1. We only sang once instead of twice, so it didn't get to be such a terribly long and late night.
2. We added a new feature, a recorder duet by myself and one of our neurotypical girls who's been learning recorder at school.
3. We had these nifty new t-shirts, paid for by a Christmas gift from the family of one of our sometime-volunteers.
Oh, and 4., we invited a friend, George Dunlop, to take pictures for us, and he did a great job!
The angel is a bit annoyed (I'm definitely taking some license here) and says, I'm God's messenger, I'm standing in the holy of holies, and you accuse me of lying? You want to know if this is for real, then I'll give you a sign: you won't be able to speak your doubts—or anything else!—until your son is born, and you name him John.
Zacharias comes out and people ask him why he's been in there so long. He flaps his arms—there was a bird in there? No, no—he traces a circle on his head—oh, an angel! What did he say? He pantomimes holding a baby. The angel was holding a baby? No, no—he goes and finds his wife, the oldest woman present (60-something, perfect!) and pats her stomach. Oh, she's going to have a baby! Wonderful!
Cut to Mary sitting by herself. The angel appears again, and says, Don't be afraid, you are greatly blessed by God and will have a son. Mary says (again, taking some license), I can't figure out how this could be since I'm not married yet, but if you say so, it must be true! The angel says, you haven't asked for a sign, but I will give you one. Your relative Elizabeth is also going to have a son in her old age. She is already six months pregnant.
The angel leaves and Mary decides to go visit Elizabeth. She knocks on a door and out comes the pregnant Elizabeth!
Her pillow is showing, but everyone got the point and loved it!
When she hears Mary's voice, the baby jumps in her womb. Soon Elizabeth's time comes to disappear into the bedroom & come back out minus pillow but holding a baby. Everyone congratulates her & someone asks, are you going to call him Zacharias junior? Zacharias gets up, gestures No, no, and gets pen & paper, and writes "His name is John." As soon as he finished writing, he could speak again, and praises God.
For our game, we imitated the unborn John the Baptist and "jumped for joy" over a length of string held at higher and higher levels.
Craft time, also a favorite, was folding paper angel bodies, but then attaching prepared photos of each person's head, and pasting on a halo. Since no one takes their crafts home anyway, we then stuck all the angels on a Christmas tree on the wall.
One of our girls put her head on a bit too low, making her angel a bit hunchbacked looking. Later on she asked if she could take her angel off the tree. Why? Because her neck was starting to get sore! She was really worried that she had caused this by placing her angel head wrong! But I said I could fix her neck and "kissed it better." She seemed okay after that!
Next we see the proud Haman being annoyed by the fact that Mordecai won't bow to him. So he suggests to the king that all the Jews be killed & the king says, sure go ahead. Moredecai sends Esther another very brief message (SOS), but this time she doesn't pass it on to the king. She writes back (Can't!) and he responds (Must!). The narrative, of course, spells out more detail, but no way could we have the kids write complete messages. So anyway, then everyone kneels down to "pray and fast" for the count of three (days). Esther goes to see the king and he welcomes her. She invites him and Haman to a feast for the following night. (We cut this down to just one feast. Saved time & didn't change the basic plot.)
Haman is really puffed up now; he's the only commoner invited to the royal feast. (I am SO PROUD of our Haman. He used to be one of our biggest behavior problems but lately he has been doing so well. He actually got into hamming it up, this time! I love it!) Only one thing mars his self-congratulations: that Mordecai still refuses to bow to him. Hmm…why wait until the day for all the Jews to be killed? Since he's in such obvious favor with the king, why not ask tomorrow morning that Mordecai be put to death right away?
That night the king can't sleep so he's browsing through his scrapbook. He comes across the note written by Mordecai that saved his life, and realizes he has never done anything to reward him, for shame!
So the next morning Haman shows up, and before he can get a word out, the king asks him, what should be done for someone I want to honor? Haman is sure he's the one the king means, so he thinks of something he'd really like: wearing the king's robe & crown, riding the king's horse, and having someone lead him around the city telling everyone how much the king honors him. The king says: Fantastic idea! Go get Mordecai and do that for him right now! Haman has no choice but to comply:
Whew, that was awful. Good thing he hadn't put forth his request!! Oh well, he still has this wonderful banquet to look forward to, right? And wonderful it was!
Afterward the king is so happy he says to Esther, absolutely anything you want, what can I do for you? She says, "Just save my life from the wicked enemy who wants to kill me and my people." The king says, who would dare do such a thing? Esther points dramatically to Haman. The king calls for his soldiers, who pull a pillowcase over his head and lead him off. (Haman really did do a great job, but he couldn't take the pillowcase; that was a bit too much.) The king does away with the order for the extermination of the Jews, & he & Esther live happily ever after. (Yes, I know, the laws of the Medes and the Persians could not be revoked, but it was simpler this way and again, didn't really change the basic plot.)
