Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Elisha and the Shunammite woman

We were really short on boys this week! So the Shunammite woman's husband was the only genuine male in our story.

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!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Elisha and the widow’s oil

This was a relatively short story. Only seven verses in the Bible! Of course I always throw in some extra-Biblical imaginings to add to the drama. We started with introducing the husband and wife first. We happened to choose the same fellow who had "died" in the previous week's story about Abigail & Nabal. He looked a little cheated when this time he died right after he got introduced! But we were short on boys anyway, so he got "resurrected" as Elisha & got to wear the "prophet's mantle." But before we met him, we had the "evil creditor" taunt the widow and shake a stack of bills marked "overdue" in her face. So the widow goes to Elisha & he instructs her how to use the bottle of oil which is all she has left in the house. Before the story had started, we had distributed a couple of cups or bowls to each adult, as well as a few "silver coins." So now the widow sent her two boys to go collect all the cups and bowls, which she proceeded to pretend to fill with oil. Then, also on the prophet's instructions, the boys were supposed to go sell the oil back to the neighbors. The adults didn't quite get it, and instead of exchanging the vessels for money, they put their coins in the vessels as if they were begging bowls! Oops! (It's not only our kids who don't always pay close attention…) After we got this straightened out, "mom" went to the creditor and paid him (her) a few coins. The creditor got to stamp all the bills "paid."

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.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Abigail

Kevin Hui led this story the first time around, so this week I got to do more "creative writing" instead of just translating/updating. Enjoyed that! We started out by introducing King David, crown and all, but then explaining that he wasn't actually king yet, Saul was. Crown to Saul. And Saul was jealous of David so was trying to kill him (Saul chases David with sword). So now David and some of his friends were on the run, which meant they didn't always have enough to eat. Today they were passing a sheep farm, and it happened to be shearing time. So we put sheep headbands on a couple of the girls & had them get down on all fours while a servant "sheared" them with a buzzing electric razor (safety cap on!).

David sent a couple of his friends to ask Nabal, the farmer, for some food, but he refused. So David and his friends decide to kill the farmer and his whole family (so who's the big fool here, Nabal or David?). Fortunately, one of the guys was smart enough to look for Nabal's wife Abigail and let her know what was going on. She put some donkey ears on another volunteer, then packed a basket with some meat, bread, fruit and wine, and led the donkey to meet David (oops, should have gotten a picture of this too.) David is grateful not only for the food, but for how her intervention had prevented him from rash action that would not have been pleasing to God. He kisses her hand & leads the donkey away.

The next day, she tells Nabal what happened, and he's so upset he has a stroke (which for some reason struck everyone as very funny). Then we all counted to ten (days), after which Nabal dies and is carried away to be buried. Our Nabal is an older boy who is not always overly cooperative, but he really liked being carried away by two men. We don't always get to see him smile so nicely!

So, after David hears that Nabal is dead, he starts thinking about how beautiful and wise Abigail was, and now she's all alone…hm…so this time, instead of receiving a gift from Abigail, he sends a servant with a gift for her! The servant also relays David's proposal. She accepts, and we end with the wedding march.

Now, when Abigail put fruit and other foodstuffs in the donkey's basket, she undoubtedly packed it neatly and carefully. For our game, however, while we had a donkey drawn on the blackboard, with a basket attached, we put the (fake) fruit in it by throwing it from a few feet away. Not quite so efficient, but more fun!

For our craft, I had to start preparing way ahead of time. Each sheep for our sheep-shearing craft took me over an hour to make, and I needed to prepare for ten kids. (Then of course we only had six…) Here is the "before and after" photo:

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Hannah

No pictures again this week, which is really too bad as we had at least one great Kodak moment. We had introduced Elkanah and his wife Hannah, whom he loved very much. Elkanah was instructed to demonstrate this by kissing Hannah, which he did using the "MLFF kiss"—kissing two fingers and then pressing them into the cheek of the kissee. In spite of his love for Hannah (I hypothesized), he took a second wife so he could still have children. I hadn't written into the story that Elkanah loved her, but the narrator told him to kiss her anyway. This time, he bent over (our tallest boy & shortest girl) and kissed her on the cheek! It was very sweet, but alas no photo!

