Baptism of Jesus

This week we did the baptism of Jesus. A lot of our kids were gone for a Special Olympics activity (again), but while it was too bad they missed all the fun, the game would have gone even more overtime with everyone there!

We had only one "actual" character; John the Baptist in his wooly vest and leather belt. Kids (and adults; like I said, not enough kids) brought up dolls to represent the various types of people coming for baptism. Barbie-style dolls would have been too expensive to buy so many, so I picked up these cheap plastic superhero dolls for about a quarter a piece. So we had Batman & Spiderman, among others, coming to the wilderness to hear John the Baptist, ha! No one had a problem with this. So then, except for the proud Pharisees that John rejected, each of the dolls got dunked in a basin of water (now you know why we used dolls). Lastly came the "Jesus" doll (a Ken doll; I just couldn't see using a Robocop or whatever you call these things!). I remembered to have the tissue-paper dove "fly" down & plaster itself to the wet doll, but forgot to have the voice of God speak from heaven. Oops.

So: in baptism you go down into the water and come up…so for our game we put our faces down into a basin of water (everybody had to wash with a wet-wipe first to minimize germ-sharing) and came up with apples in our teeth!

Fun…but I should have done the craft first this time instead of the game. Because of course everyone had to finish their apples before they could start the craft, so we got running a bit late.

The craft was paper cups (some people get baptized with cups/bowls rather than being dunked, right?) which we then filled with a juice drink to "test" them.

It was a day for snacking! First the apples, then the juice, and then at the end of the morning, because it was Mrs. Chu's birthday, we had cake! She thought I had the date wrong, but I didn't. The Chinese aren't big on celebrating birthdays, especially for adults. But they don't mind if we do!

By the way…we looked at this story in the follow-up Bible study with our new believer, since she hadn't been there. She was amazed by the account of the Holy Spirit's visible descent, and the voice from heaven. "Wow! Did that happen when YOU were baptized?!" she wanted to know. I LOVE this lady's questions!!