Pause unit 4 for Christmas & the New Year

12/16/07		Elizabeth and Mary		jumping for joy	origami angel ornaments	Luke 1: 76-79
12/23/07		Magi		??	Christmas stockings	Jer. 29: 11-13
12/30/07		10 Lepers (thankfulness)		race on knees	foil pie plate tambourines	Ps. 92: 1-4

We had our sixty-year-old grandmother play the part of the pregnant Elizabeth. She brought the house down! But she absolutely refused to let me take her picture; I was SO disappointed!

The game that week was planned by our intern, Kevin--it was a little confusing to me as to how it was played, so I'm leaving this space blank. Game ideas always welcome

I found some cute pre-printed origami angels on Tammy Yee's website, but instead of adding her angel heads, I had prepared pictures of everyone (everyone's heads)—I took digital photos of our newcomers as soon as they arrived, and got them printed out during the game time. So each person got to attach his/her own head & then a halo, to the angel body. Then we put them all up on a large green poster-paper Christmas tree! Our kids almost never take their crafts home anyway. And they loved having them up on the tree.

For the game the week we talked about being thankful for the past year, I had embroidered the ten lepers' story a bit to say that the one thankful leper "ran to Jesus and fell on his knees." So for our game, we reversed that and ran on our knees to "Jesus" & then got up "healed" & ran back to the team. But running on your knees can be uncomfortable, so I basted thick foam pads on two pairs of legwarmers. Each runner then had to take them off at the end of his/her turn and the next person on the team had to put them on. Much hilarity!

I mentioned in the last post that one of our boys didn't know how to throw or to cut with scissors. We found out when he was playing one of the Magi that he didn't know how to kneel down either! Oops! In trying to help him get down, I ended up dropping him flat on his face. Some physical therapist I am, ha! I really wish I could have time with this boy outside of Sunday mornings to do more stuff one-on-one with him. (By the way, we let him WALK with the legwarmers on the next week!)

We JUST learned a couple of days ago that this boy, Man Chun, lost his excellent paid caregiver last week due to visa problems. Now he has a new "auntie" who doesn't speak Cantonese! Which means she cannot communicate with him verbally. What a setback for the poor kid. Just in time for summer vacation, too.

Doubly disappointing is the fact that the former auntie had said she wanted to become a believer, but was hesitating for fear of not being able to take the pressure from family to continue worshipping the ancestral gods. Now she will be away from any known Christian influence. So we are sad for her as well as for Man Chun.

We return to Macau on the 4^th of July—just three more weeks! I am so looking forward to seeing everyone again. We've been hearing great reports about how well things have been going. But maybe more about that AFTER I catch up the backlog here. Just one more unit to go!