Isaac the Peacemaker

                Things went a teeny bit better today—still had a little more time than I had ideas.  Almost none of the activities suggested in the curriculum booklet were workable in our setting. :-(  We started by reminding the kids of what God had promised Abraham (a baby), then showed one of the craft papers from last week that tell us another promise from God:  He gives peace.  So today’s story was about how God helped Abraham’s baby, Isaac, to become a man of peace.

                We introduced Isaac, now all grown up with a wife and two children.  Isaac was a wealthy man with lots of cattle and sheep.  What do sheep and cattle eat?  Grass.  Nobody could think of anywhere there was much grass in Macau.  But where Isaac lived, there was plenty of grass—at least, until it didn’t rain.  So what could they do if it didn’t rain and there was no grass?  They had to move.  We asked who had ever moved, and if they thought it was a good thing or a hassle.  Everyone agreed—hassle!  So, the family had to pack their suitcase to move.  I should have slowed this down a lot more.  I had brought a huge suitcase full of stuff for our “family of four” & unpacked it in & around the teacher’s desk in our classroom.  Basically kids just grabbed stuff and threw it in & I tried to name it as it was being dumped.  Then the family had to haul it once around the room to arrive at “Gerar.”  I was originally going to have them unpack the suitcase at this point, but after the first free-for-all I decided, forget it.  So anyway, the reason they went to Gerar is that Abraham had once dug a well there.  But—someone had filled it in!  So the family had to work together to “dig out” the black circle taped to the floor.  Well, then along came the local folks and said, hey, that was their well, they couldn’t use it.  Isaac did not lose his temper; they just went a ways away and dug another.  And the neighbors came again and said, sorry, since we lived here first, this well you just dug is ours too.  Now, that’s unfair!  Who dug this well, anyway?  But Isaac did not lose his temper.  Instead, he told his family they would just have to move again.  Another trip with the suitcase around the room.  Dig some more, tape down the third black circle.  This time, none of the neighbors fought with them over the well.  So Isaac thanked God for giving them peaceful neighbors, and good water to drink.

                After this, we all sat back down & divided the kids into two groups (of three each).  Helpers asked the kids if they had good neighbors or if they ever got in fights with their neighbors.  Or their classmates, or their siblings.  Two of the kids in my group insisted they never lose their temper.  Ha!  I’ve seen them both hard at it!  Then the helpers prayed that they would be able to get along with their neighbors/friends/siblings, with the peace that God promises.

                So after praying to be peaceful neighbors, our next two activities focused on doing what the bad neighbors had done, oh well…we passed out two paper cups to each kid; one full of sand and the other empty, though with a blue circle stuck in the bottom to represent water.  They got plastic spoons and were instructed to use them to fill up their “wells” like Isaac’s neighbors had.  (Sorry, with the spoon, not by just pouring from one into the other!)  When they were all done, we pointed out that the now empty cup also had “water” in the bottom.  If you try to fill up a well by digging up the dirt right next to it, you’re going to end up with another well!  So much for filling it up!  So if you really want to plug up a well, you should bring the dirt from somewhere else, probably in a wheelbarrow.  So of course then we had to play at being wheelbarrows.  I wasn’t sure if any of the kids had done this before and how willing they would be to do it, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it, even Wing Yan who could NOT hold herself up with one hand while dumping a cup of sand with the other, collapsing in helpless laughter!  Our helpers weren’t real used to it either and preferred to go with one helper per wheelbarrow “handle” but that was okay!  The only trouble was the game didn’t take nearly as long as I thought.  We probably should have gone out into the hallway for a longer “runway” rather than stay in our small classroom, oh well.  So after I proclaimed we were done, I looked at the clock (horrors!) and retracted my statement.  Said we had to do it as a race now.

                Finally, after all that work—it’s hard work being a bad neighbor, much easier to live at peace!—we all needed a drink of water.  (Not from our sandy wells though.)  And a little snack.  Then, to be “good neighbors” to the Education Center whose rooms we borrow, we all worked together (more or less) to sweep up and put the desks back into rows before going to meet the adults for final announcements.  (We just started this last week—having the kids signal “time’s up” by invading the parents’ classroom rather than the other way around.  The kids get antsy but the parents could chat on forever and forget we need a break over in the kids’ room!)