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.