with his advisors. They all agree that Vashti could not be queen anymore or wives everywhere would get the idea that it was okay to disobey their husbands.

So then the king needs a new queen, and they hold a beauty contest to determine who it will be. All the beautiful young girls in the city are gathered to the palace. We were short three of our usual "young girls" so we recruited three moms to fill the ranks of contestants. First, they spent a whole year in cosmetic treatment—we had them all spray themselves lightly with perfume, put on some hand lotion, and then pat their faces with the puff from a (powderless) compact (actually a small folding mirror). Finally the great day came when all the candidates were to present themselves to the king. They were all taken by a servant into one of the side bedrooms where I had readied an array of dresses, which each girl put on over their clothes. Then they sashayed out one at a time—we had some hams among both mothers and daughters; great fun!!

The Bible says they were allowed to "bring anything they wanted" with them from the harem. I'm not sure exactly what they might want to bring so I had it be gifts (of little snacks) for the king—who thoroughly enjoyed playing his role of watching all these silly girls parading through in their oversized dresses while munching his goodies!

As we know, in the end, Esther was the winner. She is crowned and we all sing the wedding march while she & the king walk down the room together.

We combined game & craft into one activity this time, as it was kind of both in one anyway. We had the kids divide into two teams, with the two sitting down facing each other. We had an odd number of kids though, so called for a volunteer and got Mr. Lei. Then, we explained, we were going to do some "cosmetic treatment" like the candidates in the story's beauty contest. First, the kids in team one painted the faces of their opposite number, then team two returned the favor. Some kids barely put enough paint on to be visible, others were quite enthusiastically artistic! (Mr. Lei's partner was one, as was the girl partnering Wing Yan...)

I was most thrilled, though, with the pair-up of Ka Hei and Ying Wai. It was so neat to see both of them paint creatively and tolerate being painted in return—both did better than we expected.

The big disappointment was that Sally was absent; she loves craft time but has trouble making eye contact. I wanted to see how she would do with having to look at someone's face to do the craft! I wonder if we could arrange a special session with her some time..?

Adult Bible study centered on whether wives were supposed to always obey their husbands—some good discussion, if not as completely open in the sharing time as we might have liked.

A Special Sunday

2010-12-03T17:16:00.004+08:00

We had heard about a sister church in Hong Kong that had a Sunday school program for special-needs kids and their parents, and this Sunday was finally the one where we were all able to get together. We had nearly fifty, so were very thankful to be able to borrow the Centro O Amanhecer daycare center for the occasion.

We took a break from our unit on Old Testament women in favor of a story that would have a more direct application to both groups: the importance of thankfulness. Conveniently, this was just three days after the American holiday of Thanksgiving!

The story of Jesus healing the ten lepers is not terribly long, but it took plenty enough time to get all our lepers kitted out in bandages and face masks.

Lai Wun ended up looking more like a surgeon than a leper, but she was cute anyway!

One thing we could all be thankful for was that, whatever our problems, none of us are afflicted with leprosy! In Bible times it was a particularly frightening disease, entailing as it did exile from the community. We had folks throwing stones (paper wads) at them. A few of the kinder ones threw food (small packets of crackers) for the lepers to share. All in all a miserable existence. So when they saw Jesus at a distance, having heard that He was a healer, they all cried out for mercy. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priest. They scratched their heads at that. How come? Did Jesus want the priests to confirm their leprosy so He would know what He was up against, or what? Whatever—they started walking, when suddenly, one of the boys (who had been complaining that he wanted to take his bandage off anyway) said, "Hey, guys, I have feeling in my leg all of a sudden!" He got to take off his bandage and say, look, it's healed! That was the signal for everyone to take off their bandages, give high fives all around, and head off for the unseen priest (a volunteer just escorted them out the door of the main room temporarily. All but one, who stopped and said, I better go back and thank Jesus while I still know where He is. (Actually, our Jesus had disappeared; tired of his inactive role. So his brother became the stand-in.) So the one came back and knelt at His feet saying, praise God, praise God! Jesus lifted her up and praised her for having a thankful heart which is even more special to God than strict obedience.

For our game, we divided into two teams. Instead of running to Jesus and falling to their knees, the race involved running to Jesus on their knees. He would then lift them up and they could run back to their team. The extra twist in this was that each "runner" had to wear knee protectors (those lepers need to protect their skin, you know!), so as each child got back to their team they had to take them off for the next child to put on. This was not exactly done "decently and in order," and you couldn't prove which team had actually won, but it was fun anyway!

The craft was fairly simple; making "tambourines" to sing praises with. Each child got a foil pie plate, and eight small jingle bells to attach along the rim with florist wire. Everyone seemed to prefer wearing them as hats rather than using them as musical instruments, though!

We didn't have a regular Bible study during the last period; while the kids had some free play time, the adults heard a testimony of thankfulness for God's grace from a Hong Kong father with two autistic sons. Afterward we all enjoyed a catered "potluck" meal together, while families from the two churches got to know one another better in individual conversations. A group this large every week would be truly exhausting (I trust if we get this large we will have more volunteers available!), but once in a while is great!

Elisha and the Shunammite woman

2010-11-23T21:49:00.004+08:00

We were really short on boys this week! So the Shunammite woman's husband was the only genuine male in our story.

We introduced Elisha & his servant and had them walk around the room a couple of times, stopping twice at the invitation of our heroine to sit down at the table with bowls & chopsticks and "eat a meal" with her & her husband. After they left the second time, the woman suggests preparing a room for them, and they do that together: they unfolded a cot in a corner of the room and added a table, chair and candlestick.

The next time Elisha came around they were invited to relax in the room. Our Elisha was NOT going to lie down on the bed; at least she was eventually willing to sit on the edge of it, while Gehazi sat on the stool. They conferred about what to do to thank the woman & eventually tell her she's going to have a son. (Actually we had to just say, they told her. Elisha was instructed to tell our 11-year-old Shunammite woman she was going to have a son. She stared at her for a few beats and whispered, "she's so young!") Anyway, she is told the prophecy and says, don't trick me, please.

Sure enough, she has a son. I forgot to bring the baby doll from home; so I grabbed an old craft off a shelf; one of these dolls we'd made out of water bottles and Styrofoam balls. Mom was trying to cuddle her baby when its head fell off—oops! (Must be why the child ended up with the murderous headache in the next scene, right?)

We chose one of our not-usually-overly cooperative girls to be the child and she did well, though she wanted mom to stick with her. Worked well; we had mom be one of the other reapers when the child complained of the headache—the one who brought the child home. Decided on the spot to skip the interlude with the child sitting on mom's lap until he dies & put him/her straight to bed. Fortunately she was willing to lie down, and even to be covered with a sheet when she "died."

Mom then gets on her donkey and trots off to find Elisha and says, didn't I tell you not to trick me?! Gehazi gets back to the house first, feels the child and says, yup, he's dead. Then Elisha comes and no way are we going to try to get him/her to lie prone on top of the child! But she knelt willingly by the side of the bed with both hands on the child. Then the child was supposed to sneeze seven times. She tried really hard but couldn't figure out how to imitate a sneeze. So we got seven little coughs, after which she got up and Elisha took her to the mother, with the conclusion: God doesn't trick people.

For game time, we attached a little "room" (tissue box) to a corner of a table and said how if Elisha wanted to rest, he just needed to get to that little room, so we would try to get to that little room too—with one of those little cars that you pull back a few inches and they go forward. Not always in a straight line, of course. A little bit too easy to be a really good game, but our kids are so uncritical, they like just about anything!

For our craft we made candlesticks like the one they put in Elisha's room.

The candles were white TP rolls—candles are supposed to be wax, of course, so we made them wax by coloring them with wax crayons. Most of the kids had a little trouble waiting long enough for the glue to dry on the handles, but they kept trying. I was proud of them all!

Elisha and the widow’s oil

2010-11-20T21:33:00.002+08:00

This was a relatively short story. Only seven verses in the Bible! Of course I always throw in some extra-Biblical imaginings to add to the drama. We started with introducing the husband and wife first. We happened to choose the same fellow who had "died" in the previous week's story about Abigail & Nabal. He looked a little cheated when this time he died right after he got introduced! But we were short on boys anyway, so he got "resurrected" as Elisha & got to wear the "prophet's mantle." But before we met him, we had the "evil creditor" taunt the widow and shake a stack of bills marked "overdue" in her face. So the widow goes to Elisha & he instructs her how to use the bottle of oil which is all she has left in the house. Before the story had started, we had distributed a couple of cups or bowls to each adult, as well as a few "silver coins." So now the widow sent her two boys to go collect all the cups and bowls, which she proceeded to pretend to fill with oil. Then, also on the prophet's instructions, the boys were supposed to go sell the oil back to the neighbors. The adults didn't quite get it, and instead of exchanging the vessels for money, they put their coins in the vessels as if they were begging bowls! Oops! (It's not only our kids who don't always pay close attention…) After we got this straightened out, "mom" went to the creditor and paid him (her) a few coins. The creditor got to stamp all the bills "paid."

Our game involved pouring "oil" (water) into jars. We set two small bottles in the bathtub and put two stools next to the tub. The kids divided into teams & had a relay. Each child had to climb onto one of the stools and pour water from there until "their" jar was full. Volunteers stood by to refill the water bottles they were pouring from (bigger than the ones in the tub!) and also to empty the tub bottles between kids. It went well—messy-type games usually do! :-)

Craft time was a lot simpler to prepare for than it had been for Abigail. Bruce and I just had to drink a lot of fruit juice during the week so we would have enough little glass bottles for the kids to paint with glue and coat with tissue squares for fancy oil jars.

Abigail

2010-11-09T17:00:00.002+08:00

Kevin Hui led this story the first time around, so this week I got to do more "creative writing" instead of just translating/updating. Enjoyed that! We started out by introducing King David, crown and all, but then explaining that he wasn't actually king yet, Saul was. Crown to Saul. And Saul was jealous of David so was trying to kill him (Saul chases David with sword). So now David and some of his friends were on the run, which meant they didn't always have enough to eat. Today they were passing a sheep farm, and it happened to be shearing time. So we put sheep headbands on a couple of the girls & had them get down on all fours while a servant "sheared" them with a buzzing electric razor (safety cap on!).

David sent a couple of his friends to ask Nabal, the farmer, for some food, but he refused. So David and his friends decide to kill the farmer and his whole family (so who's the big fool here, Nabal or David?). Fortunately, one of the guys was smart enough to look for Nabal's wife Abigail and let her know what was going on. She put some donkey ears on another volunteer, then packed a basket with some meat, bread, fruit and wine, and led the donkey to meet David (oops, should have gotten a picture of this too.) David is grateful not only for the food, but for how her intervention had prevented him from rash action that would not have been pleasing to God. He kisses her hand & leads the donkey away.

The next day, she tells Nabal what happened, and he's so upset he has a stroke (which for some reason struck everyone as very funny). Then we all counted to ten (days), after which Nabal dies and is carried away to be buried. Our Nabal is an older boy who is not always overly cooperative, but he really liked being carried away by two men. We don't always get to see him smile so nicely!

So, after David hears that Nabal is dead, he starts thinking about how beautiful and wise Abigail was, and now she's all alone…hm…so this time, instead of receiving a gift from Abigail, he sends a servant with a gift for her! The servant also relays David's proposal. She accepts, and we end with the wedding march.

Now, when Abigail put fruit and other foodstuffs in the donkey's basket, she undoubtedly packed it neatly and carefully. For our game, however, while we had a donkey drawn on the blackboard, with a basket attached, we put the (fake) fruit in it by throwing it from a few feet away. Not quite so efficient, but more fun!

For our craft, I had to start preparing way ahead of time. Each sheep for our sheep-shearing craft took me over an hour to make, and I needed to prepare for ten kids. (Then of course we only had six…) Here is the "before and after" photo:

Hannah

2010-11-02T17:10:00.002+08:00

No pictures again this week, which is really too bad as we had at least one great Kodak moment. We had introduced Elkanah and his wife Hannah, whom he loved very much. Elkanah was instructed to demonstrate this by kissing Hannah, which he did using the "MLFF kiss"—kissing two fingers and then pressing them into the cheek of the kissee. In spite of his love for Hannah (I hypothesized), he took a second wife so he could still have children. I hadn't written into the story that Elkanah loved her, but the narrator told him to kiss her anyway. This time, he bent over (our tallest boy & shortest girl) and kissed her on the cheek! It was very sweet, but alas no photo!

