Isaac’s wife & children

We were gone on vacation over Sunday the 8^th. Mrs. Chu was scheduled to lead the story, about Abraham's servant going and getting a wife for Isaac. But that morning she was unexpectedly called in to work. She gave the material to 10-year-old Wing Tung to lead. Wing Tung has led the game and craft a couple of times, and does fairly well. But, not surprisingly, leading the story was too big a job for her. She could probably tell it fine, but trying to tell it and at the same time get various kids to play their various parts, and keep track of props, etc…we heard it was rather confusing for all. Oh well, live and learn. I didn't hear how the game (blowing bubble "prayers" to the ceiling) and craft {gold bead bracelets) went.

Sunday the 15^th, then, was the story of Jacob & Esau, mainly focusing on Jacob's manipulations to get the birthright & the blessing. We disguised Jacob, one of the girls, by wrapping wooly scarves around her neck & arms. After she finished getting the blessing & sat back down, we had Esau show up and start hunting him to vent his wrath. So Jacob was supposed to flee. I looked for our Jacob to get her going, but her disguise was too good! I didn't recognize her! (I'd remembered she'd worn pink, but it was all covered up by the dark scarves. Smile.)

For a game we had ten small objects in a bag for the kids to feel for according to which photo they drew. A nice quiet game for a change, and it went well. For craft time we made microwave chili, ("that red stuff" as Esau/Edom would say) each child adding some different ingredient to the pot. When we did this three years ago, a couple of our adults wouldn't eat it because as Buddhists they eschew eating beef. So we made it with ground pork this time (turkey hamburger isn't available here). Guess what—chili tastes kind of weird made with ground pork!

Bible study was another one of those eye-openers. That's good; it means we're having genuine discussion. Still, hard to draw my application and conclusion when most people (including the believers) seemed to feel that a certain amount of bending the rules to get some extra benefits is just the way the world works. I wasn't able to convince anyone otherwise in the time we had. Will have to just pray for the Holy Spirit to use the truth in their hearts.

Abraham’s test of faith

Today was our mother church's annual outdoor service/picnic, so that's where most of our people went. I decided to stay around just in case some new folks or returnees who didn't know about the event might show. One of our regular families was actually planning to come, since the picnic lasted too long for their schedule. But I guess they decided to take the morning off as well. So there was just myself and this new "volunteer" mom with her neurotypical daughter.

We did the program anyway. Usually we set three kids as the minimum. But since I had decided to do this story with flannelgraph, we didn't need a lot of bodies. And since I had gone to all the trouble to prepare it, I figured we might as well do it!

It worked out rather well chronologically that this story happened on the low-attendance day (God keeps doing things like this!), since it is one that is kind of hard to teach to unbelievers. Although, thinking the Ng family was going to be there, I had done a lot of extra studying as to how to help mom digest it, and learned a few helpful things myself!

Like, because of what Abraham went through, none of us has to go through the same thing. Because now we KNOW God wouldn't really require us to sacrifice our children to Him. It's sort of "too late" for Him to test anyone else on that score. I'm glad of that!

Promise Fulfilled

The births of Ishmael and Isaac; another one of those stories that is hard not to have some fun with. We had just two boys (& six girls), so we picked the older boy to be Abraham. We let him pick out his wife—that was fun, he really gave it a lot of thought. Then when Sarah had her brilliant idea about Hagar, we let her pick who would be her maidservant. Everyone had a good laugh when Abraham and Hagar walked to the end of the room and came back with a baby. Wing Tung as Hagar gave a stellar performance of being "uppity" toward her mistress after having her baby. Even when Sarah finally drove her away (by beating her over the head with a balloon), she was sticking her tongue out at Sarah over her shoulder. Little ham. (A girl after my own heart—she's the one sharing my profile photo.)

When we did this three years ago, we had Abraham pass out red-colored hard-boiled eggs after Isaac was born, imitating a Chinese custom. However, our stand-in Abraham from downstairs has given us a couple of dozen red eggs twice in recent weeks for reasons only he fully understands. I didn't think anybody wanted any more eggs!

