Deborah

This story turned out a little too short, in spite of adding some "filler" at the beginning with introducing Moses, who dies, then Joshua, who dies, before explaining the role of the judges, of whom we'll meet just two in this unit.

We had Deborah sitting in front of a palm tree drawn on the blackboard. Lai Wun did a great job. She is non-verbal, yet when she was supposed to tell Barak to go destroy Sisera, she got all the tones exactly right!

While she and Barak were chasing Sisera, our Jael invited him into her tent, which was a sheet over a desk. He was very cooperative about going in there and lying down. Deborah and Barak were also cooperative about not noticing his feet sticking out!

The cooperation evaporated real quickly when Jael crept into the tent and started hammering on the end of the tent peg. I don't think she was actually pounding it on his head! But it took some coaxing to get him back under the sheet, so that Jael could get Barak to come look at him with the tent peg through his temple…

Last week a visitor had complained that our game was "dangerous" because we were having kids throw things. Funny she did not object to this week's game, which was screwing large plastic screws, relay fashion, into cardboard heads. (Actually less dangerous than pounding something through.) I had wondered if it was a little too gruesome, but the kids just had fun. It was good practice for them to learn to use a screwdriver; two kids went from clueless to getting the idea during the course of the game!

For craft time we made leaves for our palm tree, by sticking two pieces of tissue paper together around a stem, and then fringing the edges. Here is "Deborah under her palm tree."

We might have made too big a deal out of the palm tree. It was a great craft! But during the adult Bible study, one of the moms asked if Deborah got her power from the palm tree she sat under! Oops! Another mom helped clarify that the palm tree was special because Deborah sat under it, rather than the other way around. It is so great when they ask questions like this though. So much better that they ask them than just think them!!

The Fall of Jericho

Of course before we could conquer Jericho, we had to get across the Jordan, right? So we had everyone line up behind our two "priests" who were carrying the ark of the covenant between them. I used this ark I'd made a couple of years ago for a different story. It was somewhat the worse for wear after today's story; our priests couldn't quite hang onto the idea that they were supposed to stand still in the middle of the Jordan. So with all the forward and backward pushing and shoving, the sockets for the poles got ripped off the sides—oh well!

After everyone crossed over, but before the priests came up out of the riverbed (not yet, not yet), Joshua had 12 people go & each retrieve a large stone from the riverbed to build a memorial. When I was planning this story, I was trying to think, what can I use for stones? The small planter/aquarium stones I have are too small & hard to make a solid pile of. Legos didn't seem right either…aha! A perfect use for all those boxes of individually wrapped mooncakes we were recently given for the Chinese mid-Autumn festival!

Next it was time to conquer Jericho which, we reminded everyone, was the home of Rahab. She was sent up to the upper bunk with her "family" (half-a-dozen paper-towel rolls with faces) where she tied the red cord to the top of the ladder, and waited. In the meantime, we began our marching. When we did this three years ago, we had a smaller crowd. Today's was extra large & it was not working as well to get everyone out of the living room, out the balcony, in past Rahab's house on the edge of the city wall, & back out to the living room. So we didn't do the whole thirteen circumnavigations this time. Did two (sitting down and "sleeping" after each) & then said now we were at the seventh day…and the seventh trip around. Then when the people shouted and one of the priests "blew" a trumpet, our cued-in Rahab dropped a "wall" of legos off the top bunk with a satisfying crash! Our two spies then rescued her and her family, taking the paper towel rolls from her before helping her down the ladder. Rahab hammed it up very thoroughly, I love it! Only after she was safe did a bunch of kids run in with swords & then come back out and throw a bunch of tissue paper flames into the doorway. End of story.

The obvious game consisted of knocking down a small wall of wooden blocks (NOT mooncakes—you'd have to have a bowling ball to knock them over!) with a sponge "trumpet." Then we made our own little trumpets of toilet paper rolls, colored paper, & stickers for the valves.