The whole family (including Peninah's three children) walked to Jerusalem, where Elkanah presented his sheep to the priest. I had deliberately chosen an adult to be the priest so that I could instruct him on how to be very careful when offering the sheep…He first tore off one part of the paper sheep & laid it on the altar (a stool) and burned it (sprinkled orange tissue scraps on it)—no problem. Then he was supposed to tear off another part and keep it for himself by stuffing it in his pocket. This is where he was supposed to be careful not to tear into the stapled-off section that had little chocolate beans in it, but his tear went astray and a bunch of the chocolate beans scattered on the floor. <Hold action while these were cleared away…> The last part of the sheep was for the family to eat and give thanks as part of their worship, so the family sat down & the remaining chocolate beans were poured from the sheep into their individual bowls (real food=willingness to stay seated!).

Then Peninah was supposed to start ragging on Hannah, loudly thanking God for her healthy children and asking Hannah what SHE had to be thankful for. Unfortunately, just about this time someone decided that Peninah was too cold and started helping her drink a full glass of hot water. Sort of cramped her "provoking" style and I think everyone missed exactly what was supposed to be going on, sigh. Hannah just had to pretend to have been provoked. She got up & poured her leftover beans into the "children's" bowls and went off to the other end to pray. The priest accused her of being drunk, she said no, she was just pouring out her heart before God, and the priest blesses her & says he hopes God will answer her prayer. This somehow gives Hannah great peace & she gets up, washes her face, and goes home with her family.

Around a year later, she gives birth to Samuel…here we had another glitch, as our normally extremely reliable actress playing Hannah disappeared into the bathroom (long story), so Elkanah had to show off the baby. So while Hannah was in the bathroom, the narrator explained how she wouldn't go with the family to Jerusalem that year. When she came back out, it was deemed time for her to bring little Samuel to the temple. She gave him to Eli the priest. And God further rewarded her by giving her five more children (our recycled paper-towel roll people).

Well, if people missed the bit about Peninah provoking Hannah during the story, they got something of a recap for game time. All the kids sat in a circle. The first child to be designated "Hannah" got a juice bottle filled with more of those little chocolate beans, and a pair of chopsticks. She was allowed to start eating them (with the chopsticks to keep it reasonably slow) while the child next to her, designated "Peninah", started throwing our big foam die—the metaphor being, when Peninah rolled a six this would be counted as managing to provoke Hannah to quit eating. Then the candy jar passed to this child who became the new Hannah, and on around the circle (we did two rounds).

Had a hard time coming up for a craft for this story. Three years ago, we were just preparing to say goodbye to Melissa Lathrop who had been with us for about a year. We talked about how Hannah would make a little garment for Samuel each year when they went to the temple. Then together we used fabric markers to decorate a T-shirt to give to Melissa as a farewell gift. But this time around we didn't have anyone to send off. Finally got the helpful suggestion from Sharlene Ortlund (thanks, Shar; even if you didn't help me make any sheep, you were a big help nonetheless!) of making little praying figures out of pipe cleaners. They weren't too hard for the kids except for a couple of them who managed to get them to balance better by having the praying hands clasped behind the body instead of in front…they seemed to understand when I pointed this out, and fixed them without protest; I was pleased.

Discussion questions during the adult Bible study asked, have you ever thought of your child as a gift from God/heaven? And, If you do, how have you seen this to be true; & if not, how might things be different if you could view him/her this way? Again, I wasn't in on the study, being in with the kids, but I heard there was good discussion. One of our nonbelievers shared her Buddhist viewpoint that family members are "assigned" by "heaven" based on some kind of affinity demonstrated in a previous life, so you assume your children were meant for you & treat them accordingly. (This comment came from not a mother but an aunt who has recently taken on the care of her young-adult niece and couldn't be kinder to her than her own mother would be. We have been quite impressed by her sincere dedication to her second-hand "gift.") We appreciate learning more about our families' worldviews. Her comments suggest she feels no need to turn to Jesus for help in raising her niece. We can only pray she will learn to love Him for Himself.

Ruth and Naomi

2010-10-29T22:35:00.002+08:00

Good to have the troops back this week! We even had some visitors; relatives of one of our families. They were Mandarin- rather than Cantonese-speaking, so the young man was rather alarmed when the first thing I did to start the story was to grab him and bring him to the front to introduce him as Elimilech. One of the moms translated for him & then he was okay with it. He didn't have to do much anyway—just walk around the room ("to Moab") with his wife and sons and then "die." Then the two sons got married, and then they died—by this time the moms were interested in what was going to happen to these poor women left alone!

One of the daughters in law stays put, and Ruth follows Naomi around the room again, back to Israel. She gets the idea of helping feed them by going out gleaning. If there's a place that sells dried grasses that look like grain, I don't know where it might be. But I found some great vegetables that very much like sprouting grain to a non-farmer like myself. We had two bunches of these that we'd sprinkled with rice before scattering on the ground for Boaz's servants to gather while Ruth got busy picking up the little pieces of rice off the floor. Boaz asks a servant who that hard-working, pretty girl is. When he learns it's Ruth, he is very impressed; he's heard of her. He instructs his servant to drop extra grain in front of her, which he does.

When Ruth brings the grain home, Naomi asks whose field she was in. When she learns it's Boaz, she's really excited, and whispers some strange instructions in Ruth's ear. Ruth has never heard of such a strange custom (maybe she had, but I sure hadn't, and I was sure it would seem strange to our moms as well!), but she is obedient to her mother-in-law's instruction.

Boaz lies down next to a heap of sprouting veggies and begins to snore. Ruth climbs under his blanket down by his feet and waits for him to wake up. When he does, first he's shocked, but then tickled to death that Ruth would propose to him. He sends her home with an armful of sprouting veggies. Soon he sends for her and they get married.

One of our girls had brought a bouquet of flowers as a gift that morning. So we used it for Ruth's wedding bouquet!

Then about a year later, Ruth & Boaz had their baby Obed.

For our game, we "gleaned" grains of rice from paper plates in the center of the table, using chopsticks. At the end of the game we counted how many grains they had managed to get in their individual bowls. One girl had cheated by grabbing a plate of rice and using the chopsticks to just sweep it into her bowl. Well, you might say she followed the letter of the law, anyway! I was impressed with how hard some of the kids worked on this. It wasn't easy—try it yourself (uncooked rice—no cheating)!

Craft was making "bundles of grain" by tying together about 20 strands of twine each and then shredding the top centimeter or so. That took patience! Again, I was pleased with how a few of the kids applied themselves diligently. I was helping a boy who was NOT into it. I did get him to make at least one genuine pull at each strand of twine with one hand while I was being the second hand. Proud of myself for my own perserverance—ha!

We’re Ruthless

2010-10-21T17:42:00.001+08:00

Ha. No pictures this time either, as there was nothing to take pictures of. Due to a big Special Olympics competition, we didn't have enough kids in attendance to meet our minimum for doing our regular program. This week's Bible story was supposed to be on Ruth; hence our title.

One of the "kids" who did come is actually a woman in her 30's who has no apparent mental handicap. However, she has become very withdrawn, not wanting to leave her home for any reason. Her mother, who cares for her, is out of ideas for how to help her daughter. Our dear Mrs. Chu managed to persuade them to come to MLFF several weeks ago, and they've been there every week since. The daughter is content to consider herself a "kid" and to participate in games & crafts as one of them. She seems much happier than when she first started coming. Today we enjoyed some very sweet smiles.

With the small attendance, we were free to focus on this new family and get to know them a little better. I didn't get to know them as well, as our one other kid (really a kid) was getting restless and I felt the best thing was for me to go hang out with her in the free-play room. So I missed how it went, but mom was also clearly happier at the end of the morning after being on the receiving end of some compassionate listening and encouragement.

Afterward we all went out to lunch together at a local teahouse.

Next week, we should be back to our regular schedule.

Gideon

2010-10-15T21:54:00.001+08:00

Didn't manage to take any photos this week. Too busy refereeing! We had a very hyper Gideon who probably could have tackled the Midianites single-handed. When the Biblical Gideon is confronted by an angel who greets him with "the Lord is with you," he responds, "If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?" Our Gideon had a more "human" response to the shock of being greeted by an angel: "I have to go to the bathroom!"

We cut out a lot of the story to make it reasonable length; our Gideon (after his bathroom break) asked this angel right away about getting a sign with the fleece. Then while he "slept," the angel wet down a towel on the floor with a watering can. Then in round two, sprinkled the floor but not the towel.

Once this was settled, Gideon was all ready to set off with his huge army, but of course God had to pare it down first. We volunteered all the adults to be the ones afraid to go to battle, so that all the kids could be left to act out the water-drinking test. We just put a sheet of blue paper on the floor and had them either kneel & put their faces down to it, or just pretend to scoop some up & drink out of their hands. They were all very cooperative; it was great. But the power of suggestion was just too much for Gideon. He had to go get himself a real drink of water before his little army of three (each representing 100) could march off to battle.

Got to recycle again—we used the trumpets from the fall of Jericho craft time. Then had "jars" made of yet more toilet paper rolls (I've been saving them for months) covered with wrapping paper and stuffed with tissue-paper "torches." Of course these wouldn't break with enough noise to frighten the Midianites! So when they were supposed to smash them we had someone stir around the bucket of Legos. Plenty noisy enough! The Midianites (i.e. everyone but Gideon & his three companions) fled out the balcony door. We ended there, with a rousing rendition of, "Isn't He wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."

For game time, we had everyone, adults & children, stand up & then started through a list of things meant to winnow people out. Things like: stand on one foot (right vs. left), you're your birthday (odd vs. even dates), check feet (socks vs. no socks, etc.) Unlike Gideon, we always rejected the minority rather than the majority, so we could play longer!

Since all those jars got broken in the Bible story, our craft was "mending broken jars": taping cut-up paper cups back together. The kids (and parents) had a harder time than I'd anticipated. I had cut each cup into five pieces. If we use this craft again, we should cut them into just two or three pieces. Just holding them steady and getting the tape on was enough of a challenge for the kids; they didn't really need the extra challenge of figuring out how to fit so many pieces together. So I could have taken pictures of the "mended" cups but they were just too ugly!

Deborah

2010-10-08T07:18:00.002+08:00

This story turned out a little too short, in spite of adding some "filler" at the beginning with introducing Moses, who dies, then Joshua, who dies, before explaining the role of the judges, of whom we'll meet just two in this unit.

We had Deborah sitting in front of a palm tree drawn on the blackboard. Lai Wun did a great job. She is non-verbal, yet when she was supposed to tell Barak to go destroy Sisera, she got all the tones exactly right!

While she and Barak were chasing Sisera, our Jael invited him into her tent, which was a sheet over a desk. He was very cooperative about going in there and lying down. Deborah and Barak were also cooperative about not noticing his feet sticking out!

The cooperation evaporated real quickly when Jael crept into the tent and started hammering on the end of the tent peg. I don't think she was actually pounding it on his head! But it took some coaxing to get him back under the sheet, so that Jael could get Barak to come look at him with the tent peg through his temple…

Last week a visitor had complained that our game was "dangerous" because we were having kids throw things. Funny she did not object to this week's game, which was screwing large plastic screws, relay fashion, into cardboard heads. (Actually less dangerous than pounding something through.) I had wondered if it was a little too gruesome, but the kids just had fun. It was good practice for them to learn to use a screwdriver; two kids went from clueless to getting the idea during the course of the game!

For craft time we made leaves for our palm tree, by sticking two pieces of tissue paper together around a stem, and then fringing the edges. Here is "Deborah under her palm tree."

