Ten Plagues—a Double-Header

Between having been sick, and adding four new patients to my physical therapy schedule, I never did get around to updating this last week! So we'll cover two sessions with this entry. Conveniently, last Sunday was the first nine plagues of Egypt, and this morning we had the Passover.

We greatly condensed the story of the plagues. Had Moses and Aaron go straight to Pharaoh & ask that the people be let go. When Pharaoh said no, Aaron threw down his rod & it "became" a snake. Then three kids in fancy hats threw down their newspaper rods & they became small snakes which got "eaten up" by Aaron's. This was insufficient to impress Pharaoh. We skipped the bricks-without-straw part of the story and went straight into the list of plagues that were supposed to soften Pharaoh's heart (but, of course, they didn't):

1. water into blood—a small jar of "ripened" beef blood for everyone to smell—eeuuww!!

2. frogs—everyone had to get down & hop

3. fleas—everyone scratched

4. flies—one of the kids given a flyswatter to swat imaginary flies. (Had to borrow this from a friend who'd brought hers with her from the US. Couldn't find them anywhere here! Strange. It's not like we have no flies (though, granted, not as many as in Minnesota!)

5. animal sickness—had a couple of kids imitate cows, sheep & pigs, then on cue, fall over & die

6. boils/sores—everyone got bandaids

7. thunder & hail—everyone crowded for cover under three umbrellas

8. grasshoppers—gave brooms to a couple of kids to try to sweep out the invisible invaders

9. darkness—covered all the kids' eyes for a count of three (days)

That week's game involved trying to get all the grasshoppers and/or frogs out of your house—by throwing them into the opposing team's house! Kids divided into teams on opposite sides of a tape line, & bags of a few dozen newspaper wads were dumped on each side. The game was to keep picking up & throwing the things over to the other side until time was up; the winning team had the most pest-free house.

For a craft we made these darling grasshoppers out of clothespins. Very simple & a lot of fun, but I can't post a picture until I take my memory card in to the photo shop; something went flooey with it today & it doesn't fit in my computer…

So then this morning we finished with plague #10, the death of the firstborn. Started by distributing bits of jewelry to all the adults {"Egyptians"}. Then briefly reviewed the previous plagues. Since Pharaoh was still holding out, Moses warned him that this plague was going to be more horrible than any of the rest, with all first-born being killed. But in spite of all other plague warnings coming true, Pharaoh wasn't going to take this seriously.

But God did! He instructed the Israelite families to take a lamb (a small water bottle with a sheep's face on the lid and covered with cotton balls), slaughter it (saw at the neck with a plastic knife) and catch its "blood" (ketchup) in a bowl. We'd made two doors, with frames, out of brown poster paper. Different kids then dipped some plastic flowers into the ketchup and painted along the top and sides of the doors. I love this visual!

The next instruction was about not leavening their bread—a fluffy bread roll was a reject, saltine crackers were displayed as acceptable. The kids then had to go "plunder the Egyptians" by collecting the jewelry from the adults and placing it in their prepared carrier bags. Then they had to stand, with their bags over their shoulders (but no staves; I didn't manage/bother to have enough for everyone), and eat their crackers. While they were doing this, the "angel of the Lord," (a parent in a halo), walked around the room looking at the six(!) wooden doors and our two paper doors. None of the wooden doors had blood on them, of course, so they got a thumbs-down from the angel, while the paper doors with their markings got thumbs-up.

Then the wailing started by the Egyptians, and Pharaoh yelled at the Israelites to get out of there NOW. So they all trooped to the end of the room, end of story!

I thought the game was going to be simple but for some reason it wasn't. The kids sat in a circle & when music started, were supposed to pass cards around the circle, so that each child would always have a card. Some kids were collecting cards & not passing them on; one boy started standing up and throwing his cards to the four winds. I interrupted the leader at this point with my trademark yell and told the kids that if they weren't going to listen and play according to the rules, we were not going to play any games. My, it got quiet! And the game went much more smoothly after that! When the music stopped, a number tile was drawn from a bag; whichever child had that number sticker on his/her shirt would have his/her card checked. If it was a white one (no blood), the child "died" and was out of the game; if it was a red card (blood), the child got a cracker. We were going to play until the white cards were all gone, but with the confusion at first it was taking too long, so we quit before everyone died who was eligible. :-)

Craft time went well. We did smaller versions of our water-bottle sheep, using bubble-stuff jars (I've got enough bubble solution in some other containers at work now to blow bubbles until I retire, I think!)