Wing Tung led the game; a variation of Simon Says ("God says"), to illustrate the point that we're supposed to wait and do things God's way rather than listen to just any old "good advice."

For our craft we did these pretty wall hangings (modeled by our pretty Wong sisters) which I found on a Bible Crafts for Kids website. It was very popular, especially sticking all the extra little stars around the larger 神是信實("God is Faithful") stars.

We had new visitors this week, a woman from our mother church and her neurotypical 7-year-old daughter. Mom wants to become a regular volunteer with us; the daughter is a little nervous yet around the other kids. (Veteran Wing Tung, on the other hand, was reported by her teacher to be speaking up in defense of mentally handicapped children at her school, saying they are nothing to be afraid of, they just think differently. Love this kid.) Anyway, part of the problem with ManMan's discomfort came from the fact that "Abraham," who had chosen her as his wife, was quite taken with her and followed her around staring at her during the free time. He used to do this with Wing Tung and finally learned mom wouldn't tolerate it. Now it seems we need to start over with ManMan. Something else to pray about!

Babel Babble

Ten kids again this week! One of them a first-timer. We're getting a bit crowded, but I like that better than rattling around.

The story of the tower of Babel is pretty short in the Bible, and was pretty short as a skit. I tried the same thing as three years ago—having them start taping paper "bricks" to the wall, and then see what happens when suddenly God confuses language and no one is allowed to talk to anyone else. Too many smart kids this time around; they knew what they were doing and having to be silent didn't stop them from working at the building. Sigh. I think it might have gone at least a little better (in other words, more properly worse!) if I had had one of the kids handing out the little bits of masking tape, instead of myself. Or something.

Charades were fun though! I was paired with one of our newer girls, who in her shyness was noisily reluctant to participate in just about anything in the first weeks. But she feels comfortable now, and did a great job following my lead to act out "taking a shower" for the others to guess.

We did wordless books as a craft—since people couldn't use words to communicate with each other right after Babel!

Bible study was a bit of an eye-opener. I said, some people might accuse God of being like an unhealthy parent who doesn't want His children to grow up and become independent. In trying to explain the difference, I hypothesized: imagine your children saying, "Okay, I am going to be an independent adult now. I will move away, and will never again make any contact, by letter or by phone, and most certainly will never, ever come to visit." How would you feel about that? I couldn't believe it when TWO people immediately responded with the same answer: "Well, as long as they sent money…"!! Different culture!!!

A little awkwardness during the share/prayer time. One mom asked prayer that her daughter wouldn't have noisy tantrums when there were no seats available on the city bus. The new mom, whose son is much higher functioning than any of the other non-neurotypical kids, responded with a confident statement that if mom were just consistently firm with her, she would behave just fine. I see this kind of thing happening frequently among other groups of parents who don't seem to "get" that kids have different levels of potential. It's quite discouraging for the moms of the more difficult kids, especially since many of them have also bought into the idea that it's not the kid, it's they themselves. Ouch. Had to work at tactfully cutting off the flow of advice and emphasizing that this was worth praying about!

My new believer-mom hasn't been able to come for Bible study lately because her father-in-law is in the hospital and she has to bring him special food every morning. But the extremely timid mom (a believer of sorts) that I'd been trying to invite to join us, DID come! That was exciting. But I quickly realized that her level of education is far lower than any of the others', and even the relatively simple follow-up materials I'd prepared & used successfully in the past, were overwhelmingly difficult for her. I hope she will come again. It's all too possible that she is much more accustomed to feeling overwhelmed than to feeling personally cared about, so I'm hoping that will tip the balance. I would so love to see her blossom in Jesus!

From Noah to Abraham

It's pretty hard to do the story of Noah and his ark without having fun! Mrs. Chu led the story time. When I first gave her the notes last week, she noticed she was supposed to open an umbrella when it started to rain. She said, hey, should I bring my plant spritzer? Great idea!