The whole family (including Peninah's three children) walked to Jerusalem, where Elkanah presented his sheep to the priest. I had deliberately chosen an adult to be the priest so that I could instruct him on how to be very careful when offering the sheep…He first tore off one part of the paper sheep & laid it on the altar (a stool) and burned it (sprinkled orange tissue scraps on it)—no problem. Then he was supposed to tear off another part and keep it for himself by stuffing it in his pocket. This is where he was supposed to be careful not to tear into the stapled-off section that had little chocolate beans in it, but his tear went astray and a bunch of the chocolate beans scattered on the floor. <Hold action while these were cleared away…> The last part of the sheep was for the family to eat and give thanks as part of their worship, so the family sat down & the remaining chocolate beans were poured from the sheep into their individual bowls (real food=willingness to stay seated!).

Then Peninah was supposed to start ragging on Hannah, loudly thanking God for her healthy children and asking Hannah what SHE had to be thankful for. Unfortunately, just about this time someone decided that Peninah was too cold and started helping her drink a full glass of hot water. Sort of cramped her "provoking" style and I think everyone missed exactly what was supposed to be going on, sigh. Hannah just had to pretend to have been provoked. She got up & poured her leftover beans into the "children's" bowls and went off to the other end to pray. The priest accused her of being drunk, she said no, she was just pouring out her heart before God, and the priest blesses her & says he hopes God will answer her prayer. This somehow gives Hannah great peace & she gets up, washes her face, and goes home with her family.

Around a year later, she gives birth to Samuel…here we had another glitch, as our normally extremely reliable actress playing Hannah disappeared into the bathroom (long story), so Elkanah had to show off the baby. So while Hannah was in the bathroom, the narrator explained how she wouldn't go with the family to Jerusalem that year. When she came back out, it was deemed time for her to bring little Samuel to the temple. She gave him to Eli the priest. And God further rewarded her by giving her five more children (our recycled paper-towel roll people).

Well, if people missed the bit about Peninah provoking Hannah during the story, they got something of a recap for game time. All the kids sat in a circle. The first child to be designated "Hannah" got a juice bottle filled with more of those little chocolate beans, and a pair of chopsticks. She was allowed to start eating them (with the chopsticks to keep it reasonably slow) while the child next to her, designated "Peninah", started throwing our big foam die—the metaphor being, when Peninah rolled a six this would be counted as managing to provoke Hannah to quit eating. Then the candy jar passed to this child who became the new Hannah, and on around the circle (we did two rounds).

Had a hard time coming up for a craft for this story. Three years ago, we were just preparing to say goodbye to Melissa Lathrop who had been with us for about a year. We talked about how Hannah would make a little garment for Samuel each year when they went to the temple. Then together we used fabric markers to decorate a T-shirt to give to Melissa as a farewell gift. But this time around we didn't have anyone to send off. Finally got the helpful suggestion from Sharlene Ortlund (thanks, Shar; even if you didn't help me make any sheep, you were a big help nonetheless!) of making little praying figures out of pipe cleaners. They weren't too hard for the kids except for a couple of them who managed to get them to balance better by having the praying hands clasped behind the body instead of in front…they seemed to understand when I pointed this out, and fixed them without protest; I was pleased.

Discussion questions during the adult Bible study asked, have you ever thought of your child as a gift from God/heaven? And, If you do, how have you seen this to be true; & if not, how might things be different if you could view him/her this way? Again, I wasn't in on the study, being in with the kids, but I heard there was good discussion. One of our nonbelievers shared her Buddhist viewpoint that family members are "assigned" by "heaven" based on some kind of affinity demonstrated in a previous life, so you assume your children were meant for you & treat them accordingly. (This comment came from not a mother but an aunt who has recently taken on the care of her young-adult niece and couldn't be kinder to her than her own mother would be. We have been quite impressed by her sincere dedication to her second-hand "gift.") We appreciate learning more about our families' worldviews. Her comments suggest she feels no need to turn to Jesus for help in raising her niece. We can only pray she will learn to love Him for Himself.