Finishing up with the Ascension

In preparation for the visual aid at the end of the story, I had placed our cardboard Jesus doll on the wall under the transom window (with the string strategically covered by an extra cloud…I know, I should have a picture but forgot the camera that day…). So as we began, I asked, okay, so we know that Jesus died, and rose from the dead, and where is he now? Lai Wun yelped and pointed at the doll on the wall! I was impressed; I wouldn't have guessed she would remember the association from seeing this doll used as Jesus only once, three weeks previously!

I mixed in a lot of Jesus' upper room discourse as His farewell speech, since we hadn't touched on it before and we needed more material anyway! We talked about how having the Holy Spirit was even better than having Jesus with us if we're supposed to go around preaching the gospel to the whole world. Just like a glass of water in "Jerusalem" wouldn't help quench your thirst if you were at "the ends of the earth" (the other side of the room), but if you drank it, as our volunteer did, and then went to the ends of the earth, it would still be inside you! (Only, of course, the Holy Spirit lasts longer than a glass of water.)

Sure, they'd have the Holy Spirit, but they would still miss Jesus! Would they ever see Him again? Oh yes, He was going to prepare a place for each of them in His Father's heavenly home. We put up this picture of a "golden city" and had the kids find their places behind the various windows. They really liked that!!

When our Jesus was supposed to ascend, we had him disappear into the storeroom and pull the string attached to the Jesus doll so that it rose into the "clouds." But then we also enjoyed the extra visualization of going out to the street and watching a helium balloon ascend to the skies.

Kevin led the game, which I had originally described as just a "silly wedding shower type game," relating to the truth of Jesus coming back for us like a bridegroom coming for His bride. But Kevin took it further—the paper plates we balanced on our heads were to help the bride walk elegantly tall, while the oranges between our knees were to practice taking tiny steps for the narrow skirt of a traditional red wedding gown. Thanks, Kevin, that was so great!!

He also led the craft, which was ascension pictures—the little Jesus figures were on a piece of string that could pull them up behind a cloud that was attached to the paper with thick double-sided tape so that there was space behind it. Oops; should have taken a picture of those too but at least they are still at the church so I can do a make-up later…

Good little Bible study time with the girls. During the prayer time, one girl asked that Jesus would help her behave better. Once again, I was impressed; most of our adults are still thinking in terms of asking God to change their problem situations more than to change them personally. Another girl asked prayer for her upcoming ordeal of being tested on the recorder when she still hadn't figured out how to play some of the notes in the required song. Well, I've been playing recorder since I was just her age (that is, a loooong time!), so I ended up going over for a visit that evening and working on the song with her. Thank You, Jesus for a quick and enjoyable answer to that prayer!

Term break

Actually our "Life of Jesus" term isn't officially over yet. But we had some volunteers who wanted to come this Sunday & weren't available on the 18^th, so we'll finish up then.

Once before we had had a group of volunteers take the kids to a local park, leaving the adults to have some uninterrupted conversation time. But we had more kids this time, and fewer volunteers, plus it was slightly drizzly. So the parents went off to the café in the park to drink tea and talk, while the volunteers entertained the kids back at the church!

We divided up the kids into two groups as well. The volunteers stayed with the mentally handicapped kids while I took the three neurotypical girls (ages 10, 10 & 8) into the office to inaugurate our "kids' discipleship group." We talked a little about the passage where Jesus rebukes those who wanted to keep the children away from Him. Our application being that children can be His disciples too, and it would be good to use this time to discuss the day's Bible story and pray for one another like the adults do.

I'd been a little concerned that they would resent losing their free play time, but they like to talk at least as they like to play, so this little group has its appeal too! I passed out identical little notebooks with attached pens, so that we could record prayer requests and pray for each other. Each then prayed for the person on their left.

I look forward to seeing how this develops, even though it means one more meeting I need to prepare for each week.

This morning I had Bible study with the mother of two mentally handicapped girls. The younger girl, Lai Ting, is 15 and quite articulate. Mom would like her to be allowed to join the girls' group and be encouraged to think about how to apply the Bible study. She couldn't do the writing, but other than that I can imagine she would be able to be an active participant. Now I just pray that the other girls will genuinely welcome her!!