We might have made too big a deal out of the palm tree. It was a great craft! But during the adult Bible study, one of the moms asked if Deborah got her power from the palm tree she sat under! Oops! Another mom helped clarify that the palm tree was special because Deborah sat under it, rather than the other way around. It is so great when they ask questions like this though. So much better that they ask them than just think them!!

The Fall of Jericho

2010-09-30T16:27:00.002+08:00

Of course before we could conquer Jericho, we had to get across the Jordan, right? So we had everyone line up behind our two "priests" who were carrying the ark of the covenant between them. I used this ark I'd made a couple of years ago for a different story. It was somewhat the worse for wear after today's story; our priests couldn't quite hang onto the idea that they were supposed to stand still in the middle of the Jordan. So with all the forward and backward pushing and shoving, the sockets for the poles got ripped off the sides—oh well!

After everyone crossed over, but before the priests came up out of the riverbed (not yet, not yet), Joshua had 12 people go & each retrieve a large stone from the riverbed to build a memorial. When I was planning this story, I was trying to think, what can I use for stones? The small planter/aquarium stones I have are too small & hard to make a solid pile of. Legos didn't seem right either…aha! A perfect use for all those boxes of individually wrapped mooncakes we were recently given for the Chinese mid-Autumn festival!

Next it was time to conquer Jericho which, we reminded everyone, was the home of Rahab. She was sent up to the upper bunk with her "family" (half-a-dozen paper-towel rolls with faces) where she tied the red cord to the top of the ladder, and waited. In the meantime, we began our marching. When we did this three years ago, we had a smaller crowd. Today's was extra large & it was not working as well to get everyone out of the living room, out the balcony, in past Rahab's house on the edge of the city wall, & back out to the living room. So we didn't do the whole thirteen circumnavigations this time. Did two (sitting down and "sleeping" after each) & then said now we were at the seventh day…and the seventh trip around. Then when the people shouted and one of the priests "blew" a trumpet, our cued-in Rahab dropped a "wall" of legos off the top bunk with a satisfying crash! Our two spies then rescued her and her family, taking the paper towel rolls from her before helping her down the ladder. Rahab hammed it up very thoroughly, I love it! Only after she was safe did a bunch of kids run in with swords & then come back out and throw a bunch of tissue paper flames into the doorway. End of story.

The obvious game consisted of knocking down a small wall of wooden blocks (NOT mooncakes—you'd have to have a bowling ball to knock them over!) with a sponge "trumpet." Then we made our own little trumpets of toilet paper rolls, colored paper, & stickers for the valves.

Rahab and the two spies

2010-09-25T20:39:00.001+08:00

Back up to eight kids this week. It was a shorter story than usual. Three years ago we'd done Rahab and the fall of Jericho together; this time I decided to split it into two stories so we could have a little more fun with the fall of Jericho (for next week). Which meant that I was desperate to embellish this one, ha!

We started by introducing Moses and reiterating how they'd followed him around the wilderness until all the older generation had died off—so we all marched around the room, pushing the adults down into chairs one by one. Finally Moses (last adult standing) died too. And Joshua was introduced as his successor.

Joshua tells everyone they are going to enter the land in three days. This time no one dares to say no! But he still sends a couple of spies in first to check out their first big obstacle, the city of Jericho. It was a big city, so they needed to spend the night there. This woman named Rahab invited them into her home, i.e. one of the side bedrooms. (Decided not to point out that she was a prostitute.) Some people got wind of this and went to tell the king of Jericho, who decided to send a couple of soldiers to capture them. So Rahab sent the two spies up the ladder to the top bunk. I wasn't sure how Sally would manage the ladder but she did fine! (Wish I'd gotten a picture.) Then Rahab did her best to cover them with a sheet. It definitely was a good thing the soldiers didn't inspect the "roof" too closely, ha! Rahab sends them off to keep searching, then she makes her deal with the spies to rescue her family. We almost missed giving her the red cord, but then they managed to give it to her before they climbed back down & left. End of story. A lot of parents missed the action since it was taking place in the side room & they didn't come look, sigh.

Since the soldiers had been looking for spies who were covered up, our game involved looking for candy that was covered up by one of three overturned teacups that were moved around the table. Most of our kids kept very careful track & found the candy without hesitation. The two Wong girls have a little more trouble concentrating, & the younger girl was starting to get upset because she hates to try anything she doesn't know how to do. And if she won't, neither will her sister. Mr. Lei, who was leading the game, got the brilliant idea of asking Lai Ting (the younger sister) to do the mixing up of the cups, which she could handle, so she was happy. Then some other kids wanted to do that to. That was a fun twist to the game.

Craft time was pretty simple. Each child had a drawing of a house with a flat roof. They first were given two stickers of men lying down (flannelgraph figures scanned in, shrunk, and printed on label sheets) to put on the roof. At first one of the girls didn't quite catch which side of the house was up (no one ever sees one-story houses here!) and stuck a spy on the wall. When her mistake was pointed out, someone else immediately suggested he was climbing up to the roof. He then made it to the top safely. :-) When everyone's spies were in place, glue was smeared over the whole roof, spies and all, and shredded-tissue "grass" (or "flax," whatever flax looks like—I have no idea) was stuck on to completely cover the spies. Not elegant, but possible for everyone; I don't think anyone needed parental help this time!

Spying out the Land

2010-09-17T21:26:00.002+08:00

Extra low attendance this Sunday, due to a big Special Olympics event. Only four kids total—two mentally handicapped & two neurotypical. I don't know if this was good timing or not: We were being visited by a woman from Hong Kong who is planning on applying to the mission to be sent to take over at MLFF while we are in the US next year. So she didn't get the whole picture. Sigh.

Other than attendance, it was a good Sunday. We got our Israelites (kids) to the edge of the promised land, but could see that it was full of people (adults)! In fact, the people of the land were very tall (all the adults stood up on stools). So Moses sent a bunch of spies in to see just how good the land was. They all had to sneak quietly through the gauntlet of "giants" and head out to the balcony. While there, adults and children counted loudly to 40 (for the number of days they spied out the land) while the spies were collecting evidence of the land's fruitfulness. Then they brought it back carefully past the giants again.

Of course, in spite of this, everyone whined and complained again about how tall the people were, so they ended up being sentenced to wait another 40 years, for the next generation to enter.

For game time, we had a narrow aisle to pass through between two rows of stools, with two volunteers waving long cardboard tubes up and down for the kids to have to dodge. Our volunteers got a little too enthusiastic and one cardboard tube got destroyed! But no one was hurt and everyone had fun.

Our craft was making "giants" from marshmallows.

Playing Catch-up

2010-09-10T21:40:00.004+08:00

Apparently things were a bit slow at Merciful Love while we were on vacation. Well, I hope it made things easier for the leaders.

The first week (August 22) they finished up the last commandment. For the story, they used Naaman the leper, with Elisha's servant Gehazi being covetous of the gifts Naaman had offered for his healing (which Elisha had refused).

The game was about the perils of coveting too much. A pan was prepared with a paper towel spread over it and fastened in place with a rubber band. This was placed on a stool in the middle of the group. Then a bag of small stones of various sizes was passed around the group. Each person would place one stone on the paper towel in turn. The object was to see whose "coveting" of "just one more…" would tear or otherwise dislodge/destroy the prepared pan. Even the cheap paper towels we used are amazingly strong—this game works better if you dampen the paper slightly before beginning the game.

The opposite of covetousness is contentment, so the craft was cutting & pasting these "contented cats."

The next week was the review of the ten commandments. The instructions were for each family to receive one or two slips of paper listing one of the commandments and the story that had gone along with it. I really wanted the parents to try to lead their kids to act their stories out. Even if they didn't remember the story, to at least act something out that would give a clue to the commandment for others to guess which one was being portrayed. But the volunteer helper who came that week, an even bigger ham than myself, ended up capitulating and acting everything out for the others to guess. I do hope she involved some of the kids (I didn't want to ask, in case it came out too grumpy/controlling), since it would be the adults in general who would be doing the guessing.

For the game, the kids were to divide into two teams, each with the commandments written out on ten slips of paper. With our big poster board example displayed in the front, they were supposed to place them in the correct order on smaller "stone tablets," relay fashion, racing to see which team was fastest and/or most accurate.

I don't know how it went speedwise, but I did notice that neither group got them all in the right order!

Since they were now done learning the ten commandments, the kids made paper graduation hats for craft time.

Whining and complaining

2010-09-10T21:40:00.003+08:00

Yes, I know, this story belongs a lot earlier in the Exodus account. I doubt any of our people noticed though. :-) We had talked about manna when we talked about honoring the Sabbath. This time we talked about water and quail, with emphasis on the people's whining and complaining, not trusting that God would provide.

Included were:

The bitter water at Mara, with Moses throwing a tree branch (broken off of Zaccheus' sycamore, I love it when I can recycle props) into the crumpled-blue-tissue-paper water supply.

The water that came out of a rock (came out from behind the folded table that the rock was taped onto) when Moses struck it.

The flock of paper quails that came "flying" down among the Israelites when they were complaining about not having meat to eat.

We did craft ahead of game time this week. The craft was making slingshots such as perhaps the Israelites could have used to bring down the quail. Tied two craft sticks together in an x-shape, with the top part of the x being much larger, then strung a twisted rubber band across the top. Then of course we shot down (or tried to shoot down!) some stand-up quail targets using the slingshots, with small squares of cardboard, the same size/shape as our "manna wafers" but that could be folded slightly around the rubber band for gripping & shooting.

I was standing behind the targets and got hit a lot more often than the quail. I guess they wanted to eat "hippo meat" more than they wanted quail, ha!

Fourth anniversary

2010-08-20T12:02:00.001+08:00

We took another break this week before finishing the commandments. Besides it being our 4^th anniversary, we wanted to do something special to say good-bye to some of our special helpers who are leaving Macau this month. So we told two brief Bible stories, relating each one to a different "honoree."

First we introduced the prophet Elijah (Kevin Hui, who will enter Tokyo Christian University this fall). He was a famous prophet, probably most famous for the time he was going to sacrifice a bull on the altar (one of the kids wearing cow horns, stretched out on a board across several stools), and God Himself sent fire down from heaven to consume the burnt offering (girl in halo sprinkles tissue paper flames over the bull). God really loved Elijah, so much that when it didn't rain for three years and a lot of people didn't have enough to eat, he sent ravens to feed him (kids with black wings carrying crackers and a water bottle). Not only that—God loved him so much that when it came time for him to leave this world, he didn't have to die! Instead, God sent a fiery chariot, drawn by horses of fire, to carry him up to heaven!

I was quite proud of this fiery chariot—a leftover from the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, with tissue flames added. I was also very proud of our two horses. I never guessed Ka Ho would be willing to keep his horse mask on long enough to help carry Elijah away, much less long enough to pose for a picture afterward! Good job, Ka Ho!

Wound up this story by saying that Kevin was like Elijah. He had done some wonderful things in God's service, and now he was going to fly away from us in a "fiery chariot." We presented him with his farewell gift. Then it was time for the next story.

Unfortunately, our second honoree had to work! But her daughter came, so she was the main character in our story: Jesus. Jesus, of course, also did mighty miracles, and God loved Him very much. Although He had to die, that wasn't because God didn't love Him enough. Instead, it was because both Jesus and His heavenly Father loved us so much that He died in our place so that we could go to heaven. But then, of course, He rose from the dead and also went to heaven in a special way.

But when all this was about to happen, He wanted to make sure His followers knew just how much He really loved them, and how much He wanted them to love one another. So He and His followers ate dinner together (Jesus passes out crackers to all). While they were eating, Jesus got up & tied a towel around His (her) waist & got a basin of water…and began to wash everyone's feet! We didn't have Man Man actually do this for everyone; it could have weirded some folks out. We just said, when He got to Peter (a girl we'd gotten to okay this before we started), Peter said, no way! You are my Master, you can't wash my feet! And Jesus replies, but it is important that you let me do this, or else you won't really belong to me. So Peter lets him. And Jesus concludes, now I want You all to follow Me in this. You need to love one another as I have loved you, and be willing to serve one another humbly.

