A Snake in the Garden

This Sunday's lesson was on the fall of man. We used Barbie dolls again, because it's an important part of the story that they were naked, and there's only so far you want to go in role play! But rather than manipulating the dolls myself like I did a year ago, we had volunteers doing that. (Adam did a lot of pacing around the garden! smile) When they were supposed to eat the fruit, the volunteers ate it.

When we did this three years ago, we only had three kids that Sunday, which worked extremely well for craft time. Each one strung a bunch of fabric leaves which then became Adam's one-piece and Eve's two-piece cover-ups. This time we had six kids. Instead of just stringing the leaves together, I had them sew them to a ribbon, so that the fabric leaves (did I do a lot of cutting last week!!) would end up side-by-side instead of face-to-face. My idea was to tie the ends of the ribbon together and wrap them sort of sari-style. It didn't work super well. I'd welcome any suggestions if someone out there is more craft-wise than I am.

Our game, called "the path of sin" consisted of throwing our large foam die and taking the corresponding amount of steps on the rubber alphabet tiles laid out in line. At intervals there were different tiles (with the alphabet letters missing) & these were "sin" tiles. The idea being, life would be just dandy without sin, but if you land on one of those you have to go back to square one. One of our boys threw a number which would land him on one of these tiles. With a mischievous grin on his face, he picked up the die and made another throw—same number—and another. One of the other moms started scolding him for not playing according to the rules. I didn't want to discourage him, though. I thought he was showing great initiative, and not being crabby about "losing" but having fun with trying to get around the game. Hey, he just doesn't want to sin, I said! I can't remember now whether he ended up starting over or not. But he didn't lose his temper, that I do know, which for this boy is true progress.

In the afternoon Bruce & I went to a concert of the Macau Youth Orchestra. One of our newest kids, 10-year-old Ming Yan, was playing violin. (She's neurotypical, her 11-year-old sister is not). We enjoyed that very much. They were very good.

During this past week we had two birthdays in our core group happen to fall on the same day—Mrs. Lei's according to the Chinese calendar, and Chu Wing Tung's (my profile buddy) according to the modern calendar. So we invited both families out to dinner all together. It was really nice to get together without any core group business to think about, just enjoying each other's company. It would be nice to do more of this kind of thing.

Creation, the 5th & 6th days

An exciting week!! One of our newcomers married into a Christian family. Has considered herself a Christian because they don't worship idols at her home, but she really knew NOTHING of what she was supposed to believe. Last week I had asked her if she would be interested in getting together for some Bible study with just two or three of us, during the week, and she said yes. (I wouldn't have felt I had the time to do this if we hadn't started over!) I also invited another mom who's been coming for over a year; I think she would like to come but will have trouble coming regularly. We shall see.

But Mrs. Wong came Thursday morning and she prayed to receive Christ as Savior! WOOHOO!! Am I excited or what?!!

This Sunday, then, we finished up the creation story. I need to get away from using as much flannelgraph as I did three years ago, but this time it still seemed to be the best way to introduce all those animals. Having the kids name them and put them up on the board twice—once when they were created and once when Adam had to name them—was good.

We played our Animal Farm again. I hadn't come up with enough animals for everyone to imitate—we had ten kids and eleven adults this week! But we got around that problem by having a lot of the kids team up with mom, which probably worked better anyway. Lots of laughter for this game!!

We hadn't had a craft the first time around, but this time we did. We made octopi out of bananas, and people faces with tomatoes. Not original ideas; they came from a "Lovely Vegetables" e-mail forward I received quite a while back. Thank you, Sico! Bruce has the camera with him, he's on his way to a conference in the Philippines, so I can't add any pictures right now…

Starting Over

September 6^th, we started the curriculum over from the beginning. Just some minor changes from the first Sunday, on the first 4 days of creation. We added a game this time, which we didn't have the first time around. We talked about how some scientists claim that the world "just happened," so we experimented with trying to just happen to make the world as beautiful as God made it. Each child got to try throwing cardboard cutouts of a tree, a bush, a couple of flowers, the sun, and a cloud onto a grass & sky scene laid on the floor. Guess what—nobody's looked anywhere near as good as the model picture!

This time around we are radically changing our adult Bible study time. That is the one section of the morning where the adults get to explore the Bible more deeply—the one section that one would expect to have the highest potential for yielding spiritual fruit. And since we haven't had any adult conversions since November 2006, and she had been learning about Jesus for ten years (!!), we figured we needed to change this part!

So now it's going to be mainly just a review of the story rather than a study of a related passage. Though we plan to have a few key verses to look up at the END of the study. I was in with the kids, so I can't say firsthand how it went. Except I do know there was a tangential discussion about whether God could fix global warming. It sounds like Bruce handled it well.

