An exciting Sunday!

The Palm Sunday story is a fun one, because it's so visual. We started out by having various people coming up to Jesus, one with a cane, for healing, one with a Bible, to ask for explanations, and one with a baby, to ask Jesus to bless it. Then everyone swarmed up and started tugging at Jesus from all sides (he was a little alarmed, but took it well). This to give a possible reason (tiredness) why He wanted to ride into Jerusalem rather than walk as usual. I really don't know exactly why. I don't like the "manipulative" idea that He did it purely to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9. I love the scenario Dorothy Sayers suggests in A Man Born to be King, but that was a bit too complicated to get into for our story.

So Jesus sends a couple of disciples to a corner of the room where someone is standing with a stick donkey. They start to untie it and have to remember to repeat "the Lord needs it" when the donkey-holder protested. They did great!

Jesus also did a great job of riding the donkey, even bouncing a little to make it look real. Great job, Ka Hei! I had passed out various shawls and scarves ahead of time (people keep giving me these things and I almost never wear them, but they sure come in handy for things like this—smile) & kids & adults alike helped to spread them on the ground for Jesus and his donkey to walk over.

I had also found a big bunch of palm leaves at the market, for about $1.20/dozen. I always have this picture in my mind that the people were waving them as Jesus came in, but when I read the Bible accounts carefully, it seems they just also laid them on the ground. But we waved them; there I go rewriting the Bible again. But everyone enjoyed it—makes you wonder how the folks on the first Palm Sunday could have resisted it! Ha!

We added a slight new twist to the story. We had the protester who didn't want to see Jesus hailed as a possible king, but I left out Jesus' remark about the stones crying out. Instead I took our protesting religious leader and had him talk with Judas right there about helping him (for a price) to find a quiet place to "confront" Jesus away from his adoring fans. Setting the stage for next week's story.

For our game "Who Will Be King?" we had the kids do paper-scissors-rock in rotation, to see who got to take three steps forward. The first one to the end of the room being crowned king. It got a little confusing at times as to whose turn it was, but that wasn't a big problem. Some chuckles over the boy who couldn't figure out that the object of the game was NOT to try and display the same thing as his opposite. Finally got him to "play it right" by having an adult volunteer play with him; he'd copy the volunteer & then we'd see if he'd beaten his opponent or not.

Since our story had featured branches, our craft featured leaves. I had bought two different small plants—one with "standard" leaves & one with fern-like leaves. Kids would paint the back (bumpier) side of the leaves and press them onto white paper cups in different designs.

Kevin was supposed to lead the Bible study but then had to work. Bruce was also gone—we had a small crowd overall. So by default, I had the privilege of leading the Bible study, and a privilege it was! With Mrs. Chu watching the kids, there were just four of us in the Bible study—myself (Mary missionary) Mr. Lei (from the core group), Mrs. Wong (new believer of six months), and Mrs. Ng (not yet a believer). We reviewed the story, about how some people wanted Jesus to be king & some didn't. Asked if they thought Jesus would be a good king, of China, say, and then asked why some people, now as then, really don't want to accept Jesus' reign in their lives. I pointed out that it's not just unbelievers, but some believers also want to have the benefits of salvation, peace, etc., but don't want to let Jesus really rule in their lives, to obey whatever He says.

I asked for a show of hands—who has accepted Jesus as Savior? As expected, three hands. Next question, who wants to be serious about obeying Jesus & letting Him rule their lives? FOUR hands? So Mrs. Ng, how does that work? You don't believe in Him as Savior, then why would you want to obey Him? Turns out she also wanted to accept Him as Savior! So we prayed with her, right then and there, all of us! Wow, was that special!!

Jesus cleanses the temple

I'm rearranging the order of Scripture a little (a lot?). The cleansing of the temple takes place after the Triumphal Entry in the gospels (though John has another account very early in Jesus' ministry). But I didn't want to put Palm Sunday two whole weeks ahead of time (needing the Sunday before Easter to cover Good Friday), so this story got bumped back.

We talked about how, when we want to worship God, we go to church (Chinese translation: "teaching meeting,"), where the main activity is teaching. But in Jesus' time, the main activity of worship was making offerings. People would bring cattle

or sheep

or birds

to present as offerings. Some of them they would burn on the altar, some they would contribute to the priests, and some they would eat themselves, enjoying a feast and thanking God for His provision for them. Sometimes they would get so happy they would dance! Which we all did then, singing one of our favorite choruses, 盡心盡性來敬拜我主 (I will praise the Lord with all my heart and mind…)

But that day when Jesus went into the temple, He didn't see people singing and dancing and worshipping the Lord. He saw people doing business, making a profit for themselves by changing money and selling animals for sacrifices. He got really angry! He made a whip of cords and drove the animals out of the temple, and overturned the table of the moneychanger. Then the priest was supposed to ask Jesus what His authority was for doing such a thing, but our neat-and-tidy-loving Jesus was too busy picking up the spilled coins. (smile)

For our game, we talked about how sometimes the moneychangers would cheat the people, but we were going to exchange things exactly. The girl who led the game would draw one number card from a basketful, and then each player in turn had to find two other cards that together would add up to the leader's card. Good math practice. Hard for a lot of the kids; but the parents were okay with that!

For craft time, we braided different colors of plastic string together, to make not whips but bracelets. That was hard for some of the kids to, but they all seemed to enjoy trying, with help.