With most of our core group folks gone for World Vision's Famine Day, and Bruce preaching elsewhere, I got to lead the adult Bible study. I really enjoyed preparing it. Application verses were from I Cor. 5:6-8 about cleansing yourself from the leaven of sin because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. It struck me that, if the children of Israel had not killed their lamb & come under the protection of its blood, they would have died. If they had gone with leavening their bread and wanted to wait around for it to rise, they wouldn't have been killed by the destroying angel, but they might have gotten left behind in Egypt and have been stuck being slaves for the rest of their lives. Just so, in the Christian life, we are saved from eternal death by the blood of Christ, our Passover lamb, but we need to get rid of the sin in our lives (also with His help, I would like to add!) in order to not live as slaves to it.

I don't know that any of the parents thought this was quite as cool as I did, but at least we got to take note that there are these two sides to the Christian life. ("What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" –Rom. 6:15)

God’s call to Moses

Between spending this week working at gathering all the props for this Sunday's story, and writing the next week's story to give to the leader, I'm having trouble remembering clearly how last Sunday went!

Let's see. The story started with an introduction of various areas in which Moses would have received a good education as the son of the princess. We had prepared a notebook & pen (reading & writing), a calculator (mathematics), a scroll (law/administration) and a sword (warfare). The idea was to have different kids identify what props went with what areas of education. The leader just went through it with "Moses," however, and rather quietly, so I'm not sure anyone else knew what was going on at that point. Oops. Things got better after that!

Moses had to kneel and propose to an Egyptian girl who wanted nothing to do with him. To show one reason he identified with his native people. He was out walking and saw some of his people working in the fields—one pushing a broom as a plow, the other with a pole over her shoulder with a peanut-butter-jar "water bucket" at each end. An Egyptian took a whip to them; Moses "killed" her and covered her with a blanket. The next day, the same two workers started fighting & Moses stepped in to break them up. They accused him of wanting to kill them too. He was frightened and fled Egypt for Midian. Became a shepherd (picture of flock of sheep on the wall).

Then he saw the burning bush (also a picture on the wall) & heard God speaking to him. Took off his shoes & knelt. Made excuses for not wanting to go to Egypt, which "God" answered in various ways including having him throw down his broom-handle staff which was quickly exchanged for a snake made of a rolled-up towel. Finally God got tired of his excuses and just ordered him to go, so he took off. End of story.

We played "snake" for our game. Tied the whole bunch (ten kids) together with plastic string, making figure-eights between each of them, and then had them walk through a simple obstacle course made of stools and folded tables. Had a hiccup or two when one of the girls wanted to sit on a stool, but eventually they made it through & back, with much hilarity!

We made burning-bush pictures for our craft. Our newest girl, Sally, really likes craft time!

I had been praying about how aggressively I should pursue our "problem" boy who hadn't come in over a month. And then one day last week ran into him & his mom on the street near our home, which is nowhere near where they live. So I took that God-presented opportunity to invite them to return, and they did come back this Sunday. Somewhat late, but early enough to participate in the game & craft. He is drooling more than ever, though was a bit better about being willing to use a towel to wipe his face rather than other surfaces. Thankful for that!

Birth of Moses

Going back to where we left the descendants of Israel in Egypt, we began by explaining how things had changed for them. As relatives of Joseph they had enjoyed a somewhat privileged position; now, they were slaves. To illustrate this we had an "Egyptian" recline in the lazy-boy, while one child fanned her with this huge wall fan (if we'd opened it all the way it would have taken two kids to fan the girl!), and another knelt to present her a glass of water on a tray. Of course, worse was yet to come; Pharaoh stood and read out the decree that girl babies could live and boy babies would be thrown into the Nile. We passed out paper cutouts of boy & girl babies to all the girls & women, then had a "soldier" with a sword come and inspect them all. He gave the girl babies back but the boys got ripped in half and thrown onto our blue tissue paper Nile. (I was careful not to give boy babies to our most not-want-to-let-go-of-anything girl, or our new visitor!)

Next we introduced a certain mother, her son Aaron, her daughter Miriam, and her new baby (doll) that she was very reluctant to throw in the Nile. She got a basket, lined it not with pitch (too messy!) but a plastic tablecloth, then towels to wrap the baby in. She put the basket in the "Nile" and set Miriam to stand guard. Along comes the princess who rescues the baby. Quick-witted Miriam suggests finding a wet-nurse & comes back with mom. The princess gives her a bag of coins and she promises happily to keep him until he is weaned.

Our very popular game involved fishing "precious things" out of water. We played hot-potato with the baby doll & whoever ended up with it had a go at fishing bobbing malted-milk balls out of a bottle of water with a 3-cm. neck, using chopsticks. Took a little patience, but if our kids are motivated by anything, it's chocolate! (What can I say? Me too!)