Our absent friend Ka Lin learned this lesson well from Jesus, we pointed out. Even though she didn't do a lot of upfront stuff in the time she was volunteering with us, she was always willing to do any little behind-the-scenes thing that needed doing. And we appreciate Man Man too, because it was hard for her, being shy and not used to being around mentally handicapped/autistic kids, to come to Merciful Love with her mother. But she was obedient, and fit in very well and ended up liking it very much! So we presented Man Man with gifts for herself and her mom.

Our game followed the foot-washing theme. The kids lined up in two teams, each on a row of stools, sitting shoulder to shoulder. While we didn't actually do any foot-washing, we did the before-and-after. Kid one had to take off kid two's shoes, then sit down while kid two took off kid three's shoes, etc., until the last kid took off kid one's shoes. Then the procedure was repeated only putting the shoes back on. It was great fun, and once again I was thrilled with how well everyone cooperated. It was a little unfair; the first team one because they had more kids wearing flip-flops as opposed to regular shoes! Something else interesting to note: a-Wai, from our very poorest family, never wears anything but flip-flops. He was supposed to take off the lace-up shoes of the person next to him and he had NO idea where to begin! But he hung in there while Bruce was helping him, hand-over-hand.

For craft time, we used a worksheet I found on the internet where the kids glued pieces of cereal ('food that the ravens brought Elijah") in the spaces provided and then added them up to see what the total amount was.

We had ordered in food, then, for a meal to celebrate the anniversary. During our Bible stories, A-Wai had been demonstrating a new odd behavior pattern—holding his face under the water faucet while scratching at it vigorously. Then coming back into the room with water dripping off his chin. Finally I told him that he either stop this, or he would have to leave before the meal. And he stopped! After the meal, however, he was right back in the bathroom doing it again. We hadn't cut the cake, though, so I told him that he would have to leave now, without cake. "But I won't do it again!" he said. (A complete sentence!!) However, I felt that it was more important to be consistent in penalizing his aberrant behavior just then, than to reward his grammatical excuses. And he & his mom had had a good meal.

I still feel bad about the whole thing though. I wouldn't do this with any other kid; they all have behavior problems of one kind or another. One big difference, however, is that their parents take charge of discipline themselves. A-Wai's mom is simply unable to do this. She was smiling as she left; it's possible that she appreciated someone taking him in hand. (And he didn't lose his temper! He just tried his excuse & then left!) I need to talk to her more about this some time, I know. But we left the next day for vacation. Will not be back until September. Praying for them, and the best way—and the most pleasing to God, which I still don't know whether this was--to help both a-Wai and his mom.

Pictures will also have to wait until September!

Commandment Nine

2010-08-13T20:20:00.002+08:00

Well, we more than made up for our low attendance of the past couple of weeks! "Just" eight kids, but three visitors from Hong Kong, who come once a month as volunteers, and six American visitors from our home church in Rapid City, South Dakota, here to teach at an English day camp.

Our story was about Naboth and his vineyard. (A plate of grapes Naboth stood over with his watering can.) The one that King Ahab wanted for himself but couldn't have because he at least did know last week's commandment about not stealing! So he went home and pouted. His wife Jezebel had no such conscience concerning God's commands, so she arranged for him to be hauled before the judge (visitors beware—you WILL be recruited!) and have some people accuse him of blaspheming God and the king. Then we all "stoned him to death" with wadded newspapers. When Jezebel told her husband it was all taken care of, he knew better than to ask too many questions. He just went & dumped out Naboth's grapes, put in his own bunch of broccoli (the Bible says he wanted it for a vegetable garden) and stood over it with his watering can. End of story.

For game time, we had a bunch of true or false statements stuck face down to the blackboard for the kids to take turns choosing. If it was true and they knew it, they got an M&M. If it was false and they knew it, they could win their candy if they corrected the statement. With enough coaching, everybody won. Even the boy who kept insisting that the statement "big sister Mary is a boy" was true. We used a lot of statements that had to be verified on the spot. Things that I didn't know for sure would be true or false when I wrote them, such as, "Ka Hei is wearing a red shirt," or "Sally is wearing earrings today." I was pretty much positive that I was not a boy though!

Thanks to Pauline Yeung for the craft idea. We said, Jezebel had those worthless fellows in the story tell lies about Naboth on purpose. But a lot of times, when we bear false witness about others, it's because we have not taken the time to look carefully at what the truth really is. You need to see things clearly before you talk about others—in other words, you need to have your glasses on!

Normally when we have visiting volunteers, we have them watch the kids in the side bedrooms while the adults have their Bible study in the living room. But we had too many visitors to squeeze them all into those rooms with the kids. Having the Americans join the Bible study would be too overwhelming, though, with the translation that would be needed. So, the perfect solution: the Hong Kong volunteers got to join the Bible study, while the Americans and I took the kids to a nearby park and bought them all something to drink. It was HOT, but that was okay.

While we were out there we also got all the kids to sign Kevin's birthday card, which we presented to him when we got back.

Commandment Eight

2010-08-07T21:41:00.002+08:00

Low attendance again, but it really didn't spoil the fun! To illustrate "thou shalt not steal," we used the story of Zaccheus. How coming to know Jesus made him decide not to steal anymore. I embroidered the story rather elaborately to draw it out & get more kids directly involved. Had him sitting at his tax table & someone coming up & asking how much tax they owed. He (she) consulted the local income tax table and determined it should be three pieces of silver. A sign was held up to this effect while Zaccheus put finger to his lips, and then said to the hapless taxpayer: "Four pieces of silver." We said, the people knew what was going on, but what could they do about it? If someone dared to call him on it (we had someone come do this), he could call out the soldiers & have them arrested (two kids with swords haul the person off), and they'd have to pay at least twice as much to get out of jail!

Well, then one day nobody is coming to pay taxes, how come? Hm, there's a big crowd over there—Jesus is in town! Zaccheus tries to push through the crowd to see him, but not only is he very short, no one likes him so all are determined to make it difficult. So he climbs this tree…

Jesus stops and asks to come to his home for dinner. So Zaccheus invites a bunch of his tax collector friends, and they all sit around a table eating crackers, with Zaccheus sitting next to Jesus. Then Zaccheus bangs on his water glass and gets up & announces he will not steal from anyone again, and in fact will pay back whatever he has stolen. Jesus congratulates him and blesses him.

On the theme of "stealing," we had each child go out of the room one at a time; each time we "stole" a different person from the group and had him/her go into yet another room. Then the player had to come out & guess who had been stolen. This was a new one, and fun. Craft was a work sheet titled "what has been stolen?" with various pairs of drawing with one part missing in the second drawing of each set—a wheel on a car, a spoon at a table setting, etc. Relatively easy, but it was about time for an easy craft, I think!

Commandment Seven

2010-07-31T21:06:00.002+08:00

For our story that clearly shows the folly of committing adultery, we used David and Bathsheba. David is on the roof & sees this beautiful woman next door taking a bath (in a large plastic storage bin). Should he keep looking? NO! But what does he do? He whips out a pair of binoculars (two toilet paper rolls taped together) for a closer look. He really wants to know who she is so he calls a servant up & gives him the binoculars. Servant says it's Uriah's wife & he is dispatched to go bring her. She gets out of the "tub" and puts on a bathrobe (over her clothing, of course!) & comes to David. They sit on the recliner together and are briefly covered with a blanket. Bathsheba was one of our neurotypical girls, & was acting very flirtatious in the recliner. Our autistic David was totally oblivious to what was supposed to be going on. Just as well!

Bathsheba goes home, but soon sends a servant to tell David she is pregnant. Our servant, Sally, doesn't speak much, so I told her she could just gesture to describe a large tummy. But Mrs. Chu really wants to encourage her to talk more (which is good) so she was trying to insist she say "she's having a baby." But for some reason this struck Sally so funny she couldn't get a word out. Every time she opened her mouth she would start shaking with silent laughter. Occasionally she would just make the gesture. It was very cute and funny to watch! Eventually we decided she'd communicated well enough, so David sends for Uriah to "talk about how the fighting is going," (looking at a map together). Then David tells him to go home but instead he sits on the couch with the servant under a blanket. David then has to go with plan B, which is to send a letter by the hand of poor Uriah himself, to Joab to tell him to arrange Uriah's death.

This taken care of, David plays the benefactor: oh, his loyal soldier is dead and left a pregnant widow—he will take care of her by marrying her! (they march down the room to the wedding march) He may think he's gotten away with this, but soon Nathan the prophet comes & tells him he's going to be punished by having people steal his wives, and there will always be killing among his descendants. He immediately admits his sin, so at least is spared being put to death himself. End of story.

Our game was three-legged racing to illustrate the truth that a married couple is meant to walk through life together. I had brought an old leg-warmer to use as a simple way to join the legs of each pair. Someone asked, are you sure it's going to be big enough for two people's legs? I said I was sure, because I had checked by putting it around both of my "sturdy" calves the previous evening—and then of course the phone rang…(true story)!

For craft, following the wedding theme, each child had a cartoon couple on which to stick various parts of fancy wedding outfits, in the correct order. I was surprised at all the neckless couples we ended up with—I thought the kids had done better with this craft three years ago. Maybe the parents helped more the first time? It was fun for everyone though.

Commandment Six

2010-07-21T21:03:00.001+08:00

An exhausting morning at Merciful Love! We had eleven kids, & eleven adults. Pretty crowded, but we still fit!

For our story, we had a condensed & slightly edited version of II Samuel 2 & 3. First we introduced Israel's first king, Saul. But because he was not loyal to God, God chose someone else to take his place, David. But because David remembered the commandment "thou shalt not kill," he was willing to wait for God's time to become king. When Saul finally died, though, some people felt that his son Ishbosheth should be the new king. One country, two kings—what happens? War! So each king chose a general from among the other kids—Joab for David, Abner for Ishbosheth.

Next we introduced Joab's little brother Asahel who wasn't very skilled in warfare but was very brave and very fast. He starts chasing Abner, who also would rather not kill such an innocent, and tries to persuade him to go chase somebody else. But Asahel doesn't listen, he catches up to Abner, & gets killed.

War drags on for a while, and finally (here's my major editing job) Ishbosheth gets impatient and accuses Abner of being lazy and useless. Abner takes offense and defects to David. Of course then Ishbosheth is in big trouble & he dies before too long. So now there's just one king, and peace in the land. Everybody's happy except—whom? Joab, of course. Not only is his little brother dead, but he has to be partners with the guy who killed him! So under the guise of "discussing business," he arranges a private chat with Abner, and kills him.

When David hears, he is angry, and explains to Joab that while killing in war is one thing, killing someone from sheer jealously & dislike is quite another. Joab "gets away with murder" by protesting that Abner was too dangerous a potential traitor. But David demonstrates that he did not condone the murder by personally arranging for Abner's burial (his being covered with a blanket, that is) and commanding everyone in the room to cry for him.

Game time: we heard in the story that in war there usually has to be killing, but wouldn't it be nice to have battles where people didn't have to die? So we battled for the championship of pillow-fighting on a low balance beam. Whoever fell off first was the loser in a double-elimination tournament, which we never quite finished with all those kids, but everyone got at least two turns. One reason we didn't finish was that everyone's balance was so good! It was really hard to get anyone to fall off the beam! In some of the contests, I had to resort to tickling (both kids at once) to speed up the process!

Craft time was horrendous. The idea was good; we said that the opposite of killing was healing, & set out to make stethoscopes out of drinking straws & a bottle cap. The problem was, you had to string this all together by getting the yarn through these drinking straws. I had done one at home and it went very easily. However, I had used the heaviest large-eyed needle in my collection, and it would fall through the straw easily, even when, as with the first straw, there were two strands of yarn to draw through. Most of the needles I had were much lighter, and it was very difficult. Either we needed heavier needles, or lighter string, which I certainly could have managed had I realized the problem. Once again, I was humbly amazed at how accepting everyone was of the mess-up. I was by far the most frustrated person of the entire group!