Of course before it rained we had to build the ark. We put different members of Noah's family to work pantomiming chopping down trees, sawing boards, pounding nails, and painting it all with pitch.

We pushed together the twin beds in one of the dorm rooms to serve as the completed ark. Mr. Lei kindly transported my set of nesting wooden steps over from the daycare center where I work, on his motorcycle. So when it was time for all the animals to board, they were able to climb the steps while imitating all the different animals we'd imitated during the "animal farm" game for week two. There were more animals than people, so some had to hop off and re-board…all good fun.

After our long rainstorm, when the ark landed, one of our moms was the bird who flew out, coming back empty-beaked, then with a branch in her teeth, then not at all. Sigh, I'm just never quick enough with the camera!

Instead of imitating animal actions, for our game this time we first practiced the sounds of various animals. Then kids (and one parent, to make up an even number) drew cards with animal pictures on them. Two names were drawn out of a bag & those two had to come up & make "their" noises. If they made a pair (to go 2 by 2 into the ark, of course), they "won" & got their treat of (of course) animal crackers. If they didn't, they sat back down & their names were put back into the bag. This continued until all the pairs had been matched. (When it started getting a little long, our clever leader started peeking into the bag to find names whose animals would match.)

For our craft we made very pretty rainbows by gluing together concentric circles in rainbow colors, then folding them in half. Very pretty!

That was last Sunday. I never got around to posting last week because of scrambling to get ready for this week. I'd been staying a week ahead BUT because of a Special Olympics event today, we knew a lot of our kids weren't going to be coming. So we decided to hold off on the tower of Babel story, which is much more fun with a bigger crowd, and this week take a peek ahead, and introduce Abraham.

An older gentlemen who lives on the ground floor of our building has taken an interest in our little group, and has provided treats for us a couple of times. This morning he came up with some more snacks and a box full of toys—it was a bit of an interruption, as we'd already started our program, but he paid for that! We convinced him to stay and take part in our Bible story, since we were all girls this morning, and we needed someone to play the 75-year-old male lead. Mr. Poon stroked his snow-white goatee and agreed he was perfect for the part!

It was a swift introduction. Abraham & his wife & nephew & servants pulled their luggage cart around the room, passed through the promised land and got all the way down to Egypt, where Pharoah wanted to take Sarah as his own wife. But the angel of God started beating him over the head with a balloon, so he gave her back! They all toddled back to Canaan, where Abraham & Lot agreed to separate. Then when God appeared to him the third time to tell him he was going to become a great nation, we paraphrased his reply as: "But my wife and I are so old, and we have no children, and now even my nephew has left!" But God said to trust Him, and once again Abraham believed Him, so they shook hands on it.

We'll see how God ends up fulfilling this promise, after we go back and review the Babel story…

Our game today was called "Abraham's journey." We all went out to the stairwell & up one flight of steps. Drew numbered plastic bowling pins out of a bag to determine how many steps to take. Some were forward, some were backward. The plan of the game was that if you didn't end up directly on the landing in front of our door, you were progressing down to the next landing, which was "Egypt," and you'd have to work your way back. But all of our kids were more efficient than Abraham and got to the promised land without detouring so much as a step down toward Egypt.

When they arrived at the final destination, they got a treat of raisins, a product of the promised land!

For craft time we made little covered wagons like Abraham might have used to transport his goods! Both the game and the craft were supposed to be led this time by Mrs. Chu, but instead she "bribed" her ten-year-old daughter Wing Tung to finish her homework quickly (more quickly than she EVER does) by saying that if there was enough time, she would teach her how to be the leader for this morning. So Wing Tung led and did very well at it. She looked happier than she'd been since school started last month. That was neat to see. We'll see how much more we can have her do in the future.