We're thrilled that our two new families look like they're settling in for the long haul! It's neat that they get to start from the beginning now with us.

On to Rome

Our last Sunday in the "old" curriculum! It was a good way to wind up, with our two new families returning, and great participation by all in all the activities. Which were:

Our story:

Today we're going to take Paul to Rome. He has a centurion with him to guard him.	Introduce Paul, centurion (with sword & shield)
They need to go by ship. Here is the ship's captain, and the crew of sailors. This boat doesn't require rowing; it goes under sail.	Introduce ship's captain and crew (captain: blue hat; crew: sailor hats) Crew are all remaining kids. One adult holds sail (white cloth on stick)
The weather is less than ideal. They make some headway, but then the wind changes and they're blown back…	They all walk forward following the sail, then all walk backward. Repeat 2-3 times.
This really wastes a lot of time! They're not even halfway there yet, but they need to stop and take on some more provisions.	Everyone gets a grocery bag full of crumpled newspaper. Captain's bag includes packet of wafer cookies
Paul considers the weather and says, we've wasted so much time already, shouldn't we spend the winter here?	Paul says: Spend the winter here.
But the captain thinks he's just a bother. He says, we must keep going!	Captain says: keep going!
So they set out. And they go forward, and they go back…	Another round of forward and backward
Suddenly, the wind picks up! It's really getting dangerous!	Have sail and everyone weave around in all directions—up, down, side-to-side.
Try putting out the sea anchor!	Captain ties anchor rope to mast, throws cardboard anchor to adult on sidelines.
But they continue rolling up & down at the mercy of the waves. It's been more than ten days already! They've about lost all hope.	They continue weaving around.
But that night, an angel appears to Paul and says, don't be afraid. God has promised that He will protect not only your life, but the life of everyone else in the ship.	Angel with halo says: don't be afraid, you'll be safe.
The next day Paul tells the captain not to be afraid, because the God he serves has promised to rescue them all. He suggests they all eat something to keep their strength up.	Paul says: don't be afraid. God will rescue us. Eat something! Captain passes out cookies to all.
After they have eaten, they throw the rest of the food overboard to lighten the ship.	Everyone throws their grocery bags away from the group.
Suddenly—they see an island in the distance!	Everyone shades their eyes and points
Let's see if they can make it there--,arggh, no! We've hit a huge rock! The boat is starting to break up! Everyone needs to swim for the island!	Everyone stops dead. Sail falls down. They jump out and swim around.
The people of the island welcomed them kindly. But they were all wet and cold, so they needed to start a fire. They start gathering firewood.	Everyone shakes hands with all the adults. Start gathering sticks (tightly rolled newspaper) for fire.
Paul thinks this is a stick—but it's a snake! It bites him. The people think it must be God's judgment on him—that since he didn't drown God had to kill him this way. But then he just shook it off and was fine. The people were amazed. Paul was able to tell them about the God he worshipped who took care of him.	Paul gets one stick with snake head and masking-tape fangs which attach to his hand. He shakes it off. Everyone points to him. Then Oohs and Aahs.
They spent the winter on this island, and then another ship came along going to Rome, so they all got on that ship.	Adult picks up sail again, everybody lines up, they go in one smooth trip around room
When they get to Rome, Paul doesn't have to be in prison; he can rent his own house and just have a soldier guarding him all the time.	Paul sits in recliner, soldier stands beside him
So a lot of people came and visited him at his home, and he was able to tell them about Jesus.	Several come & sit on stools in front of him, he holds up picture of cross
The Bible doesn't tell us what happened when he finally saw the emperor after two years under house arrest. The history books of the Bible end with him still there. Then most of the rest of the Bible is made up of letters that Paul wrote to the churches he started. So next week, we are going to start over again and look at the historical stories, starting back from the creation of the world.

I couldn't get hold of a big enough inner tube for two people, so for our game, we just used a large hula hoop and said to pretend it was a life preserver. Kids were paired according to approximate sizes. Each pair got inside the hoop facing away from each other. They had been shipwrecked and needed to swim to shore. Each kid was supposed to try and head for the "shore" (masking tape line on floor) that he/she was facing. It was pretty hilarious. We had a couple of really strong and determined pullers, and at least one who cooperatively turned around and followed his partner to her shore.

For our craft, we made "3-D" pictures of sailing boats, stacking the layers with prepared "dots" of blu-tack.

Bible study was from Philippians 1:12-14, and 2 Cor. 1:3-4, about how if we trust God, He can use even our bad situations to bring blessing to others.