Fifth commandment, and a welcome break

2010-07-11T20:54:00.002+08:00

It was good to be back with the Merciful Love crowd this Sunday! I was still feeling pretty wiped out from all the drama of Bruce's hospitalization. So I was very thankful to be able to just dump the responsibility for the story in Kevin's capable lap. He'd led a story on the Prodigal Son a couple of years ago, and that is the story of choice for the theme of "Honor Your Father and Mother." Doesn't Ka Ho look the part of the young man living high on the hog on his father's money?

Our game was "pass the hats"—one "parent's hat" and one "child's hat" were passed around the circle as music played. When it stopped, whoever was the "child" had to kneel and pur a cup of tea for the "parent." The crowd was a little too big so that there were a lot of repeats before some of the kids got one chance to be in the game. But we hadn't wanted to restrict it to just the kids, because it's part of the fun when some adult has to reverse the roles and kneel before a child to honor them with this tea ceremony.

When we'd done this commandment before, it happened to fall on Father's Day, so the craft was obvious. However, it didn't work out that way this year, so we needed something different. One thing that we wanted to bring out in the discussion on the story was that neither of the two sons in the parable really believed in or appreciated the depth of their father's love for them. So we honored the parents' love by making them Olympic style gold medals (chocolate) with stickers on the back reading 愛心獎 (love award), and then had a little ceremony awarding them to the parents/caregivers. Mrs. Wong won two gold medals!

I really enjoyed leading the Bible study time. We talked about how bad they would feel if their children didn't believe they loved them, or didn't want a real relationship with them but only wanted what they could get out of them. We then pointed out how Jesus had actually told this parable to help us get to know our heavenly Father—and do you suppose He feels bad when we don't want to have a love relationship with him? No one gave me a verbal answer, but everyone looked a bit stunned at the thought. A good concept for them to chew on during the coming week!

This morning Bruce was back with us. He managed the four flights of stairs just fine with his crutches! We didn't have a regular program; again a team of three helpers from a church in Hong Kong watched the kids (along with Bruce who isn't up to a lot of running around in the heat yet), and the rest of the adults went to an outdoor café in a nearby park for some drinks and conversation.

Trying to continue on the theme we sort of began last week, my plan was to discuss how to develop a heart relationship with our heavenly Father. I was surprised to find how many didn't seem to find it a difficult concept to pour out their hearts to God (Psalm 62:8). Just in case their words were more confident than their practice, however, I did go ahead and pass out little cards with some suggestions for getting started, such as, "Heavenly Father, I feel sad about…I don't know what to do about…I am fearful of…I don't understand…"etc.

Another thing that came out during the discussion, which we started by asking, "to whom do you turn when you need to share your heart with someone?" was how much these parents are able to trust and share freely with one another. This kind of openness is not terribly common in the Chinese church, and it's truly a blessing!

Commandment Four

2010-07-03T22:39:00.001+08:00

As I mentioned last week, I couldn't be there for this past Sunday's service, so have no specific highlights to share. Just the general outline, for posterity's sake:

The story we chose to illustrate proper Sabbath-keeping was the gathering of manna in the wilderness. Moses was introduced, and then all the rest of the kids shouldered their "baggage" and followed him around the room. The point was made that this was desert country without enough food to eat. So everyone starts giving Moses a hard time & he prays to God for help. God promises there will be food in the morning. Moses conveys this to the people, and they all go into the side bedrooms and crowd onto the beds to "sleep". Meanwhile the leader scatters a bunch of little foam squares over the floor in the living room. The kids "wake up" the next day & come out & gather it. What does it taste like? Wafer cookie squares passed out to everyone.

What about tomorrow? the people want to know. Go to bed and see! So they all go to bed. The next "morning," they find twice as many squares to gather. More wafers to eat.

Someone asks if this will happen every day. Moses says, almost every day, but did you notice there was twice as much today as yesterday? That is because tomorrow is the Sabbath, when we are not supposed to do any work, including gathering food. You have enough for tomorrow, so you can enjoy sleeping in!

Everybody goes back to bed. But then a couple of kids get up before the others and go out looking for manna. Of course they don't find any. Moses scolds them and says they need to learn to trust God to take care of them, and enjoy their rest. God knows their need for food, and He also knows their need for rest, which is why He created the Sabbath. They eat some more wafers and agree that from now on they will trust God & not just themselves.

Craft came before game time for this lesson. Each child received a box drink (sweetened soy milk, a favorite of all) plus a wrapped rectangle of pressed seaweed (another favorite treat—of theirs, not mine!), and wrapped them together in gift wrap, then labeled it with their own names. Then these were placed aside.

For the game, there were six cooperative tasks involving the stack of stools we use as extra seating: line up ten stools in a row, arrange them in a circle, turn them upside down, flip them back over and stack them by two's, separate them again & wipe them down with cloths, and finally, stack them in one pile and store them in the storeroom. After each task, they were to sit down and pretend to sleep, signifying six days of work. The responsibility after waking up on the seventh day was enjoy God's gift of leisure by opening their gift-wrapped packages and eating and drinking! Like I said, I wasn't there, but I would guess that this was a popular game, especially the ending!

I will be there for the next commandment, hooray! Bruce is safely out of the hospital; this time the hip seems to be holding together nicely, thank the Lord!

Commandment Three

2010-06-24T17:19:00.001+08:00

Time for a blog update. It will be sketchy, as I wasn't there. My husband had hip replacement surgery on Friday June 18^th over in Hong Kong so I have been there (here) with him.

We used the story of Job to illustrate this commandment about not using the Lord's name inappropriately. Highlights would be "Satan" in his/her red mask bragging about how many people he has led astray, and "God" in his/her halo pointing out righteous Job. So then of course the trials begin—pictures of his flocks & herds & children are systematically carried away by armed raiders, or destroyed. Finally Job ends up with sores (bandaids) all over his arms & legs. (Handy that this was summer; more flesh exposed!). Then his friends come and lay into him about how he must be a great sinner or God would never treat him like this.

Eventually God appears and scolds the friends for using His name wrongly, by saying untrue things about His dealings with us. Job receives new flocks & herds & children.

For the game we had little clip art pictures of donkeys, camels, oxen and sheep in various numbers, masking-taped face-down on plastic blocks & evenly distributed into two plastic bags. Players divided into two teams, each with a "Job". The other players, relay-style, would take a block from the bag & run it to Job, where they would peel off the tape to find the animal, and make a check next to that category. First team to restore at least one of all four kinds of animal to Job was the winner. This wasn't original; I found it on a website somewhere & if I could remember where I would give it credit. Sorry!

Craft was obvious. Job's friends did a lousy job at being a comfort to him when he was sick. So the kids practiced a much better way to behave toward sick friends—creating get-well cards. They made them for my husband! Kevin, who has been staying at our home to cat-sit, collected them to bring back & have there to surprise Bruce when he got back home.

But I ended up bringing them here to the hospital instead. I rushed home to Macau yesterday (Wednesday) to arrange things for this Sunday, among other errands, and then rushed back to Hong Kong this morning to be here for Bruce's second surgery, since his too-thin thigh bone fractured sometime post-op. So I won't be at Merciful Love for the next commandment either…

Commandment Two

2010-06-16T21:19:00.002+08:00

For our story about not worshipping idols, we chose the account of Daniel's three friends and the fiery furnace. Started out by re-introducing King Josiah from last week's story & recalled that God was not going to punish Judah until after he died. So now—he's died. (Gets plonked back onto chair.) God indeed punished the people with exile to Babylon. (Two guys with swords escort everyone around the room.)

The king of Babylon wasn't a humble guy like Josiah. In fact, he was so proud, he didn't want to be just respected, he wanted to be worshipped! (This is my "free" version of the Bible story, which does not actually say what the image was that the people were supposed to worship. I'm just guessing it was likely an image of the king himself.) So we dressed a second child in the same purple-tissue-paper robe and gold-paper crown as the king, and had a couple of adults lift her onto a stool. (We're short of boys these days!)

During the announcement of the "rules of worship" we played snippets of each type of musical instrument we mentioned, from a little toy keyboard. Of course then the three friends didn't bow to the idol when the bad guys played the music when the friends were near the statue. So they got thrown into the "furnace" which was one of our side bedrooms, with paper flames taped along the sides.

When the king peeked into the furnace and saw something he didn't expect, we had him tell everyone to come look. Which gave the pre-cued volunteer the chance to slip into the "furnace" from the back via the connecting bedroom—picking up a halo for himself along the way. :-)

When the king called the friends to come out, he had to sniff at them all to see if they smelled like smoke. (They didn't.)

Again, a slight poetic re-write: we ended the story with the king declaring that Yahweh was clearly the right God to worship, so we wouldn't be needing that statue anymore (pull it down).

Although unlike idols, God is invisible, He still showed His power over the flames. Just like an invisible puff of air can blow out a candle flame, right? Game time had everyone blowing up (with or without help) balloons and then aiming them at candles to try and blow them out. Most of the kids got the right idea about pointing the balloon in the right direction and letting the air out, but it was harder to convince them that they needed to let it out fast. The "slow leak" stuff didn't do the job! It was fun trying though!

For a craft we made what one of the kids called "fire popsicles." (Popsicles translate as snow sticks; so these were then "fire sticks"). Cut-down juice-boxes wrapped with "flame" paper; a hole on the bottom letting you slide a popsicle stick up & down with three cutout boys glued to the end, going in & out of the furnace. A lot of work to prepare the materials (drank a lot of juice last week!), but easy to assemble on the day & everyone liked them.

Commandment One

2010-06-07T16:26:00.002+08:00

First thing to do was to have one of the kids paste the first commandment up on the big "tablets" at the front of the room. Only as I was having him read it out did I realize that I had made a typo & written 耶和話 for耶和華. Oops!

We told the story of King Josiah and the discovery of the scroll in the temple that made him realize how far the nation had gone away from God, and the danger of having done so. That morning I had put several drawings of altars or "totem poles" up on the walls, which were used during the story to illustrate how the land was filled with worship of false gods. So at the end the kids had to take them all down and tear them up.

Our game followed the theme of "destruction"—a relay race with two stacks of fairly simple puzzles that had to be completely taken apart, no pieces still stuck together, before the next person in line could go. Should have been a good game but between two adults needed to receive the puzzle pieces into separate bags (so we wouldn't have to sort them all out at the end), and one to keep the kids waiting in line instead of running up & surrounding the players as they like to do, no one was watching the ends of the lines. So somehow they didn't come out even & we never did figure out who had been left out of the race. Sigh.

We made little "phylacteries" for craft time which worked great three years ago, but this time I used the wrong kind of paper, I guess; the glue just didn't want to stick it together well enough. The kids had these flapping-open boxes bobbing on their foreheads…I am not batting 1.000 on crafts these days!!

Receiving the Law on Mount Sinai

2010-06-04T21:04:00.002+08:00

We started our story with a little question-and-answer time. We had seen how God had taken care of the Israelites—besides God, who takes care of YOU? (mom & dad) So, what should you do to show them how thankful you are? (be obedient) What are some things you should do to be an obedient child? Here each one had to come up with an example, or, for the non-verbal kids, had to nod agreement to a possible suggestion. Fun to get the kids of all types involved & thinking!

Next question: is it important to obey God, too? (yes) What should we do to be obedient? The good thing is, He tells us through His Word, and in today's story we will see how He first told His people about His law.

Okay, so the Israelites have been traveling for some time now (everybody gets up & follows the designated Moses once around the room) and are now in the Sinai wilderness. There is a tall mountain there (a tall, double-sided stepladder), called Mt. Sinai. God has told Moses He is going to come down to meet him on the mountain. Since God is coming so near, everyone had to be clean & nicely dressed & ready to greet him. So first, everyone had to line up & each received a washcloth to dip in a basin of water, to wash their faces. Then all the boys got neckties to wear, and all the girls got "corsages" (more like boutonnieres)—rather than fussing with pins for those, I used masking tape which worked fine & was much quicker & safer!

A white sheet was then held hovering over the ladder by a couple of tall helpers. "God" shook the ladder & blew a horn & climbed up the backside, then called for Moses to come up. He did & then we had to all count to 40, since he was up there that many days & nights. Then he came down holding a clay tablet bearing the "ten commandments" (actually just the Roman numerals I-X). Moses announced to the people that next week, we would start studying those commandments one at a time.

