Back in the Saddle

It’s wonderful to be back at Merciful Love after our six-month home assignment. Attendance and enthusiasm are high! Now if I can just scrape off a little rust here.

When we were gone three years ago, Kevin led a series on the parables of Jesus. Unfortunately, the notes he left behind weren’t easily reproducible, so Grace hasn’t been doing any parables beyond a first one, on the Sower, during the two months since finishing the Acts curriculum I left behind. She’s been so busy doing some fantastic pastoral work with individuals, that on Sundays she has used whatever materials she could find with help from others. I am thankful that she is okay with my taking over the Sunday planning again as I would really like to get the whole package updated and user-ready for—(? don’t ask!). Which means I will eventually have to go back and write some filler stuff, but for right now I’m just managing week by week. With the Lord’s help!!

Anyway, enough of this. Our first Sunday back was just a welcome party, but this past Sunday we plunged into the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). We introduced a couple of new characters at the beginning of the parable; besides the owner, we assigned two adult “foremen” who would be in charge of keeping the hired laborers on task. Task being, pick grapes one by one off of some bunches at one end of a long table, wash each grape in a basin in the middle of the table, and then put it in the proper red- or green-grape box at the other end. We made a paper clock that one of the girls happily set to the different times—6:00, 9:00, 12:00. 3:00 and 5:00—when the owner went out among the group to choose one or two more kids as laborers, agreeing with them for one silver coin each (show coin, get a handshake). Then a bell rang at 6:00 and everyone had to line up from the most recent hire to the all-day ones. Each got their silver coin & then the first two hired were encouraged to whine about not getting more. (Encouraging whining! Oh dear!) :-) Finally wound up with a short dialogue emphasizing that this was in fact not unfair.

I’m not sure anyone understood the meaning of the parable, especially since the Bible study time was a “special” one where the parents watched a testimony video & discussed it while the kids were doing their game and craft. This is a new thing we’re trying once a month when a team of three usually comes from Hong Kong to help out. Only one came this week though!

Anyway. Our game consisted in each child drawing a card assigning them a different simple task, but each one getting the same reward. Then for craft time we made clocks “like the one used in the story.” Well, sort of!