Jesus’ boyhood

In spite of the nice break the picnic gave me, I'm still feeling stressed out. The core group accepted yet another request that would make my life a little easier: for the next month or two, I will lead the stories, games, & crafts myself. I will still write them in Chinese "for posterity," but if I don't get them done until Friday or Saturday, it won't matter because I won't have to meet with any of them to go over the material ahead of time. Once I find a way to get at least a week ahead, this won't be an issue. I do love our core group folks!!

This week's story had two parts. The first was Mary & Joseph bringing Jesus to the temple as a baby, & His being recognized by Simeon and Anna as God's promised Savior. Our one stubborn-unbeliever mom got into the part of being the elderly Anna, leaning on her cane as she wobbled up to see the baby. '

Part two was Jesus visiting, and staying behind at, the temple at age 12. I asked one of our neurotypical girls, an 8-year-old, to play the part of Jesus. Took her aside before the morning program started to explain how, when the "crowd" went out through the bedroom & balcony to reappear in the living room, that she should stop in the bedroom & then turn back. She seemed quite proud to be chosen for this "secret mission"—but then forgot it when the time came and I had to yell after her several times to get her to come back & not go into the living room with everyone else! Oh well.

For our game, instead of the parents looking for their lost son, the parents went to hide one at a time to be searched for by their kids. Good fun. I finally remembered what "craft" we'd done for this story three years ago, & did it again. A maze for the kids to trace the path to help the parents find the boy Jesus.

I was watching the kids during the adult Bible study. Bruce told me that as part of the discussion he said that good parenting practice may have included Mary & Joseph discussing this incident with their son and praying with Him about how to deal with His role while still a boy. Our new believer asked, "Oh, could they pray already back then too?" I LOVE these kinds of questions!! So real, so innocent (and so easy to answer)!

Interestingly, before I heard about the Bible study, I had had a talk with one of our Christian moms about an ongoing conflict she's been having with her neurotypical daughter over the girl's tendency to dawdle over her homework. I urged her to consider praying with the girl for a solution to the problem. Even before God provides the solution, it would be a chance for the two of them to put themselves on the same side in the war-with-dawdling, rather than being only antagonists. So that dovetailed rather nicely with the Bible study application! Perhaps I can find out this week if they tried it & how it went.