For game time, everyone had to sit down while we blu-tacked the numbers 1-10 in random order on the walls & floor. Numbers were then drawn one at a time. For the first number, everyone was in the race to find & grab the right card. Once any person had a card, however, he/she could not go for another until everyone had "won" one. It went well. A key was making everyone sit back down between each number.

Our craft was making clay tablets like the one Moses had brought down from the mountain. We had pre-cut "double tablet" shapes. Everyone got a lump of quick-drying clay to roll out to smoothly cover the shapes, using wooden or plastic dowels (I had some of each on hand; just enough!). Then they were to "carve" the numbers 1-10 into the clay.

When I was going over this with the day's leader, she said she really wasn't familiar with Roman numerals. We foreigners think "ten commandments" and automatically think Roman numerals but hey, you know what? I bet that even if they were numbered on those original tablets, it wasn't in Roman numerals! So we went "indigenous" and used the Chinese numerals: 一﹐二﹐三﹐四﹐五﹐六﹐七﹐八﹐九﹐十﹗Sorry no photos though; the numbers didn't photograph well in the white clay.

I went back & tried again to take a picture; here we go:

I heard the Bible study generated some good discussion. One interesting point being that God obviously wanted to communicate with His people, which their Chinese gods do not. (All religions are NOT just the same!)

Crossing the Red Sea

2010-05-28T21:37:00.006+08:00

Today's story was pretty short—but that was okay because craft time was loooong.

We got all the kids kitted out with their "luggage" (carrier bags with towels inside) and they walked around the room following "God" (a volunteer in a halo), who held aloft a pillar of cloud for the first round (daytime) and a pillar of fire for the second (nighttime). Then we had them "camp" by the shore of the Red Sea, which was two blue-patterned sheets on the floor. Our adult "Egyptians," decided to chase after the trapped Israelites, so God told Moses to lift up his rod. He did so & two other volunteers lifted up the sheets to the right and to the left. All the kids walked through to the other side. Then the Egyptians came along, Moses put up his rod again, and they got the sheets draped over them. Much rejoicing by the Israelites, end of story.

For game time, paper war chariots were fastened to the shower curtain in the bathroom. Kids took turns "drowning the Egyptians" with squirt guns.

Craft time was a somewhat complicated art project depicting the parting of the sea.

Each of the steps was fairly simple; there were just a lot of them. One of the last steps was to punch holes along each side of the two layers of the project to sew them together. That's what the directions in the craft book said. When I translated them for the leader, I suggested it would be better to pass the layers out pre-punched. But then when I did the sample myself, I discovered that I had to glue some things on over some of the holes. So I told the leader to ignore my translation. We didn't have enough hole punchers for everyone, but since everyone wasn't going to be ready at exactly the same time, they could just go to a couple of designated helpers to get the holes punched when needed. Well. I think that would have worked brilliantly if we'd had good old-fashioned scissor-style hole punchers. Instead I had these stapler-style things that just didn't have wide enough openings to get through all the two layers once we'd added the sand and the sea. It was very awkward. One of the parents figured out you could just sew it together without holes if you pushed the (blunt) needle hard enough, so that's basically what we did. What thrilled me so much about all this was that NO ONE made any whiny remarks about how this should have been thought through better. The attitude of every single person there was, "okay, let's work together and figure this out."

I LOVE MY CHURCH!

Ten Plagues—a Double-Header

2010-05-16T21:19:00.002+08:00

Between having been sick, and adding four new patients to my physical therapy schedule, I never did get around to updating this last week! So we'll cover two sessions with this entry. Conveniently, last Sunday was the first nine plagues of Egypt, and this morning we had the Passover.

We greatly condensed the story of the plagues. Had Moses and Aaron go straight to Pharaoh & ask that the people be let go. When Pharaoh said no, Aaron threw down his rod & it "became" a snake. Then three kids in fancy hats threw down their newspaper rods & they became small snakes which got "eaten up" by Aaron's. This was insufficient to impress Pharaoh. We skipped the bricks-without-straw part of the story and went straight into the list of plagues that were supposed to soften Pharaoh's heart (but, of course, they didn't):

1. water into blood—a small jar of "ripened" beef blood for everyone to smell—eeuuww!!

2. frogs—everyone had to get down & hop

3. fleas—everyone scratched

4. flies—one of the kids given a flyswatter to swat imaginary flies. (Had to borrow this from a friend who'd brought hers with her from the US. Couldn't find them anywhere here! Strange. It's not like we have no flies (though, granted, not as many as in Minnesota!)

5. animal sickness—had a couple of kids imitate cows, sheep & pigs, then on cue, fall over & die

6. boils/sores—everyone got bandaids

7. thunder & hail—everyone crowded for cover under three umbrellas

8. grasshoppers—gave brooms to a couple of kids to try to sweep out the invisible invaders

9. darkness—covered all the kids' eyes for a count of three (days)

That week's game involved trying to get all the grasshoppers and/or frogs out of your house—by throwing them into the opposing team's house! Kids divided into teams on opposite sides of a tape line, & bags of a few dozen newspaper wads were dumped on each side. The game was to keep picking up & throwing the things over to the other side until time was up; the winning team had the most pest-free house.

For a craft we made these darling grasshoppers out of clothespins. Very simple & a lot of fun, but I can't post a picture until I take my memory card in to the photo shop; something went flooey with it today & it doesn't fit in my computer…

So then this morning we finished with plague #10, the death of the firstborn. Started by distributing bits of jewelry to all the adults {"Egyptians"}. Then briefly reviewed the previous plagues. Since Pharaoh was still holding out, Moses warned him that this plague was going to be more horrible than any of the rest, with all first-born being killed. But in spite of all other plague warnings coming true, Pharaoh wasn't going to take this seriously.

But God did! He instructed the Israelite families to take a lamb (a small water bottle with a sheep's face on the lid and covered with cotton balls), slaughter it (saw at the neck with a plastic knife) and catch its "blood" (ketchup) in a bowl. We'd made two doors, with frames, out of brown poster paper. Different kids then dipped some plastic flowers into the ketchup and painted along the top and sides of the doors. I love this visual!

The next instruction was about not leavening their bread—a fluffy bread roll was a reject, saltine crackers were displayed as acceptable. The kids then had to go "plunder the Egyptians" by collecting the jewelry from the adults and placing it in their prepared carrier bags. Then they had to stand, with their bags over their shoulders (but no staves; I didn't manage/bother to have enough for everyone), and eat their crackers. While they were doing this, the "angel of the Lord," (a parent in a halo), walked around the room looking at the six(!) wooden doors and our two paper doors. None of the wooden doors had blood on them, of course, so they got a thumbs-down from the angel, while the paper doors with their markings got thumbs-up.

Then the wailing started by the Egyptians, and Pharaoh yelled at the Israelites to get out of there NOW. So they all trooped to the end of the room, end of story!

I thought the game was going to be simple but for some reason it wasn't. The kids sat in a circle & when music started, were supposed to pass cards around the circle, so that each child would always have a card. Some kids were collecting cards & not passing them on; one boy started standing up and throwing his cards to the four winds. I interrupted the leader at this point with my trademark yell and told the kids that if they weren't going to listen and play according to the rules, we were not going to play any games. My, it got quiet! And the game went much more smoothly after that! When the music stopped, a number tile was drawn from a bag; whichever child had that number sticker on his/her shirt would have his/her card checked. If it was a white one (no blood), the child "died" and was out of the game; if it was a red card (blood), the child got a cracker. We were going to play until the white cards were all gone, but with the confusion at first it was taking too long, so we quit before everyone died who was eligible. :-)

Craft time went well. We did smaller versions of our water-bottle sheep, using bubble-stuff jars (I've got enough bubble solution in some other containers at work now to blow bubbles until I retire, I think!)

With most of our core group folks gone for World Vision's Famine Day, and Bruce preaching elsewhere, I got to lead the adult Bible study. I really enjoyed preparing it. Application verses were from I Cor. 5:6-8 about cleansing yourself from the leaven of sin because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. It struck me that, if the children of Israel had not killed their lamb & come under the protection of its blood, they would have died. If they had gone with leavening their bread and wanted to wait around for it to rise, they wouldn't have been killed by the destroying angel, but they might have gotten left behind in Egypt and have been stuck being slaves for the rest of their lives. Just so, in the Christian life, we are saved from eternal death by the blood of Christ, our Passover lamb, but we need to get rid of the sin in our lives (also with His help, I would like to add!) in order to not live as slaves to it.

I don't know that any of the parents thought this was quite as cool as I did, but at least we got to take note that there are these two sides to the Christian life. ("What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" –Rom. 6:15)

God’s call to Moses

2010-05-08T20:37:00.002+08:00

Between spending this week working at gathering all the props for this Sunday's story, and writing the next week's story to give to the leader, I'm having trouble remembering clearly how last Sunday went!

Let's see. The story started with an introduction of various areas in which Moses would have received a good education as the son of the princess. We had prepared a notebook & pen (reading & writing), a calculator (mathematics), a scroll (law/administration) and a sword (warfare). The idea was to have different kids identify what props went with what areas of education. The leader just went through it with "Moses," however, and rather quietly, so I'm not sure anyone else knew what was going on at that point. Oops. Things got better after that!

Moses had to kneel and propose to an Egyptian girl who wanted nothing to do with him. To show one reason he identified with his native people. He was out walking and saw some of his people working in the fields—one pushing a broom as a plow, the other with a pole over her shoulder with a peanut-butter-jar "water bucket" at each end. An Egyptian took a whip to them; Moses "killed" her and covered her with a blanket. The next day, the same two workers started fighting & Moses stepped in to break them up. They accused him of wanting to kill them too. He was frightened and fled Egypt for Midian. Became a shepherd (picture of flock of sheep on the wall).

Then he saw the burning bush (also a picture on the wall) & heard God speaking to him. Took off his shoes & knelt. Made excuses for not wanting to go to Egypt, which "God" answered in various ways including having him throw down his broom-handle staff which was quickly exchanged for a snake made of a rolled-up towel. Finally God got tired of his excuses and just ordered him to go, so he took off. End of story.

We played "snake" for our game. Tied the whole bunch (ten kids) together with plastic string, making figure-eights between each of them, and then had them walk through a simple obstacle course made of stools and folded tables. Had a hiccup or two when one of the girls wanted to sit on a stool, but eventually they made it through & back, with much hilarity!

We made burning-bush pictures for our craft. Our newest girl, Sally, really likes craft time!

I had been praying about how aggressively I should pursue our "problem" boy who hadn't come in over a month. And then one day last week ran into him & his mom on the street near our home, which is nowhere near where they live. So I took that God-presented opportunity to invite them to return, and they did come back this Sunday. Somewhat late, but early enough to participate in the game & craft. He is drooling more than ever, though was a bit better about being willing to use a towel to wipe his face rather than other surfaces. Thankful for that!

Birth of Moses

2010-05-01T21:28:00.002+08:00

Going back to where we left the descendants of Israel in Egypt, we began by explaining how things had changed for them. As relatives of Joseph they had enjoyed a somewhat privileged position; now, they were slaves. To illustrate this we had an "Egyptian" recline in the lazy-boy, while one child fanned her with this huge wall fan (if we'd opened it all the way it would have taken two kids to fan the girl!), and another knelt to present her a glass of water on a tray. Of course, worse was yet to come; Pharaoh stood and read out the decree that girl babies could live and boy babies would be thrown into the Nile. We passed out paper cutouts of boy & girl babies to all the girls & women, then had a "soldier" with a sword come and inspect them all. He gave the girl babies back but the boys got ripped in half and thrown onto our blue tissue paper Nile. (I was careful not to give boy babies to our most not-want-to-let-go-of-anything girl, or our new visitor!)