For our craft we folded little paper "Easter baskets" and tucked in our little cardboard clipart babies with pocket tissues. Minor emergency when more kids wanted purple paper than I had prepared; fortunately I found just enough extra pieces to dry up the tears!

Finishing up with the Ascension

In preparation for the visual aid at the end of the story, I had placed our cardboard Jesus doll on the wall under the transom window (with the string strategically covered by an extra cloud…I know, I should have a picture but forgot the camera that day…). So as we began, I asked, okay, so we know that Jesus died, and rose from the dead, and where is he now? Lai Wun yelped and pointed at the doll on the wall! I was impressed; I wouldn't have guessed she would remember the association from seeing this doll used as Jesus only once, three weeks previously!

I mixed in a lot of Jesus' upper room discourse as His farewell speech, since we hadn't touched on it before and we needed more material anyway! We talked about how having the Holy Spirit was even better than having Jesus with us if we're supposed to go around preaching the gospel to the whole world. Just like a glass of water in "Jerusalem" wouldn't help quench your thirst if you were at "the ends of the earth" (the other side of the room), but if you drank it, as our volunteer did, and then went to the ends of the earth, it would still be inside you! (Only, of course, the Holy Spirit lasts longer than a glass of water.)

Sure, they'd have the Holy Spirit, but they would still miss Jesus! Would they ever see Him again? Oh yes, He was going to prepare a place for each of them in His Father's heavenly home. We put up this picture of a "golden city" and had the kids find their places behind the various windows. They really liked that!!

When our Jesus was supposed to ascend, we had him disappear into the storeroom and pull the string attached to the Jesus doll so that it rose into the "clouds." But then we also enjoyed the extra visualization of going out to the street and watching a helium balloon ascend to the skies.

Kevin led the game, which I had originally described as just a "silly wedding shower type game," relating to the truth of Jesus coming back for us like a bridegroom coming for His bride. But Kevin took it further—the paper plates we balanced on our heads were to help the bride walk elegantly tall, while the oranges between our knees were to practice taking tiny steps for the narrow skirt of a traditional red wedding gown. Thanks, Kevin, that was so great!!

He also led the craft, which was ascension pictures—the little Jesus figures were on a piece of string that could pull them up behind a cloud that was attached to the paper with thick double-sided tape so that there was space behind it. Oops; should have taken a picture of those too but at least they are still at the church so I can do a make-up later…

Good little Bible study time with the girls. During the prayer time, one girl asked that Jesus would help her behave better. Once again, I was impressed; most of our adults are still thinking in terms of asking God to change their problem situations more than to change them personally. Another girl asked prayer for her upcoming ordeal of being tested on the recorder when she still hadn't figured out how to play some of the notes in the required song. Well, I've been playing recorder since I was just her age (that is, a loooong time!), so I ended up going over for a visit that evening and working on the song with her. Thank You, Jesus for a quick and enjoyable answer to that prayer!

Term break

Actually our "Life of Jesus" term isn't officially over yet. But we had some volunteers who wanted to come this Sunday & weren't available on the 18^th, so we'll finish up then.

Once before we had had a group of volunteers take the kids to a local park, leaving the adults to have some uninterrupted conversation time. But we had more kids this time, and fewer volunteers, plus it was slightly drizzly. So the parents went off to the café in the park to drink tea and talk, while the volunteers entertained the kids back at the church!

We divided up the kids into two groups as well. The volunteers stayed with the mentally handicapped kids while I took the three neurotypical girls (ages 10, 10 & 8) into the office to inaugurate our "kids' discipleship group." We talked a little about the passage where Jesus rebukes those who wanted to keep the children away from Him. Our application being that children can be His disciples too, and it would be good to use this time to discuss the day's Bible story and pray for one another like the adults do.

I'd been a little concerned that they would resent losing their free play time, but they like to talk at least as they like to play, so this little group has its appeal too! I passed out identical little notebooks with attached pens, so that we could record prayer requests and pray for each other. Each then prayed for the person on their left.

I look forward to seeing how this develops, even though it means one more meeting I need to prepare for each week.

This morning I had Bible study with the mother of two mentally handicapped girls. The younger girl, Lai Ting, is 15 and quite articulate. Mom would like her to be allowed to join the girls' group and be encouraged to think about how to apply the Bible study. She couldn't do the writing, but other than that I can imagine she would be able to be an active participant. Now I just pray that the other girls will genuinely welcome her!!