All in all it was an enjoyable morning. Actually, the night before, we had prayed specifically that I could have an enjoyable morning—I love MLFF; can't imagine wanting to go to church anywhere else, but lately a lot of the fun has gone out of it with the tension over our one older boy, wondering what he's going to do and how some of the parents are going to react to him. I feel sort of caught in the middle between wanting to accept him warts and all, and wanting to be sympathetic to those who are strongly put off by his behavior. Well, he didn't show up at all. We found out later in the week that his refusal to take his medicine finally caught up with him & his mom ended up having to have him put in the psych hospital to get him stabilized. We don't know yet exactly how long he might be there. Lord, please work in his heart so he will want to take his medicine; everyone is happier when he does, including himself!

Jesus heals the blind man

As the story goes, Jesus and His disciples were walking along when they saw a man born blind. We had a girl, and she was adorable—I forgot to take a picture. I will have to pose her this Sunday for a make-up photo. (Here we go!)

The disciples ask who sinned, this man or his parents. We had one of the kids write those two options on the board and asked the parents to guess how Jesus answered. We got one vote for the man, two for his parents.

Jesus then was supposed to spit on the ground and make clay to put on the man's eyes. Decided NOT to persuade the boy playing Jesus to really spit; we have enough of that already, thank you! I had some "mud" (wet, ground-up chalk) ready. Also decided NOT to actually put the stuff on the girl's eyes, just in case. (We were supposed to be healing blindness here, not causing it!) So he just smeared some on her forehead above her eyes. Then someone led her to a basin of water marked "Siloam" and she washed her face.

Then came the arguments over whether she'd really been healed & how. So she had to explain it several times. We'd chosen an articulate child or we might really have had some frustration, ha! Finally they chase her away because she insists that Jesus healed her.

Jesus then meets her and she recognizes Him by his voice. She acknowledges that He is the Son of God if He says He is, and He praises her for not only having physical sight but having a heart that sees clearly as well.

We had prepared for the game last week by recording each of our adults saying, "Hello, do you know who I am?" (as we had had Jesus say in the story). So then the kids had to recognize the voices, like a blind person would. That was fun. Some surprises of who were the good listeners and who weren't!

For craft time, just as Jesus "fingerpainted" on the man's eyes, we fingerpainted on some pictures (of butterflies because they had large spaces).

I have recently thought I would like to start talking over the story with our smarter kids during the free play time, to try to give them a chance to apply the Bible to their lives more. This week, though, I ended up just talking with one little girl who is usually very cheerful but had been rather cranky that morning. Just to try & find out what was wrong. Of course she said "nothing," but just having someone listen to her ten-year-old worries seemed to make her happier. I was really glad for the chance to do that, while Kevin was supervising all the rest of the kids single-handedly; thanks Kevin!

Jesus and the Gadarene Demonaic

I was hoping for some encouragement this week. Thank you, God! We had good attention from everyone during the story, game, craft, AND Bible study! Wow!

We had a person role-play a demon-possessed man when we did the story in Acts about the seven sons of Sceva, but he didn't have to do much except yell and bowl over the would-be exorcists. For this story, since the man was more of a central character, I felt uncomfortable having someone represent him. So we used pictures, and that worked well. We put a paper doll-like picture up on the easel, with nothing on but a mean-looking face. Then had kids come up to add: torn, scanty clothing, wild hair, dirt rubbed over the skin, bloody wounds, and broken (paper clip) chains hanging from his wrists. This was the result: Our Jesus character was supposed to ask him his name, which is always an occasion for frustration/laughter. You tell one of our kids to repeat, "What is your name?" and he answers the question: "Liu Ka Ho!" Back and forth I don't know how many times. Finally got him to say it by having him do so one word at a time, so it didn't feel so much like a question with a reflex answer. (Did he learn anything from this? That I can't tell you!)

Jesus tells the Legion to come out of the man, and we asked the group, did they obey? Well, before answering that question, we introduced the "legion" (same word as for herd) of pigs. Went around the room and had everyone make a pig noise before being given a paper pig. Everyone, adults and kids, cooperated beautifully with this, though we had pigs speaking with a lot of different accents (smile)! So then when Jesus sends the demons into the pigs, they all had to squeal again and throw their pigs into the sea (onto the floor).

Then the disciples helped the man get cleaned up & gave him some clothes to wear:

In the story of the sons of Sceva last summer, we did "bowling" & had our ball knock over the seven sons. This time, we said that Jesus could overcome a whole legion of demons at once—bowling again (we didn't dress up our bowling pins—water bottles—this time though).

Our craft was these origami pig faces. I was a little worried about having such an easy paper-folding craft right after a more difficult folding craft just last Sunday. But it was fine.

Someone asked during the Bible study, this was just a parable, right? No, we assured her, it was a true story. She's thinking!

So, the morning went really well. It went downhill after that. I don't want to share all the details here, but we as a core group had decided to ban the boy who's been spitting & wiping his face on every available surface from attending potlucks at the mother church until he breaks this extremely unhygienic & unappetizing habit. Bruce had promised to bring him to the meal this Sunday, however, so the planned compromise was for me to take him & his mom out to lunch at a restaurant, where we could just be at one table & not be affecting everyone else. Mom was okay with this when we explained it to her. But the boy was NOT!! To make a long story short, we did manage to get him to a restaurant instead of over to the church potluck, but he was extremely unhappy about it and it was not a pleasant lunch for any of us. Of course, his being agitated increases the rate of spitting & wiping…

I had told mom I would try to visit her today, but haven't been able to find her at home. She needs more personal attention & support as a single mom who is pretty overwhelmed with the task of parenting this young man. If you are reading this, please pray that we can find some practical ways to encourage her. Thanks!