Next we introduced a certain mother, her son Aaron, her daughter Miriam, and her new baby (doll) that she was very reluctant to throw in the Nile. She got a basket, lined it not with pitch (too messy!) but a plastic tablecloth, then towels to wrap the baby in. She put the basket in the "Nile" and set Miriam to stand guard. Along comes the princess who rescues the baby. Quick-witted Miriam suggests finding a wet-nurse & comes back with mom. The princess gives her a bag of coins and she promises happily to keep him until he is weaned.

Our very popular game involved fishing "precious things" out of water. We played hot-potato with the baby doll & whoever ended up with it had a go at fishing bobbing malted-milk balls out of a bottle of water with a 3-cm. neck, using chopsticks. Took a little patience, but if our kids are motivated by anything, it's chocolate! (What can I say? Me too!)

For our craft we folded little paper "Easter baskets" and tucked in our little cardboard clipart babies with pocket tissues. Minor emergency when more kids wanted purple paper than I had prepared; fortunately I found just enough extra pieces to dry up the tears!

Finishing up with the Ascension

2010-04-24T19:59:00.002+08:00

In preparation for the visual aid at the end of the story, I had placed our cardboard Jesus doll on the wall under the transom window (with the string strategically covered by an extra cloud…I know, I should have a picture but forgot the camera that day…). So as we began, I asked, okay, so we know that Jesus died, and rose from the dead, and where is he now? Lai Wun yelped and pointed at the doll on the wall! I was impressed; I wouldn't have guessed she would remember the association from seeing this doll used as Jesus only once, three weeks previously!

I mixed in a lot of Jesus' upper room discourse as His farewell speech, since we hadn't touched on it before and we needed more material anyway! We talked about how having the Holy Spirit was even better than having Jesus with us if we're supposed to go around preaching the gospel to the whole world. Just like a glass of water in "Jerusalem" wouldn't help quench your thirst if you were at "the ends of the earth" (the other side of the room), but if you drank it, as our volunteer did, and then went to the ends of the earth, it would still be inside you! (Only, of course, the Holy Spirit lasts longer than a glass of water.)

Sure, they'd have the Holy Spirit, but they would still miss Jesus! Would they ever see Him again? Oh yes, He was going to prepare a place for each of them in His Father's heavenly home. We put up this picture of a "golden city" and had the kids find their places behind the various windows. They really liked that!!

When our Jesus was supposed to ascend, we had him disappear into the storeroom and pull the string attached to the Jesus doll so that it rose into the "clouds." But then we also enjoyed the extra visualization of going out to the street and watching a helium balloon ascend to the skies.

Kevin led the game, which I had originally described as just a "silly wedding shower type game," relating to the truth of Jesus coming back for us like a bridegroom coming for His bride. But Kevin took it further—the paper plates we balanced on our heads were to help the bride walk elegantly tall, while the oranges between our knees were to practice taking tiny steps for the narrow skirt of a traditional red wedding gown. Thanks, Kevin, that was so great!!

He also led the craft, which was ascension pictures—the little Jesus figures were on a piece of string that could pull them up behind a cloud that was attached to the paper with thick double-sided tape so that there was space behind it. Oops; should have taken a picture of those too but at least they are still at the church so I can do a make-up later…

Good little Bible study time with the girls. During the prayer time, one girl asked that Jesus would help her behave better. Once again, I was impressed; most of our adults are still thinking in terms of asking God to change their problem situations more than to change them personally. Another girl asked prayer for her upcoming ordeal of being tested on the recorder when she still hadn't figured out how to play some of the notes in the required song. Well, I've been playing recorder since I was just her age (that is, a loooong time!), so I ended up going over for a visit that evening and working on the song with her. Thank You, Jesus for a quick and enjoyable answer to that prayer!

Term break

2010-04-15T20:19:00.001+08:00

Actually our "Life of Jesus" term isn't officially over yet. But we had some volunteers who wanted to come this Sunday & weren't available on the 18^th, so we'll finish up then.

Once before we had had a group of volunteers take the kids to a local park, leaving the adults to have some uninterrupted conversation time. But we had more kids this time, and fewer volunteers, plus it was slightly drizzly. So the parents went off to the café in the park to drink tea and talk, while the volunteers entertained the kids back at the church!

We divided up the kids into two groups as well. The volunteers stayed with the mentally handicapped kids while I took the three neurotypical girls (ages 10, 10 & 8) into the office to inaugurate our "kids' discipleship group." We talked a little about the passage where Jesus rebukes those who wanted to keep the children away from Him. Our application being that children can be His disciples too, and it would be good to use this time to discuss the day's Bible story and pray for one another like the adults do.

I'd been a little concerned that they would resent losing their free play time, but they like to talk at least as they like to play, so this little group has its appeal too! I passed out identical little notebooks with attached pens, so that we could record prayer requests and pray for each other. Each then prayed for the person on their left.

I look forward to seeing how this develops, even though it means one more meeting I need to prepare for each week.

This morning I had Bible study with the mother of two mentally handicapped girls. The younger girl, Lai Ting, is 15 and quite articulate. Mom would like her to be allowed to join the girls' group and be encouraged to think about how to apply the Bible study. She couldn't do the writing, but other than that I can imagine she would be able to be an active participant. Now I just pray that the other girls will genuinely welcome her!!

Resurrection Sunday

2010-04-09T21:10:00.002+08:00

Our story: after reviewing what happened the previous week, while all the "frightened disciples" were huddling together, the "two bravest" (girls, of course!) decided to go visit the tomb and try to anoint Jesus' body. Just as they were realizing it was going to be hard to get into the tomb, there was a huge earthquake (lots of banging of pots) and the stone was rolled away (the door to the office opened). As the girls arrived at the tomb, out came two angels who told them the good news. They then rushed back to tell everyone else, and the whole crowd came to look at the empty grave wrappings on the bench. They didn't know what to make of it though. They all went back home except Mary, who did a good job of looking dejected and then getting all excited when Jesus came and revealed Himself to her. She then went back and told everyone she'd seen Him, but they didn't believe her. But that night, as everyone was sitting around eating (wafer cookies), who showed up but Jesus! They were afraid He might be a ghost, so they gave Him a cookie to eat which proved He wasn't. So they all rejoiced!

When we think of Easter, we think Easter eggs, right? Because they're round and hard like the stone guarding the mouth of the tomb, but when they're opened up, there is life inside! So the game needed to be played with eggs. I'd colored up a dozen & we did a relay delivering them from one bowl to another with spoons. Not original, but fun for all.

Butterflies are also a symbol of new life because of the caterpillar being "entombed" in a cocoon and emerging with a new body. I found these very clever origami butterflies at Tammy Yee's origami website.

During the free time, one of the girls dropped a bunch of legos on the ground & I took the opportunity to try and get Man Chun, who used to LOVE to pick up/put away toys (didn't matter to him whether or not someone was playing with them at the time), but has gotten really passive in the last year or so (problems balancing his meds). I knew he wasn't very good at squatting down to pick things up, though, and sure enough I couldn't get him to stoop low enough. But one of the girls saw what I was doing and wanted to help. We put some bigger things on the floor and he was able to reach them and pick them up. Later we moved to a table and I was trying to get him to stack some blocks, but in general his eyes pay little attention to what his hands are doing. The girl, Lai Woon, really wanted to help so she took over from me. She was amazingly patient with him, but her raucous "instructions" (she can't speak recognizable words) were making him nervous. I told her that & suggested she speak more softly and she did. It was so sweet to watch her with him! He never did "get it," but I was proud of Lai Woon for trying nonetheless!

Crucifixion story

2010-04-03T19:09:00.002+08:00

We began our story with Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus was played this time not by one of our boys but by a cardboard doll. The leader of the story is a dear, believing lady but because she hasn't yet been baptized, by the tradition of the local Chinese churches she cannot yet take communion. But she got to lead it this time, with the kids (none of whom can take it either)!

Then everyone got up to walk to "Gethsemane." Jesus prayed while His disciples nodded off. Then the soldiers came & all the disciples ran away. The soldiers took the doll's robe off, hit it, put a "crown of thorns" on it, and finally, with the help of some of the erstwhile disciples, nailed it to a cross outline drawn on a wooden door. When we'd done this three years ago, we had borrowed a stuffed doll from the daycare center. It was more lifelike than the cardboard one, but we needed to be careful with it & so wrapped string around its limbs & pounded the nails through the string loops. As borrowing the doll was in doubt this year (turns out I could have), I thought, with a cardboard one we can go ahead and pound the nails right into it, to help the folks understand that it really did happen. I'm thinking now that the stuffed doll would still have been better…oh well…

After the soldiers finished gambling for Jesus' clothes, and Jesus had committed His spirit to God, we had the kids go beg his body from Pilate, who granted it to them after the soldier pierced its side. They wrapped it in a towel & laid in on a small table in Bruce's office, & slammed the door. We'll open that door Easter Sunday morning and see what we don't find!

We did the craft before the game to not go from a death to a game. We painted cross outlines with glue & then sprinkled rice stained different colors over the glue. Again, three years ago these turned out better, sigh. I think we were too stingy with the glue this time. I was low on it & forgot to stock up. Sigh.

For our game, just as the soldiers had thrown our big foam dice to gamble for Jesus' clothing, the kids threw the dice. One 4 (which sounds like the word for death) won a couple of M&M's; double 4's won a T-shirt. One of the girls threw double 4's before everyone had even gotten a turn! So we just handed out all the leftover M&M's & the game was over.

I enjoyed my time with the kids during the adult Bible study. One of the girls was commandeering my exclusive attention (the one whose sister I'd spent the whole time with a couple of weeks ago—was this a desire for equal time?). But the good thing about this was that I said I wouldn't play with her unless she would throw away the toilet paper wads she constantly rolls in her fingers until her clothes are totally "snowy" (and then she goes & gets more TP). It's a habit mom would really like to see her break, so this was a good start!

We had had a visitor this morning, a good friend, mother of a 30-something autistic son, higher functioning than most of our kids. She was coming to see about whether she might be able to share some of the load when we go on home assignment next year. But she was a bit overwhelmed by the noisy chaos of our morning. Yeah, if you don't like noise, you won't like our church, this is true. It would be great if we had been able to develop our program in a way that got everyone to quietly cooperate. But my lack of special education training shows up here, I'm afraid. Sigh.

An exciting Sunday!

2010-03-25T22:04:00.001+08:00

The Palm Sunday story is a fun one, because it's so visual. We started out by having various people coming up to Jesus, one with a cane, for healing, one with a Bible, to ask for explanations, and one with a baby, to ask Jesus to bless it. Then everyone swarmed up and started tugging at Jesus from all sides (he was a little alarmed, but took it well). This to give a possible reason (tiredness) why He wanted to ride into Jerusalem rather than walk as usual. I really don't know exactly why. I don't like the "manipulative" idea that He did it purely to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9. I love the scenario Dorothy Sayers suggests in A Man Born to be King, but that was a bit too complicated to get into for our story.

So Jesus sends a couple of disciples to a corner of the room where someone is standing with a stick donkey. They start to untie it and have to remember to repeat "the Lord needs it" when the donkey-holder protested. They did great!

Jesus also did a great job of riding the donkey, even bouncing a little to make it look real. Great job, Ka Hei! I had passed out various shawls and scarves ahead of time (people keep giving me these things and I almost never wear them, but they sure come in handy for things like this—smile) & kids & adults alike helped to spread them on the ground for Jesus and his donkey to walk over.

I had also found a big bunch of palm leaves at the market, for about $1.20/dozen. I always have this picture in my mind that the people were waving them as Jesus came in, but when I read the Bible accounts carefully, it seems they just also laid them on the ground. But we waved them; there I go rewriting the Bible again. But everyone enjoyed it—makes you wonder how the folks on the first Palm Sunday could have resisted it! Ha!

We added a slight new twist to the story. We had the protester who didn't want to see Jesus hailed as a possible king, but I left out Jesus' remark about the stones crying out. Instead I took our protesting religious leader and had him talk with Judas right there about helping him (for a price) to find a quiet place to "confront" Jesus away from his adoring fans. Setting the stage for next week's story.

