Blessed are the Merciful

We had a great time at our second anniversary celebration this past Sunday! To illustrate this beatitude, we used the story of David cutting off a piece of Saul's robe in the cave (I Chronicles 24). Wa Hon is not only the biggest kid in our group, he also loves to dress up, so he was a natural to play Saul in his fancy robe (made of wrapping paper). The "X" on his breast is to show he was not a good king. ("David" got a gold star for being a good guy.)

Special highlights included David demonstrating his loyalty to Saul by an "apocryphal" scene of presenting to the king the booty from one of his successful battles. David (Ka Hei) was told to kneel down in front of the king. Instead, he sat on the floor. No, kneel! Okay, he knelt. Facing the wrong way. No, turn around! So he turned around. He was very tolerant of all this—he's come a long way! So then we told him to present this bag of "silver coins" to Saul. He opened the bag and gave him one coin. No, give him all the coins! So he started pulling them out very reluctantly one by one. So much for loyalty! Ha!

Our facility lends itself well to these little dramas. When David and his cronies were to hide in the cave, we sent them to the bathroom which opens at the front end of the "sanctuary" (and makes for some rather unworshipful moments at times…). They hid in the bathtub behind the shower curtain. Later, after Saul & his army ran around unable to find David, Saul went into the cave to sit on the toilet. (My understanding is that that is what the Bible really means!) So then the parents sitting back in the main room just saw David's hand coming out from behind the shower curtain and cutting off a corner of the paper robe.

For the game, we recycled the one from the story of the hemorrhaging woman in unit 4B. Rather than take a piece off of Saul's robe, the object of this game was for each child to remove a piece of candy that had been attached loosely to an adult volunteer's "robe." Unlike Saul, Mr. Lei was instructed to keep moving to make the game more of a challenge. When it came to Wa Hon's turn, he didn't quite get the rules. He just sprang up and started "dancing" with Mr. Lei!

For craft time, we had made up some simple tunic-style garments out of an old tablecloth. Each one had a tear ("like Saul's robe") that had to be sewn up. This one turned out to be hard for the moms to let the kids do. I was really pleased when one mom finally decided to make her son at least pull the needle through the cloth each time she started it through. Ka Ho is our most hyperactive kid right now & tends to shun craft time as being too restrictive. But he needs to learn to settle down, so I hope this is the start of a trend.

We ended up our morning with a potluck. Grandma Si made the most wonderful fried sticky-rice! Yum!