Our game was to determine whether the king would allow you in to see him, since in our story that was an iffy thing. We had the "king" (one of our fathers) sit on his throne, with an armed soldier guarding the invisible door about six feet in front of him (to prevent the kids from crushing too close and spoiling the idea that not just anyone can approach the king). Then we had each child draw a "Do" card provided from "The Appreciation Game." If they were able to do what it said, they could get in to see the king, who gave them a treat. Everyone passed.
The king wore a crown, Esther wore a crown, even Mordecai wore a crown for a little while, so our craft was making crowns.
Since I wasn't sure I had enough of the gold paper to make a model, I didn't discover ahead of time that the pieces didn't stay stuck to the headband very well. It was getting sort of frustrating until someone had the idea to grab a stapler. Next time, double-sided tape on the headband would be the way to go.
First off we had to place the Jews in Persia, so we had everyone stand, & explained how because Israel had sinned, God had brought enemies against them. Many died (sat down) and the rest were carted off to exile in different countries (walked once around the room). We introduced two who ended up in Persia: Mordecai and his young cousin Esther.
Next we introduced King Ahasuerus, who liked to party and show off his wealth. At one particular party, he wanted to show off his wife as well. So he sent a servant to tell her to put on her crown and come let everyone see her beauty. But the queen took the crown from the servant, put it on her head, and said, "I'm the queen! If I don't want to go, I don't have to go!" The king discusses this horrible loss of face with his advisors. They all agree that Vashti could not be queen anymore or wives everywhere would get the idea that it was okay to disobey their husbands.
So then the king needs a new queen, and they hold a beauty contest to determine who it will be. All the beautiful young girls in the city are gathered to the palace. We were short three of our usual "young girls" so we recruited three moms to fill the ranks of contestants. First, they spent a whole year in cosmetic treatment—we had them all spray themselves lightly with perfume, put on some hand lotion, and then pat their faces with the puff from a (powderless) compact (actually a small folding mirror). Finally the great day came when all the candidates were to present themselves to the king. They were all taken by a servant into one of the side bedrooms where I had readied an array of dresses, which each girl put on over their clothes. Then they sashayed out one at a time—we had some hams among both mothers and daughters; great fun!!
The Bible says they were allowed to "bring anything they wanted" with them from the harem. I'm not sure exactly what they might want to bring so I had it be gifts (of little snacks) for the king—who thoroughly enjoyed playing his role of watching all these silly girls parading through in their oversized dresses while munching his goodies!
As we know, in the end, Esther was the winner. She is crowned and we all sing the wedding march while she & the king walk down the room together.
We combined game & craft into one activity this time, as it was kind of both in one anyway. We had the kids divide into two teams, with the two sitting down facing each other. We had an odd number of kids though, so called for a volunteer and got Mr. Lei. Then, we explained, we were going to do some "cosmetic treatment" like the candidates in the story's beauty contest. First, the kids in team one painted the faces of their opposite number, then team two returned the favor. Some kids barely put enough paint on to be visible, others were quite enthusiastically artistic! (Mr. Lei's partner was one, as was the girl partnering Wing Yan...)
I was most thrilled, though, with the pair-up of Ka Hei and Ying Wai. It was so neat to see both of them paint creatively and tolerate being painted in return—both did better than we expected.
The big disappointment was that Sally was absent; she loves craft time but has trouble making eye contact. I wanted to see how she would do with having to look at someone's face to do the craft! I wonder if we could arrange a special session with her some time..?
Adult Bible study centered on whether wives were supposed to always obey their husbands—some good discussion, if not as completely open in the sharing time as we might have liked.
We took a break from our unit on Old Testament women in favor of a story that would have a more direct application to both groups: the importance of thankfulness. Conveniently, this was just three days after the American holiday of Thanksgiving!
The story of Jesus healing the ten lepers is not terribly long, but it took plenty enough time to get all our lepers kitted out in bandages and face masks.
Lai Wun ended up looking more like a surgeon than a leper, but she was cute anyway!
One thing we could all be thankful for was that, whatever our problems, none of us are afflicted with leprosy! In Bible times it was a particularly frightening disease, entailing as it did exile from the community. We had folks throwing stones (paper wads) at them. A few of the kinder ones threw food (small packets of crackers) for the lepers to share. All in all a miserable existence. So when they saw Jesus at a distance, having heard that He was a healer, they all cried out for mercy. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priest. They scratched their heads at that. How come? Did Jesus want the priests to confirm their leprosy so He would know what He was up against, or what? Whatever—they started walking, when suddenly, one of the boys (who had been complaining that he wanted to take his bandage off anyway) said, "Hey, guys, I have feeling in my leg all of a sudden!" He got to take off his bandage and say, look, it's healed! That was the signal for everyone to take off their bandages, give high fives all around, and head off for the unseen priest (a volunteer just escorted them out the door of the main room temporarily. All but one, who stopped and said, I better go back and thank Jesus while I still know where He is. (Actually, our Jesus had disappeared; tired of his inactive role. So his brother became the stand-in.) So the one came back and knelt at His feet saying, praise God, praise God! Jesus lifted her up and praised her for having a thankful heart which is even more special to God than strict obedience.
