Saul appointed as king

First, we introduced a fellow named Kish, who raised donkeys (Kish shows his page full of donkeys).  He had a son named Saul (introduce Saul).  A couple of Kish’s donkey’s went missing (he shows page of donkeys with two cut out), so he sent his son Saul to look for them.  Saul searched for three days (three trips around the room) without success.  Finally he got to the city where Samuel was living, so decided to ask him about the donkeys.  Just then, an angel flies to Samuel and whispers in his ear that the man who was going to come knocking on his door would be Israel’s king.  So when Saul knocks on the door, Samuel greets him enthusiastically and invites him to join him for a feast that day.  Saul is embarrassed and says no, no, I just wanted to find out about my father’s donkeys.  But Samuel says they have already been found (Kish shows full page of donkeys again), and suggests that the reason God caused them to be lost was in order to bring Saul to meet him!  So they go to the feast: all the kids sat around two tables.  A “servant” passed out bite-sized chocolate bars to everyone except Saul, who got a full-sized one, to illustrate how Samuel arranged for him to have the best portion.  After they all finished eating, everyone left except Saul & Samuel.  Samuel takes out a bottle and “pours oil” over the head of Saul, saying that God is anointing him as Israel’s first king.  Saul doesn’t quite believe it, I think.  He just goes home & doesn’t tell his father anything about it.

Then a couple of days later, Samuel calls all Israel together (all stand).  He has someone pull a paper out of a bag which reads “Benjamin” (I only put one paper in the bag at a time; made everything simpler).  Half the group were immediately designated as not being of Benjamin, so they sat down.  The second piece of paper drawn was, “Matrites,” and again about half the group sat down.  The last paper read “Saul” but then everyone sat down—where was Saul?  Finally someone went to the kitchen where he had been “hiding”.  They brought him out, Samuel crowned him king, and everyone rejoiced.  Here, for the sake of craft time, was where we jumped ahead a couple of chapters to where Samuel told the people that although God had allowed them to have a king, he was not happy about it.  In fact, to show how unhappy he was, even though it was a clear day, He was going to cause thunder, lightning and rain—one person shook a canister of seeds, one flashed a flashlight on & off, and then I meant to scatter a bunch of shreds of silver string over everyone for rain, but they all flew out of the cup into one corner of the room, so nobody got “wet” with this rain!  Samuel ended the story by saying that, even though God was not pleased with their desire for a king, if both they and their king obeyed Him with their whole hearts, everything would be fine.

We’d mentioned in the story that Saul was head-and-shoulders taller than anyone else.  So for our game we played “the most…the most…” (which is easier in Chinese than in English, because of the grammar.  You can just say 最tall, 最small feet, 最many situps,etc.) Divided into two teams and each team had to send out their next in line before the “kingly trait” was announced.

We did the same craft as three years ago for this story, which were rainclouds…they looked like jellyfish the first time, and they look like jellyfish this time!