Cain and Abel, round 2

One thing I forgot to do this week was to tape some cardboard over the on-demand water heater in the bathroom. One of our boys is big-time into tearing off electrical switches, and he tried a couple of times last Sunday to wrench the temperature gauge off. When I heard his grandmother scream, I thought she'd been injured! But absolutely no harm done. I will cover this up tomorrow morning before anyone gets there. Even if he remembers & wants to get at the switch, this will slow him down a little. I hope!

We had nine kids, which is exciting! But one drawback is that we can't necessarily come up with parts for everyone in the Bible story, so then some of the kids get bored. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, God…still leaves out 4 kids.

Oh well, this coming Sunday we'll need EVERYONE for Noah's Ark!

We played balloon volleyball for our game. Said that normally volleyball is competitive; you want to "smash" the other team (like Cain smashed Abel). But just as Cain should have been able to cooperate with his brother instead of seeing worship as a competitive sport, we would play cooperatively and see how long we could keep the balloon going.

Even this game, in our small space, left some of the kids out when they got too far back. One neurotypical girl was especially unhappy. But we have two now and they are both the same age! They enjoyed goofing around together during the free play time. Thank You, Lord.

For the craft we did the same as three years ago; pasting cotton balls on sheep drawings to represent the good fat sheep Abel offered to the Lord. One of the moms remembered that once we pasted cotton balls on jars to make 3-D sheep. Yes, and we'll probably do that again too, but we'd start with this easier one.

I'm starting to get each week's story, game and craft instructions written up in Chinese characters, with illustrations where necessary, to eventually print up and have on CD for people to use when we've moved on. It's hard work! The stories at least are written phonetically already and "translating" them is not too big a job. But I never wrote up the game or craft instructions, either just did them myself or showed them to someone else to lead. This calls for much more complicated Chinese than I'm used to composing—yikes! (I don't think I would have managed to blog this week without the extra time provided by two public holidays (China National Day and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival)

A Snake in the Garden

This Sunday's lesson was on the fall of man. We used Barbie dolls again, because it's an important part of the story that they were naked, and there's only so far you want to go in role play! But rather than manipulating the dolls myself like I did a year ago, we had volunteers doing that. (Adam did a lot of pacing around the garden! smile) When they were supposed to eat the fruit, the volunteers ate it.

When we did this three years ago, we only had three kids that Sunday, which worked extremely well for craft time. Each one strung a bunch of fabric leaves which then became Adam's one-piece and Eve's two-piece cover-ups. This time we had six kids. Instead of just stringing the leaves together, I had them sew them to a ribbon, so that the fabric leaves (did I do a lot of cutting last week!!) would end up side-by-side instead of face-to-face. My idea was to tie the ends of the ribbon together and wrap them sort of sari-style. It didn't work super well. I'd welcome any suggestions if someone out there is more craft-wise than I am.

Our game, called "the path of sin" consisted of throwing our large foam die and taking the corresponding amount of steps on the rubber alphabet tiles laid out in line. At intervals there were different tiles (with the alphabet letters missing) & these were "sin" tiles. The idea being, life would be just dandy without sin, but if you land on one of those you have to go back to square one. One of our boys threw a number which would land him on one of these tiles. With a mischievous grin on his face, he picked up the die and made another throw—same number—and another. One of the other moms started scolding him for not playing according to the rules. I didn't want to discourage him, though. I thought he was showing great initiative, and not being crabby about "losing" but having fun with trying to get around the game. Hey, he just doesn't want to sin, I said! I can't remember now whether he ended up starting over or not. But he didn't lose his temper, that I do know, which for this boy is true progress.

In the afternoon Bruce & I went to a concert of the Macau Youth Orchestra. One of our newest kids, 10-year-old Ming Yan, was playing violin. (She's neurotypical, her 11-year-old sister is not). We enjoyed that very much. They were very good.

During this past week we had two birthdays in our core group happen to fall on the same day—Mrs. Lei's according to the Chinese calendar, and Chu Wing Tung's (my profile buddy) according to the modern calendar. So we invited both families out to dinner all together. It was really nice to get together without any core group business to think about, just enjoying each other's company. It would be nice to do more of this kind of thing.