Rahab and the two spies

Back up to eight kids this week. It was a shorter story than usual. Three years ago we'd done Rahab and the fall of Jericho together; this time I decided to split it into two stories so we could have a little more fun with the fall of Jericho (for next week). Which meant that I was desperate to embellish this one, ha!

We started by introducing Moses and reiterating how they'd followed him around the wilderness until all the older generation had died off—so we all marched around the room, pushing the adults down into chairs one by one. Finally Moses (last adult standing) died too. And Joshua was introduced as his successor.

Joshua tells everyone they are going to enter the land in three days. This time no one dares to say no! But he still sends a couple of spies in first to check out their first big obstacle, the city of Jericho. It was a big city, so they needed to spend the night there. This woman named Rahab invited them into her home, i.e. one of the side bedrooms. (Decided not to point out that she was a prostitute.) Some people got wind of this and went to tell the king of Jericho, who decided to send a couple of soldiers to capture them. So Rahab sent the two spies up the ladder to the top bunk. I wasn't sure how Sally would manage the ladder but she did fine! (Wish I'd gotten a picture.) Then Rahab did her best to cover them with a sheet. It definitely was a good thing the soldiers didn't inspect the "roof" too closely, ha! Rahab sends them off to keep searching, then she makes her deal with the spies to rescue her family. We almost missed giving her the red cord, but then they managed to give it to her before they climbed back down & left. End of story. A lot of parents missed the action since it was taking place in the side room & they didn't come look, sigh.

Since the soldiers had been looking for spies who were covered up, our game involved looking for candy that was covered up by one of three overturned teacups that were moved around the table. Most of our kids kept very careful track & found the candy without hesitation. The two Wong girls have a little more trouble concentrating, & the younger girl was starting to get upset because she hates to try anything she doesn't know how to do. And if she won't, neither will her sister. Mr. Lei, who was leading the game, got the brilliant idea of asking Lai Ting (the younger sister) to do the mixing up of the cups, which she could handle, so she was happy. Then some other kids wanted to do that to. That was a fun twist to the game.

Craft time was pretty simple. Each child had a drawing of a house with a flat roof. They first were given two stickers of men lying down (flannelgraph figures scanned in, shrunk, and printed on label sheets) to put on the roof. At first one of the girls didn't quite catch which side of the house was up (no one ever sees one-story houses here!) and stuck a spy on the wall. When her mistake was pointed out, someone else immediately suggested he was climbing up to the roof. He then made it to the top safely. :-) When everyone's spies were in place, glue was smeared over the whole roof, spies and all, and shredded-tissue "grass" (or "flax," whatever flax looks like—I have no idea) was stuck on to completely cover the spies. Not elegant, but possible for everyone; I don't think anyone needed parental help this time!

Spying out the Land

Extra low attendance this Sunday, due to a big Special Olympics event. Only four kids total—two mentally handicapped & two neurotypical. I don't know if this was good timing or not: We were being visited by a woman from Hong Kong who is planning on applying to the mission to be sent to take over at MLFF while we are in the US next year. So she didn't get the whole picture. Sigh.

Other than attendance, it was a good Sunday. We got our Israelites (kids) to the edge of the promised land, but could see that it was full of people (adults)! In fact, the people of the land were very tall (all the adults stood up on stools). So Moses sent a bunch of spies in to see just how good the land was. They all had to sneak quietly through the gauntlet of "giants" and head out to the balcony. While there, adults and children counted loudly to 40 (for the number of days they spied out the land) while the spies were collecting evidence of the land's fruitfulness. Then they brought it back carefully past the giants again.

Of course, in spite of this, everyone whined and complained again about how tall the people were, so they ended up being sentenced to wait another 40 years, for the next generation to enter.

For game time, we had a narrow aisle to pass through between two rows of stools, with two volunteers waving long cardboard tubes up and down for the kids to have to dodge. Our volunteers got a little too enthusiastic and one cardboard tube got destroyed! But no one was hurt and everyone had fun.

Our craft was making "giants" from marshmallows.

Playing Catch-up

Apparently things were a bit slow at Merciful Love while we were on vacation. Well, I hope it made things easier for the leaders.

