Most of
today’s activities were only very marginally related to our Bible story, but
some good things happened, so I guess that’s okay! We only had three kids (big Special Olympics
event going on). First thing we did was
give everyone three name labels. They
were instructed to write their names on two of them. For the third one, they had to think of the
name of a friend or relative that they loved better than anyone else in the
world. Also had to tell us why they
loved that person. Then we stuck those
names on hearts with “love” ( 愛)in the middle to read (for example) Mary loves Bruce. Then we showed a large heart saying Jacob
loves…reminded everyone that in our story last week, Isaac had two sons, one
named Jacob, and today we were going to find out who it was that Jacob
loved. He loved…Rachel. But her dad wouldn’t let her marry until her
big sister married too. So Jacob ended
up having to marry them both (Wedding march around the room)—in fact, he ended
up with four wives! But he still loved
Rachel best of all.
But
her dad made him work for 14 years to get to marry her! He must have really loved her a lot. We probably don’t love candy (candy hearts,
no less!) enough to work 14 years to get one package. But are we willing to do 14 different
things? For this we used the “Do” cards
from “The Appreciation Game,” which are obligingly bilingual. Our helpers read them off and everyone had to
do each one. Or carefully selected ones;
it was very perceptive of Melissa NOT to go with “Pluck out a strand of your
own hair,” when Sally has just recently broken this bad habit! One of the 14 tasks was to jump like a
frog. Everyone tried, and we gave them
all credit, but none of them did it as well as our talented helper Melissa.
Another
one was making ugly faces. I thought
they mostly ended up cute rather than ugly, but they tried, right?
There
was also one where you had to look into someone’s eyes for a count of
five. Sounds too simple to be in a game
like this for ordinary folks, but for Sally, who is notoriously bad at making eye
contact, this was a real challenge. And
she made it! Took a few tries, and when
she finally did it, it was with her eyes nearly squinted shut, but facing the
right direction anyway! Thrilled!
Everyone
won their candy. While they were eating,
we talked about how Jacob was willing to work 14 years because he loved Rachel,
and we were willing to do 14 different things because we loved candy. But that Jesus was willing to do a lot more than
that—He was willing to die because He loved us so much! We asked each one if they know Jesus loved
them. They all said yes, and they all
said they loved Jesus too. So I asked
them to just pray one sentence each out loud: Thank you, Jesus, for loving
me. And they all did, even Wing Yan who
never talks if she can get away with gesturing.
Thrilled again! So then we took
the last labels, with their names on them, and stuck them onto hearts to make
them read Jesus loves…(name)
Okay,
so back to our story. Jacob loved Rachel
best, but he did have four wives. With
four wives, you could end up with a lot of kids. Jacob had twelve sons! They were all tacked up around the room at a
height that required the kids to stand on a stool to reach them. Our helpers read out the names and one kid at
a time had to look for that son, climb on the stool to get it down, and stick
it on the board in the order of the numbers on the back. Everyone really enjoyed this, except for
Sally had way too much trouble getting up on a stool, so she had other kids get
them down for her & then she went & stuck them on the board. This took longer than I’d estimated, so we
didn’t have to do our last activity—now I’m slightly ahead for next week,
hooray!
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