Promise Fulfilled

The births of Ishmael and Isaac; another one of those stories that is hard not to have some fun with. We had just two boys (& six girls), so we picked the older boy to be Abraham. We let him pick out his wife—that was fun, he really gave it a lot of thought. Then when Sarah had her brilliant idea about Hagar, we let her pick who would be her maidservant. Everyone had a good laugh when Abraham and Hagar walked to the end of the room and came back with a baby. Wing Tung as Hagar gave a stellar performance of being "uppity" toward her mistress after having her baby. Even when Sarah finally drove her away (by beating her over the head with a balloon), she was sticking her tongue out at Sarah over her shoulder. Little ham. (A girl after my own heart—she's the one sharing my profile photo.)

When we did this three years ago, we had Abraham pass out red-colored hard-boiled eggs after Isaac was born, imitating a Chinese custom. However, our stand-in Abraham from downstairs has given us a couple of dozen red eggs twice in recent weeks for reasons only he fully understands. I didn't think anybody wanted any more eggs!

Wing Tung led the game; a variation of Simon Says ("God says"), to illustrate the point that we're supposed to wait and do things God's way rather than listen to just any old "good advice."

For our craft we did these pretty wall hangings (modeled by our pretty Wong sisters) which I found on a Bible Crafts for Kids website. It was very popular, especially sticking all the extra little stars around the larger 神是信實("God is Faithful") stars.

We had new visitors this week, a woman from our mother church and her neurotypical 7-year-old daughter. Mom wants to become a regular volunteer with us; the daughter is a little nervous yet around the other kids. (Veteran Wing Tung, on the other hand, was reported by her teacher to be speaking up in defense of mentally handicapped children at her school, saying they are nothing to be afraid of, they just think differently. Love this kid.) Anyway, part of the problem with ManMan's discomfort came from the fact that "Abraham," who had chosen her as his wife, was quite taken with her and followed her around staring at her during the free time. He used to do this with Wing Tung and finally learned mom wouldn't tolerate it. Now it seems we need to start over with ManMan. Something else to pray about!