For our game, we divided into two teams. Instead of running to Jesus and falling to their knees, the race involved running to Jesus on their knees. He would then lift them up and they could run back to their team. The extra twist in this was that each "runner" had to wear knee protectors (those lepers need to protect their skin, you know!), so as each child got back to their team they had to take them off for the next child to put on. This was not exactly done "decently and in order," and you couldn't prove which team had actually won, but it was fun anyway!
The craft was fairly simple; making "tambourines" to sing praises with. Each child got a foil pie plate, and eight small jingle bells to attach along the rim with florist wire. Everyone seemed to prefer wearing them as hats rather than using them as musical instruments, though!
We didn't have a regular Bible study during the last period; while the kids had some free play time, the adults heard a testimony of thankfulness for God's grace from a Hong Kong father with two autistic sons. Afterward we all enjoyed a catered "potluck" meal together, while families from the two churches got to know one another better in individual conversations. A group this large every week would be truly exhausting (I trust if we get this large we will have more volunteers available!), but once in a while is great!
We introduced Elisha & his servant and had them walk around the room a couple of times, stopping twice at the invitation of our heroine to sit down at the table with bowls & chopsticks and "eat a meal" with her & her husband. After they left the second time, the woman suggests preparing a room for them, and they do that together: they unfolded a cot in a corner of the room and added a table, chair and candlestick.
The next time Elisha came around they were invited to relax in the room. Our Elisha was NOT going to lie down on the bed; at least she was eventually willing to sit on the edge of it, while Gehazi sat on the stool. They conferred about what to do to thank the woman & eventually tell her she's going to have a son. (Actually we had to just say, they told her. Elisha was instructed to tell our 11-year-old Shunammite woman she was going to have a son. She stared at her for a few beats and whispered, "she's so young!") Anyway, she is told the prophecy and says, don't trick me, please.
Sure enough, she has a son. I forgot to bring the baby doll from home; so I grabbed an old craft off a shelf; one of these 
dolls we'd made out of water bottles and Styrofoam balls. Mom was trying to cuddle her baby when its head fell off—oops! (Must be why the child ended up with the murderous headache in the next scene, right?)
We chose one of our not-usually-overly cooperative girls to be the child and she did well, though she wanted mom to stick with her. Worked well; we had mom be one of the other reapers when the child complained of the headache—the one who brought the child home. Decided on the spot to skip the interlude with the child sitting on mom's lap until he dies & put him/her straight to bed. Fortunately she was willing to lie down, and even to be covered with a sheet when she "died."
Mom then gets on her donkey and trots off to find Elisha and says, didn't I tell you not to trick me?! Gehazi gets back to the house first, feels the child and says, yup, he's dead. Then Elisha comes and no way are we going to try to get him/her to lie prone on top of the child! But she knelt willingly by the side of the bed with both hands on the child. Then the child was supposed to sneeze seven times. She tried really hard but couldn't figure out how to imitate a sneeze. So we got seven little coughs, after which she got up and Elisha took her to the mother, with the conclusion: God doesn't trick people.
For game time, we attached a little "room" (tissue box) to a corner of a table and said how if Elisha wanted to rest, he just needed to get to that little room, so we would try to get to that little room too—with one of those little cars that you pull back a few inches and they go forward. Not always in a straight line, of course. A little bit too easy to be a really good game, but our kids are so uncritical, they like just about anything!
For our craft we made candlesticks like the one they put in Elisha's room.
The candles were white TP rolls—candles are supposed to be wax, of course, so we made them wax by coloring them with wax crayons. Most of the kids had a little trouble waiting long enough for the glue to dry on the handles, but they kept trying. I was proud of them all!
Our game involved pouring "oil" (water) into jars. We set two small bottles in the bathtub and put two stools next to the tub. The kids divided into teams & had a relay. Each child had to climb onto one of the stools and pour water from there until "their" jar was full. Volunteers stood by to refill the water bottles they were pouring from (bigger than the ones in the tub!) and also to empty the tub bottles between kids. It went well—messy-type games usually do! :-)
Craft time was a lot simpler to prepare for than it had been for Abigail. Bruce and I just had to drink a lot of fruit juice during the week so we would have enough little glass bottles for the kids to paint with glue and coat with tissue squares for fancy oil jars.