The first week (August 22) they finished up the last commandment. For the story, they used Naaman the leper, with Elisha's servant Gehazi being covetous of the gifts Naaman had offered for his healing (which Elisha had refused).

The game was about the perils of coveting too much. A pan was prepared with a paper towel spread over it and fastened in place with a rubber band. This was placed on a stool in the middle of the group. Then a bag of small stones of various sizes was passed around the group. Each person would place one stone on the paper towel in turn. The object was to see whose "coveting" of "just one more…" would tear or otherwise dislodge/destroy the prepared pan. Even the cheap paper towels we used are amazingly strong—this game works better if you dampen the paper slightly before beginning the game.

The opposite of covetousness is contentment, so the craft was cutting & pasting these "contented cats."

The next week was the review of the ten commandments. The instructions were for each family to receive one or two slips of paper listing one of the commandments and the story that had gone along with it. I really wanted the parents to try to lead their kids to act their stories out. Even if they didn't remember the story, to at least act something out that would give a clue to the commandment for others to guess which one was being portrayed. But the volunteer helper who came that week, an even bigger ham than myself, ended up capitulating and acting everything out for the others to guess. I do hope she involved some of the kids (I didn't want to ask, in case it came out too grumpy/controlling), since it would be the adults in general who would be doing the guessing.

For the game, the kids were to divide into two teams, each with the commandments written out on ten slips of paper. With our big poster board example displayed in the front, they were supposed to place them in the correct order on smaller "stone tablets," relay fashion, racing to see which team was fastest and/or most accurate.

I don't know how it went speedwise, but I did notice that neither group got them all in the right order!

Since they were now done learning the ten commandments, the kids made paper graduation hats for craft time.

Whining and complaining

Yes, I know, this story belongs a lot earlier in the Exodus account. I doubt any of our people noticed though. :-) We had talked about manna when we talked about honoring the Sabbath. This time we talked about water and quail, with emphasis on the people's whining and complaining, not trusting that God would provide.

Included were:

The bitter water at Mara, with Moses throwing a tree branch (broken off of Zaccheus' sycamore, I love it when I can recycle props) into the crumpled-blue-tissue-paper water supply.

The water that came out of a rock (came out from behind the folded table that the rock was taped onto) when Moses struck it.

The flock of paper quails that came "flying" down among the Israelites when they were complaining about not having meat to eat.

We did craft ahead of game time this week. The craft was making slingshots such as perhaps the Israelites could have used to bring down the quail. Tied two craft sticks together in an x-shape, with the top part of the x being much larger, then strung a twisted rubber band across the top. Then of course we shot down (or tried to shoot down!) some stand-up quail targets using the slingshots, with small squares of cardboard, the same size/shape as our "manna wafers" but that could be folded slightly around the rubber band for gripping & shooting.

I was standing behind the targets and got hit a lot more often than the quail. I guess they wanted to eat "hippo meat" more than they wanted quail, ha!

Fourth anniversary

We took another break this week before finishing the commandments. Besides it being our 4^th anniversary, we wanted to do something special to say good-bye to some of our special helpers who are leaving Macau this month. So we told two brief Bible stories, relating each one to a different "honoree."

First we introduced the prophet Elijah (Kevin Hui, who will enter Tokyo Christian University this fall). He was a famous prophet, probably most famous for the time he was going to sacrifice a bull on the altar (one of the kids wearing cow horns, stretched out on a board across several stools), and God Himself sent fire down from heaven to consume the burnt offering (girl in halo sprinkles tissue paper flames over the bull). God really loved Elijah, so much that when it didn't rain for three years and a lot of people didn't have enough to eat, he sent ravens to feed him (kids with black wings carrying crackers and a water bottle). Not only that—God loved him so much that when it came time for him to leave this world, he didn't have to die! Instead, God sent a fiery chariot, drawn by horses of fire, to carry him up to heaven!

I was quite proud of this fiery chariot—a leftover from the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, with tissue flames added. I was also very proud of our two horses. I never guessed Ka Ho would be willing to keep his horse mask on long enough to help carry Elijah away, much less long enough to pose for a picture afterward! Good job, Ka Ho!