Resurrection Sunday

Our story: after reviewing what happened the previous week, while all the "frightened disciples" were huddling together, the "two bravest" (girls, of course!) decided to go visit the tomb and try to anoint Jesus' body. Just as they were realizing it was going to be hard to get into the tomb, there was a huge earthquake (lots of banging of pots) and the stone was rolled away (the door to the office opened). As the girls arrived at the tomb, out came two angels who told them the good news. They then rushed back to tell everyone else, and the whole crowd came to look at the empty grave wrappings on the bench. They didn't know what to make of it though. They all went back home except Mary, who did a good job of looking dejected and then getting all excited when Jesus came and revealed Himself to her. She then went back and told everyone she'd seen Him, but they didn't believe her. But that night, as everyone was sitting around eating (wafer cookies), who showed up but Jesus! They were afraid He might be a ghost, so they gave Him a cookie to eat which proved He wasn't. So they all rejoiced!

When we think of Easter, we think Easter eggs, right? Because they're round and hard like the stone guarding the mouth of the tomb, but when they're opened up, there is life inside! So the game needed to be played with eggs. I'd colored up a dozen & we did a relay delivering them from one bowl to another with spoons. Not original, but fun for all.

Butterflies are also a symbol of new life because of the caterpillar being "entombed" in a cocoon and emerging with a new body. I found these very clever origami butterflies at Tammy Yee's origami website.

During the free time, one of the girls dropped a bunch of legos on the ground & I took the opportunity to try and get Man Chun, who used to LOVE to pick up/put away toys (didn't matter to him whether or not someone was playing with them at the time), but has gotten really passive in the last year or so (problems balancing his meds). I knew he wasn't very good at squatting down to pick things up, though, and sure enough I couldn't get him to stoop low enough. But one of the girls saw what I was doing and wanted to help. We put some bigger things on the floor and he was able to reach them and pick them up. Later we moved to a table and I was trying to get him to stack some blocks, but in general his eyes pay little attention to what his hands are doing. The girl, Lai Woon, really wanted to help so she took over from me. She was amazingly patient with him, but her raucous "instructions" (she can't speak recognizable words) were making him nervous. I told her that & suggested she speak more softly and she did. It was so sweet to watch her with him! He never did "get it," but I was proud of Lai Woon for trying nonetheless!

Crucifixion story

We began our story with Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus was played this time not by one of our boys but by a cardboard doll. The leader of the story is a dear, believing lady but because she hasn't yet been baptized, by the tradition of the local Chinese churches she cannot yet take communion. But she got to lead it this time, with the kids (none of whom can take it either)!

Then everyone got up to walk to "Gethsemane." Jesus prayed while His disciples nodded off. Then the soldiers came & all the disciples ran away. The soldiers took the doll's robe off, hit it, put a "crown of thorns" on it, and finally, with the help of some of the erstwhile disciples, nailed it to a cross outline drawn on a wooden door. When we'd done this three years ago, we had borrowed a stuffed doll from the daycare center. It was more lifelike than the cardboard one, but we needed to be careful with it & so wrapped string around its limbs & pounded the nails through the string loops. As borrowing the doll was in doubt this year (turns out I could have), I thought, with a cardboard one we can go ahead and pound the nails right into it, to help the folks understand that it really did happen. I'm thinking now that the stuffed doll would still have been better…oh well…

After the soldiers finished gambling for Jesus' clothes, and Jesus had committed His spirit to God, we had the kids go beg his body from Pilate, who granted it to them after the soldier pierced its side. They wrapped it in a towel & laid in on a small table in Bruce's office, & slammed the door. We'll open that door Easter Sunday morning and see what we don't find!

We did the craft before the game to not go from a death to a game. We painted cross outlines with glue & then sprinkled rice stained different colors over the glue. Again, three years ago these turned out better, sigh. I think we were too stingy with the glue this time. I was low on it & forgot to stock up. Sigh.

For our game, just as the soldiers had thrown our big foam dice to gamble for Jesus' clothing, the kids threw the dice. One 4 (which sounds like the word for death) won a couple of M&M's; double 4's won a T-shirt. One of the girls threw double 4's before everyone had even gotten a turn! So we just handed out all the leftover M&M's & the game was over.

I enjoyed my time with the kids during the adult Bible study. One of the girls was commandeering my exclusive attention (the one whose sister I'd spent the whole time with a couple of weeks ago—was this a desire for equal time?). But the good thing about this was that I said I wouldn't play with her unless she would throw away the toilet paper wads she constantly rolls in her fingers until her clothes are totally "snowy" (and then she goes & gets more TP). It's a habit mom would really like to see her break, so this was a good start!

We had had a visitor this morning, a good friend, mother of a 30-something autistic son, higher functioning than most of our kids. She was coming to see about whether she might be able to share some of the load when we go on home assignment next year. But she was a bit overwhelmed by the noisy chaos of our morning. Yeah, if you don't like noise, you won't like our church, this is true. It would be great if we had been able to develop our program in a way that got everyone to quietly cooperate. But my lack of special education training shows up here, I'm afraid. Sigh.