First off we had to place the Jews in Persia, so we had everyone stand, & explained how because Israel had sinned, God had brought enemies against them. Many died (sat down) and the rest were carted off to exile in different countries (walked once around the room). We introduced two who ended up in Persia: Mordecai and his young cousin Esther.
Next we introduced King Ahasuerus, who liked to party and show off his wealth. At one particular party, he wanted to show off his wife as well. So he sent a servant to tell her to put on her crown and come let everyone see her beauty. But the queen took the crown from the servant, put it on her head, and said, "I'm the queen! If I don't want to go, I don't have to go!" The king discusses this horrible loss of face with his advisors. They all agree that Vashti could not be queen anymore or wives everywhere would get the idea that it was okay to disobey their husbands.
So then the king needs a new queen, and they hold a beauty contest to determine who it will be. All the beautiful young girls in the city are gathered to the palace. We were short three of our usual "young girls" so we recruited three moms to fill the ranks of contestants. First, they spent a whole year in cosmetic treatment—we had them all spray themselves lightly with perfume, put on some hand lotion, and then pat their faces with the puff from a (powderless) compact (actually a small folding mirror). Finally the great day came when all the candidates were to present themselves to the king. They were all taken by a servant into one of the side bedrooms where I had readied an array of dresses, which each girl put on over their clothes. Then they sashayed out one at a time—we had some hams among both mothers and daughters; great fun!!
The Bible says they were allowed to "bring anything they wanted" with them from the harem. I'm not sure exactly what they might want to bring so I had it be gifts (of little snacks) for the king—who thoroughly enjoyed playing his role of watching all these silly girls parading through in their oversized dresses while munching his goodies!
As we know, in the end, Esther was the winner. She is crowned and we all sing the wedding march while she & the king walk down the room together.
We combined game & craft into one activity this time, as it was kind of both in one anyway. We had the kids divide into two teams, with the two sitting down facing each other. We had an odd number of kids though, so called for a volunteer and got Mr. Lei. Then, we explained, we were going to do some "cosmetic treatment" like the candidates in the story's beauty contest. First, the kids in team one painted the faces of their opposite number, then team two returned the favor. Some kids barely put enough paint on to be visible, others were quite enthusiastically artistic! (Mr. Lei's partner was one, as was the girl partnering Wing Yan...)
I was most thrilled, though, with the pair-up of Ka Hei and Ying Wai. It was so neat to see both of them paint creatively and tolerate being painted in return—both did better than we expected.
The big disappointment was that Sally was absent; she loves craft time but has trouble making eye contact. I wanted to see how she would do with having to look at someone's face to do the craft! I wonder if we could arrange a special session with her some time..?
Adult Bible study centered on whether wives were supposed to always obey their husbands—some good discussion, if not as completely open in the sharing time as we might have liked.
No comments:
Post a Comment