Wound up this story by saying that Kevin was like Elijah. He had done some wonderful things in God's service, and now he was going to fly away from us in a "fiery chariot." We presented him with his farewell gift. Then it was time for the next story.

Unfortunately, our second honoree had to work! But her daughter came, so she was the main character in our story: Jesus. Jesus, of course, also did mighty miracles, and God loved Him very much. Although He had to die, that wasn't because God didn't love Him enough. Instead, it was because both Jesus and His heavenly Father loved us so much that He died in our place so that we could go to heaven. But then, of course, He rose from the dead and also went to heaven in a special way.

But when all this was about to happen, He wanted to make sure His followers knew just how much He really loved them, and how much He wanted them to love one another. So He and His followers ate dinner together (Jesus passes out crackers to all). While they were eating, Jesus got up & tied a towel around His (her) waist & got a basin of water…and began to wash everyone's feet! We didn't have Man Man actually do this for everyone; it could have weirded some folks out. We just said, when He got to Peter (a girl we'd gotten to okay this before we started), Peter said, no way! You are my Master, you can't wash my feet! And Jesus replies, but it is important that you let me do this, or else you won't really belong to me. So Peter lets him. And Jesus concludes, now I want You all to follow Me in this. You need to love one another as I have loved you, and be willing to serve one another humbly.

Our absent friend Ka Lin learned this lesson well from Jesus, we pointed out. Even though she didn't do a lot of upfront stuff in the time she was volunteering with us, she was always willing to do any little behind-the-scenes thing that needed doing. And we appreciate Man Man too, because it was hard for her, being shy and not used to being around mentally handicapped/autistic kids, to come to Merciful Love with her mother. But she was obedient, and fit in very well and ended up liking it very much! So we presented Man Man with gifts for herself and her mom.

Our game followed the foot-washing theme. The kids lined up in two teams, each on a row of stools, sitting shoulder to shoulder. While we didn't actually do any foot-washing, we did the before-and-after. Kid one had to take off kid two's shoes, then sit down while kid two took off kid three's shoes, etc., until the last kid took off kid one's shoes. Then the procedure was repeated only putting the shoes back on. It was great fun, and once again I was thrilled with how well everyone cooperated. It was a little unfair; the first team one because they had more kids wearing flip-flops as opposed to regular shoes! Something else interesting to note: a-Wai, from our very poorest family, never wears anything but flip-flops. He was supposed to take off the lace-up shoes of the person next to him and he had NO idea where to begin! But he hung in there while Bruce was helping him, hand-over-hand.

For craft time, we used a worksheet I found on the internet where the kids glued pieces of cereal ('food that the ravens brought Elijah") in the spaces provided and then added them up to see what the total amount was.

We had ordered in food, then, for a meal to celebrate the anniversary. During our Bible stories, A-Wai had been demonstrating a new odd behavior pattern—holding his face under the water faucet while scratching at it vigorously. Then coming back into the room with water dripping off his chin. Finally I told him that he either stop this, or he would have to leave before the meal. And he stopped! After the meal, however, he was right back in the bathroom doing it again. We hadn't cut the cake, though, so I told him that he would have to leave now, without cake. "But I won't do it again!" he said. (A complete sentence!!) However, I felt that it was more important to be consistent in penalizing his aberrant behavior just then, than to reward his grammatical excuses. And he & his mom had had a good meal.

I still feel bad about the whole thing though. I wouldn't do this with any other kid; they all have behavior problems of one kind or another. One big difference, however, is that their parents take charge of discipline themselves. A-Wai's mom is simply unable to do this. She was smiling as she left; it's possible that she appreciated someone taking him in hand. (And he didn't lose his temper! He just tried his excuse & then left!) I need to talk to her more about this some time, I know. But we left the next day for vacation. Will not be back until September. Praying for them, and the best way—and the most pleasing to God, which I still don't know whether this was--to help both a-Wai and his mom.

Pictures will also have to wait until September!