Resurrection Sunday

Our story: after reviewing what happened the previous week, while all the "frightened disciples" were huddling together, the "two bravest" (girls, of course!) decided to go visit the tomb and try to anoint Jesus' body. Just as they were realizing it was going to be hard to get into the tomb, there was a huge earthquake (lots of banging of pots) and the stone was rolled away (the door to the office opened). As the girls arrived at the tomb, out came two angels who told them the good news. They then rushed back to tell everyone else, and the whole crowd came to look at the empty grave wrappings on the bench. They didn't know what to make of it though. They all went back home except Mary, who did a good job of looking dejected and then getting all excited when Jesus came and revealed Himself to her. She then went back and told everyone she'd seen Him, but they didn't believe her. But that night, as everyone was sitting around eating (wafer cookies), who showed up but Jesus! They were afraid He might be a ghost, so they gave Him a cookie to eat which proved He wasn't. So they all rejoiced!

When we think of Easter, we think Easter eggs, right? Because they're round and hard like the stone guarding the mouth of the tomb, but when they're opened up, there is life inside! So the game needed to be played with eggs. I'd colored up a dozen & we did a relay delivering them from one bowl to another with spoons. Not original, but fun for all.

Butterflies are also a symbol of new life because of the caterpillar being "entombed" in a cocoon and emerging with a new body. I found these very clever origami butterflies at Tammy Yee's origami website.

During the free time, one of the girls dropped a bunch of legos on the ground & I took the opportunity to try and get Man Chun, who used to LOVE to pick up/put away toys (didn't matter to him whether or not someone was playing with them at the time), but has gotten really passive in the last year or so (problems balancing his meds). I knew he wasn't very good at squatting down to pick things up, though, and sure enough I couldn't get him to stoop low enough. But one of the girls saw what I was doing and wanted to help. We put some bigger things on the floor and he was able to reach them and pick them up. Later we moved to a table and I was trying to get him to stack some blocks, but in general his eyes pay little attention to what his hands are doing. The girl, Lai Woon, really wanted to help so she took over from me. She was amazingly patient with him, but her raucous "instructions" (she can't speak recognizable words) were making him nervous. I told her that & suggested she speak more softly and she did. It was so sweet to watch her with him! He never did "get it," but I was proud of Lai Woon for trying nonetheless!

Crucifixion story

We began our story with Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus was played this time not by one of our boys but by a cardboard doll. The leader of the story is a dear, believing lady but because she hasn't yet been baptized, by the tradition of the local Chinese churches she cannot yet take communion. But she got to lead it this time, with the kids (none of whom can take it either)!

Then everyone got up to walk to "Gethsemane." Jesus prayed while His disciples nodded off. Then the soldiers came & all the disciples ran away. The soldiers took the doll's robe off, hit it, put a "crown of thorns" on it, and finally, with the help of some of the erstwhile disciples, nailed it to a cross outline drawn on a wooden door. When we'd done this three years ago, we had borrowed a stuffed doll from the daycare center. It was more lifelike than the cardboard one, but we needed to be careful with it & so wrapped string around its limbs & pounded the nails through the string loops. As borrowing the doll was in doubt this year (turns out I could have), I thought, with a cardboard one we can go ahead and pound the nails right into it, to help the folks understand that it really did happen. I'm thinking now that the stuffed doll would still have been better…oh well…

After the soldiers finished gambling for Jesus' clothes, and Jesus had committed His spirit to God, we had the kids go beg his body from Pilate, who granted it to them after the soldier pierced its side. They wrapped it in a towel & laid in on a small table in Bruce's office, & slammed the door. We'll open that door Easter Sunday morning and see what we don't find!

We did the craft before the game to not go from a death to a game. We painted cross outlines with glue & then sprinkled rice stained different colors over the glue. Again, three years ago these turned out better, sigh. I think we were too stingy with the glue this time. I was low on it & forgot to stock up. Sigh.

For our game, just as the soldiers had thrown our big foam dice to gamble for Jesus' clothing, the kids threw the dice. One 4 (which sounds like the word for death) won a couple of M&M's; double 4's won a T-shirt. One of the girls threw double 4's before everyone had even gotten a turn! So we just handed out all the leftover M&M's & the game was over.

I enjoyed my time with the kids during the adult Bible study. One of the girls was commandeering my exclusive attention (the one whose sister I'd spent the whole time with a couple of weeks ago—was this a desire for equal time?). But the good thing about this was that I said I wouldn't play with her unless she would throw away the toilet paper wads she constantly rolls in her fingers until her clothes are totally "snowy" (and then she goes & gets more TP). It's a habit mom would really like to see her break, so this was a good start!

We had had a visitor this morning, a good friend, mother of a 30-something autistic son, higher functioning than most of our kids. She was coming to see about whether she might be able to share some of the load when we go on home assignment next year. But she was a bit overwhelmed by the noisy chaos of our morning. Yeah, if you don't like noise, you won't like our church, this is true. It would be great if we had been able to develop our program in a way that got everyone to quietly cooperate. But my lack of special education training shows up here, I'm afraid. Sigh.