Jesus Calms the Storm

It's not really atypical for the Sunday following a week of school holiday. The kids are out of the habit of sitting still and behaving, so things are more undisciplined than usual. Then we had a new story leader who did an excellent job of leading, except for her soft, sweet voice which I was afraid nobody was paying any attention to. For the story of Jesus calming the storm, we first had everyone, adults and children alike, follow "Jesus" around the room, until he needed to get away with His disciples for some peace and quiet.

To get into the boat, everyone (all the kids) had to walk down the "dock," which was four stools in a row with a board on top. Then they were supposed to step into the boat one by one and act like the boat was rocking, but they didn't quite get it. They did, however, very much "get" the idea of rocking violently with the worsening storm. Two of our "normal" girls were standing up & jumping up and down—not part of the script. Jesus (Ka Hei) did a very good job of sleeping, though!! And he calmed the storm just fine, but it took a little more work to get the girls calmed. Sigh.

I was frustrated with what I perceived as a lack of attention/involvement on the part of the adults. I wondered if anyone had been following the story! So, even though I hadn't been the leader, I shoved my oar in at the end and asked for the people to give me a review of what went on. The normal girls all answered, and answered well. So I should chill out, huh. I'd feel happier if the parents had done more of the responding. After all, they are the ones we are most trying to reach.

For a game I had made a bunch of small origami boats and had the kids sink them with squirt guns as they were floating in a basin of water. Hard to convince them that the guns would work better if you kept them shooting at some kind of angle rather than straight down perpendicular to the boat; they "ran out" of water way too quickly that way. But I think they had fun with it anyway.

We made the same type of boats (called "sampans" on the website I found the instructions on; I didn't like the more generic boat patterns with the big pyramid in the middle). Originally I thought we might do craft time first and then sink our own boats. But I discovered during preparation time that a) the smaller boats were a lot harder to unfold without tearing, but at the same time b) boats made out of larger origami paper squares were almost impossible to sink!

Mrs. Lei & I were in with the kids during free play & she encouraged me to do the "Appreciation Game" with the three verbal girls. They seemed to really enjoy it, though, again, they were much more interested in doing the talking part than the listening part.

I do hope this Sunday goes a little more smoothly. I'm about due for a little encouragement, I think.

Happy Year of the Tiger

This past Sunday coincided with the first day of the Chinese New Year. So we knew we would have very few in attendance. Even Bruce had to go preach at another church. As it turned out, there were just four of us: Mr. & Mrs. Lei, Ka Hei and myself. Ka Hei was thrilled with the permission to go straight to the computer and start into his favorite game. His parents and I meanwhile played a game of our own, called "The Appreciation Game," a bilingual game somewhat similar to the Ungame. I wished we'd had more adults, because it's really good how the game encourages more personal sharing than we often get. Mrs. Lei ended up borrowing it to bring with them when visiting relatives this week! I'll look forward to hearing how that went.

I do hope we'll have better attendance this Sunday!!

Sermon on the Mount

We had a poor turnout this week due to heavy rain. No one but our core families, until one other boy & his mom showed up about halfway through the morning.

It was maybe just as well. I remember this from three years ago as a really fun story time, but it seemed to fall kind of flat. I think maybe one thing I did wrong was to read the Scripture first & then assemble the little tableaux, when we already knew what they were supposed to represent. Sigh.

But the game was popular once again! We said, much of Jesus' teaching took traditional ideas and turned them upside down. So we will turn upside down—doing somersaults! Most of the adults tried it as well as the kids, with hilarious results.

Conveniently, next Sunday is Chinese New Year. So our craft followed the injunction to be private about your giving. A friend of ours operates a daycare center for children from low-income families. So we bought gifts for each of the children in their center, and craft time was wrapping the presents. Which we are asking the center's director not to reveal which church donated them.

We had some pretty lively discussion during the adult Bible study time. We had just the one mom who is nominally Christian. But even some of our believers would like to get around some of Jesus' statements about things like loving your enemies, I think. But Mrs. Leung's reaction was priceless. Someone restated, "This means, when someone treats you dirty, you cannot treat them dirty in return." She yelped, "WHAT?!" Her speech is a little hard to understand, so I'm not totally sure she understood the concept by the time we were finished. But she was obviously engaged!