For our game "Who Will Be King?" we had the kids do paper-scissors-rock in rotation, to see who got to take three steps forward. The first one to the end of the room being crowned king. It got a little confusing at times as to whose turn it was, but that wasn't a big problem. Some chuckles over the boy who couldn't figure out that the object of the game was NOT to try and display the same thing as his opposite. Finally got him to "play it right" by having an adult volunteer play with him; he'd copy the volunteer & then we'd see if he'd beaten his opponent or not.

Since our story had featured branches, our craft featured leaves. I had bought two different small plants—one with "standard" leaves & one with fern-like leaves. Kids would paint the back (bumpier) side of the leaves and press them onto white paper cups in different designs.

Kevin was supposed to lead the Bible study but then had to work. Bruce was also gone—we had a small crowd overall. So by default, I had the privilege of leading the Bible study, and a privilege it was! With Mrs. Chu watching the kids, there were just four of us in the Bible study—myself (Mary missionary) Mr. Lei (from the core group), Mrs. Wong (new believer of six months), and Mrs. Ng (not yet a believer). We reviewed the story, about how some people wanted Jesus to be king & some didn't. Asked if they thought Jesus would be a good king, of China, say, and then asked why some people, now as then, really don't want to accept Jesus' reign in their lives. I pointed out that it's not just unbelievers, but some believers also want to have the benefits of salvation, peace, etc., but don't want to let Jesus really rule in their lives, to obey whatever He says.

I asked for a show of hands—who has accepted Jesus as Savior? As expected, three hands. Next question, who wants to be serious about obeying Jesus & letting Him rule their lives? FOUR hands? So Mrs. Ng, how does that work? You don't believe in Him as Savior, then why would you want to obey Him? Turns out she also wanted to accept Him as Savior! So we prayed with her, right then and there, all of us! Wow, was that special!!

Jesus cleanses the temple

2010-03-20T21:19:00.006+08:00

I'm rearranging the order of Scripture a little (a lot?). The cleansing of the temple takes place after the Triumphal Entry in the gospels (though John has another account very early in Jesus' ministry). But I didn't want to put Palm Sunday two whole weeks ahead of time (needing the Sunday before Easter to cover Good Friday), so this story got bumped back.

We talked about how, when we want to worship God, we go to church (Chinese translation: "teaching meeting,"), where the main activity is teaching. But in Jesus' time, the main activity of worship was making offerings. People would bring cattle

or sheep

or birds

to present as offerings. Some of them they would burn on the altar, some they would contribute to the priests, and some they would eat themselves, enjoying a feast and thanking God for His provision for them. Sometimes they would get so happy they would dance! Which we all did then, singing one of our favorite choruses, 盡心盡性來敬拜我主 (I will praise the Lord with all my heart and mind…)

But that day when Jesus went into the temple, He didn't see people singing and dancing and worshipping the Lord. He saw people doing business, making a profit for themselves by changing money and selling animals for sacrifices. He got really angry! He made a whip of cords and drove the animals out of the temple, and overturned the table of the moneychanger. Then the priest was supposed to ask Jesus what His authority was for doing such a thing, but our neat-and-tidy-loving Jesus was too busy picking up the spilled coins. (smile)

For our game, we talked about how sometimes the moneychangers would cheat the people, but we were going to exchange things exactly. The girl who led the game would draw one number card from a basketful, and then each player in turn had to find two other cards that together would add up to the leader's card. Good math practice. Hard for a lot of the kids; but the parents were okay with that!

For craft time, we braided different colors of plastic string together, to make not whips but bracelets. That was hard for some of the kids to, but they all seemed to enjoy trying, with help.

All in all it was an enjoyable morning. Actually, the night before, we had prayed specifically that I could have an enjoyable morning—I love MLFF; can't imagine wanting to go to church anywhere else, but lately a lot of the fun has gone out of it with the tension over our one older boy, wondering what he's going to do and how some of the parents are going to react to him. I feel sort of caught in the middle between wanting to accept him warts and all, and wanting to be sympathetic to those who are strongly put off by his behavior. Well, he didn't show up at all. We found out later in the week that his refusal to take his medicine finally caught up with him & his mom ended up having to have him put in the psych hospital to get him stabilized. We don't know yet exactly how long he might be there. Lord, please work in his heart so he will want to take his medicine; everyone is happier when he does, including himself!

Jesus heals the blind man

2010-03-11T21:22:00.002+08:00

As the story goes, Jesus and His disciples were walking along when they saw a man born blind. We had a girl, and she was adorable—I forgot to take a picture. I will have to pose her this Sunday for a make-up photo. (Here we go!)

The disciples ask who sinned, this man or his parents. We had one of the kids write those two options on the board and asked the parents to guess how Jesus answered. We got one vote for the man, two for his parents.

Jesus then was supposed to spit on the ground and make clay to put on the man's eyes. Decided NOT to persuade the boy playing Jesus to really spit; we have enough of that already, thank you! I had some "mud" (wet, ground-up chalk) ready. Also decided NOT to actually put the stuff on the girl's eyes, just in case. (We were supposed to be healing blindness here, not causing it!) So he just smeared some on her forehead above her eyes. Then someone led her to a basin of water marked "Siloam" and she washed her face.

Then came the arguments over whether she'd really been healed & how. So she had to explain it several times. We'd chosen an articulate child or we might really have had some frustration, ha! Finally they chase her away because she insists that Jesus healed her.

Jesus then meets her and she recognizes Him by his voice. She acknowledges that He is the Son of God if He says He is, and He praises her for not only having physical sight but having a heart that sees clearly as well.

We had prepared for the game last week by recording each of our adults saying, "Hello, do you know who I am?" (as we had had Jesus say in the story). So then the kids had to recognize the voices, like a blind person would. That was fun. Some surprises of who were the good listeners and who weren't!

For craft time, just as Jesus "fingerpainted" on the man's eyes, we fingerpainted on some pictures (of butterflies because they had large spaces).

I have recently thought I would like to start talking over the story with our smarter kids during the free play time, to try to give them a chance to apply the Bible to their lives more. This week, though, I ended up just talking with one little girl who is usually very cheerful but had been rather cranky that morning. Just to try & find out what was wrong. Of course she said "nothing," but just having someone listen to her ten-year-old worries seemed to make her happier. I was really glad for the chance to do that, while Kevin was supervising all the rest of the kids single-handedly; thanks Kevin!

Jesus and the Gadarene Demonaic

2010-03-04T21:37:00.002+08:00

I was hoping for some encouragement this week. Thank you, God! We had good attention from everyone during the story, game, craft, AND Bible study! Wow!

We had a person role-play a demon-possessed man when we did the story in Acts about the seven sons of Sceva, but he didn't have to do much except yell and bowl over the would-be exorcists. For this story, since the man was more of a central character, I felt uncomfortable having someone represent him. So we used pictures, and that worked well. We put a paper doll-like picture up on the easel, with nothing on but a mean-looking face. Then had kids come up to add: torn, scanty clothing, wild hair, dirt rubbed over the skin, bloody wounds, and broken (paper clip) chains hanging from his wrists. This was the result: Our Jesus character was supposed to ask him his name, which is always an occasion for frustration/laughter. You tell one of our kids to repeat, "What is your name?" and he answers the question: "Liu Ka Ho!" Back and forth I don't know how many times. Finally got him to say it by having him do so one word at a time, so it didn't feel so much like a question with a reflex answer. (Did he learn anything from this? That I can't tell you!)

Jesus tells the Legion to come out of the man, and we asked the group, did they obey? Well, before answering that question, we introduced the "legion" (same word as for herd) of pigs. Went around the room and had everyone make a pig noise before being given a paper pig. Everyone, adults and kids, cooperated beautifully with this, though we had pigs speaking with a lot of different accents (smile)! So then when Jesus sends the demons into the pigs, they all had to squeal again and throw their pigs into the sea (onto the floor).

Then the disciples helped the man get cleaned up & gave him some clothes to wear:

In the story of the sons of Sceva last summer, we did "bowling" & had our ball knock over the seven sons. This time, we said that Jesus could overcome a whole legion of demons at once—bowling again (we didn't dress up our bowling pins—water bottles—this time though).

Our craft was these origami pig faces. I was a little worried about having such an easy paper-folding craft right after a more difficult folding craft just last Sunday. But it was fine.

Someone asked during the Bible study, this was just a parable, right? No, we assured her, it was a true story. She's thinking!

So, the morning went really well. It went downhill after that. I don't want to share all the details here, but we as a core group had decided to ban the boy who's been spitting & wiping his face on every available surface from attending potlucks at the mother church until he breaks this extremely unhygienic & unappetizing habit. Bruce had promised to bring him to the meal this Sunday, however, so the planned compromise was for me to take him & his mom out to lunch at a restaurant, where we could just be at one table & not be affecting everyone else. Mom was okay with this when we explained it to her. But the boy was NOT!! To make a long story short, we did manage to get him to a restaurant instead of over to the church potluck, but he was extremely unhappy about it and it was not a pleasant lunch for any of us. Of course, his being agitated increases the rate of spitting & wiping…

I had told mom I would try to visit her today, but haven't been able to find her at home. She needs more personal attention & support as a single mom who is pretty overwhelmed with the task of parenting this young man. If you are reading this, please pray that we can find some practical ways to encourage her. Thanks!

Jesus Calms the Storm

2010-02-27T16:59:00.001+08:00

It's not really atypical for the Sunday following a week of school holiday. The kids are out of the habit of sitting still and behaving, so things are more undisciplined than usual. Then we had a new story leader who did an excellent job of leading, except for her soft, sweet voice which I was afraid nobody was paying any attention to. For the story of Jesus calming the storm, we first had everyone, adults and children alike, follow "Jesus" around the room, until he needed to get away with His disciples for some peace and quiet.

To get into the boat, everyone (all the kids) had to walk down the "dock," which was four stools in a row with a board on top. Then they were supposed to step into the boat one by one and act like the boat was rocking, but they didn't quite get it. They did, however, very much "get" the idea of rocking violently with the worsening storm. Two of our "normal" girls were standing up & jumping up and down—not part of the script. Jesus (Ka Hei) did a very good job of sleeping, though!! And he calmed the storm just fine, but it took a little more work to get the girls calmed. Sigh.

I was frustrated with what I perceived as a lack of attention/involvement on the part of the adults. I wondered if anyone had been following the story! So, even though I hadn't been the leader, I shoved my oar in at the end and asked for the people to give me a review of what went on. The normal girls all answered, and answered well. So I should chill out, huh. I'd feel happier if the parents had done more of the responding. After all, they are the ones we are most trying to reach.

For a game I had made a bunch of small origami boats and had the kids sink them with squirt guns as they were floating in a basin of water. Hard to convince them that the guns would work better if you kept them shooting at some kind of angle rather than straight down perpendicular to the boat; they "ran out" of water way too quickly that way. But I think they had fun with it anyway.

We made the same type of boats (called "sampans" on the website I found the instructions on; I didn't like the more generic boat patterns with the big pyramid in the middle). Originally I thought we might do craft time first and then sink our own boats. But I discovered during preparation time that a) the smaller boats were a lot harder to unfold without tearing, but at the same time b) boats made out of larger origami paper squares were almost impossible to sink!

Mrs. Lei & I were in with the kids during free play & she encouraged me to do the "Appreciation Game" with the three verbal girls. They seemed to really enjoy it, though, again, they were much more interested in doing the talking part than the listening part.

I do hope this Sunday goes a little more smoothly. I'm about due for a little encouragement, I think.

Happy Year of the Tiger

2010-02-18T22:13:00.001+08:00

This past Sunday coincided with the first day of the Chinese New Year. So we knew we would have very few in attendance. Even Bruce had to go preach at another church. As it turned out, there were just four of us: Mr. & Mrs. Lei, Ka Hei and myself. Ka Hei was thrilled with the permission to go straight to the computer and start into his favorite game. His parents and I meanwhile played a game of our own, called "The Appreciation Game," a bilingual game somewhat similar to the Ungame. I wished we'd had more adults, because it's really good how the game encourages more personal sharing than we often get. Mrs. Lei ended up borrowing it to bring with them when visiting relatives this week! I'll look forward to hearing how that went.

I do hope we'll have better attendance this Sunday!!