This was the mom of the boy I mentioned last week, that I'd given a whack on the head when he was trying to wipe his saliva on the puzzle pieces that the girl sitting next to him was playing with. So I was glad to see them back, and glad that the boy doesn't seem to be holding a grudge, as Mr. Lei was afraid he would. I still want to visit them over Chinese New Year though!

Jesus the good teacher

One of Jesus' "identities" was that of a good teacher. So, what kind of teacher was He? When you hear "teacher" what do you think of? Going to school? We lined up stools for the kids to sit on in rows, and had them all wear neckties to symbolize "school uniforms."

But no, Jesus was not that kind of teacher. So, was He a teacher like me? Here at Merciful Love Family Fellowship, we don't have to wear uniforms, and you can sit anywhere you want. But we still like to have you come on time, and if you come too late or the wrong day of the week, you won't get any teaching from me! Nope, Jesus wasn't like that either. He had a group of "students" called disciples who went with Him everywhere, walking through the whole country of Israel, from town to town. Sometimes they would have to camp out…we'd given each "disciple" a bag containing a bath towel. So camping out meant spreading our towels on the ground and pretending to go to sleep. The photo didn't turn out too great—everyone DID lie down; just not all at the same time, ha!

Then the next day they would continue walking. When they got to a village, when Jesus sat down to teach them, the local people would also gather around to hear them (we all sat on the floor at the parents' feet). Jesus would often teach in parables, drawing comparisons between common situations and God's truth.

The parable "Jesus" told that day was about a mother with many children. Although there were many, she loved each one of them. We asked each child, "Does your mother love you?" They all answered yes right away except one girl who checked with mom first! (Mom said yes.) We talked about all the things she did for them, & acted them out together—cooking, helping with homework, playing, etc. Well, then "Jesus" said, one of this mom's children was mentally handicapped. Suddenly all the moms got real quiet. They wanted to hear this! Jesus went on to say that although she loved all her children, she loved this one in a special way, and spent a lot of extra time and money to try to help her. And when she made some progress, it was more exciting to mom than if one of her other children came in first in his class! Dear children, "Jesus" said, this is what your Heavenly Father is like. Don't ever think that you are too slow, or too naughty, for Him to love you. He created all of us, and loves us all, but He has a special heart for those who need Him the most.

Yes, I know, Jesus never told this exact parable. Though He might have, if He'd visited Merciful Love Fellowship! This parable was modeled on Luke 15:4-7 about the shepherd going after the one lost sheep out of one hundred, and the great rejoicing in heaven when a sinner repents. Bruce brought that out in the Bible study.

Game time was "follow the leader". One of our girls had been begging to be allowed to teach a game or craft, so I assigned her to be the leader we were supposed to follow and imitate. Two problems: to give enough room for the long line (parents played too), we had to go out through the bedrooms & the balcony & back around to the living room, which meant the front of the line was rarely in sight of the back. But even if it had been, our leader was the shortest person in the whole group—oops! One thing that helped was positioning myself at one of the corners and copying what I had seen the leader do as she passed, so those who could see me (at 5'4" I'm considered fairly tall) could join in.

For craft time, we wrote out the two most important commandments and rolled them up on chopsticks to make scrolls. I had printed out the words for each child to copy from. Most of the kids were almost finished when I noticed that the girl who'd asked her mom if she loved her hadn't even started yet. I guess she hates to write, and mom was trying to force her to do it by not helping her. Hope I didn't ruin things, but with the time crunch, I suggested she could just glue the printed commandments on her scroll paper and roll that up. She liked that & was soon finished.

The boy I'd whacked on the head two weeks ago didn't come at all this Sunday. Last week they came just as we were winding up. I neglected to call mom this week to see if everything was okay. We will see what happens this coming Sunday. We have to leave right after the service for a conference in Hong Kong, so won't be able to call them during the week. But when we get back it will be time for Chinese New Year, and traditional house-to-house visits. They must get one, whether they come this week or not!