Two sisters, two choices

The way we do this story, Martha is busy making up a bed in the guest room while Mary is in the kitchen chopping up vegetables. Jesus and His disciples arrive and Mary lets them in & serves them all some water. She never makes it back to the kitchen because she gets too interested in listening to Jesus.

When we did this before, we only had one girl, which worked well enough because then we could choose a mom, who would know how to unfold & make up the cot, to be Martha. This time we had plenty of girls, even though our two neurotypical regulars were absent. So I chose a new visiting volunteer (I love throwing the new volunteers in at the deep end—ha). Well, then the only girl willing to play Mary was Lai Wun, who is the big sister in her family, not the younger sister. There was no way she was going to let herself be demoted to little sister! There was also no way she was going to be able to handle that cot by herself. So we enlisted her mom as a "servant." Whatever it takes! Our Mary was a good sport, handing out empty teacups all around and letting me tease her about not remembering to do so with both hands.

So then Martha finishes the bed and comes down to the kitchen and, where's Mary? Look at this, the vegetables haven't been finished, the meat (some slabs of clay in a plastic bag) hasn't been put in the marinade, the fire (a candle) hasn't been lit—what HAS she done? So then Martha is supposed to try and get Mary's attention by whispering & waving. Mary played her part well; i.e. didn't pay any attention to her but kept looking at Jesus. Then Martha is supposed to come out and tell Jesus to make Mary help. Our Martha apparently didn't want to bother Jesus. She just grabbed Mary by the arm and tried determinedly to drag her bodily back to the kitchen. She was so noisily insistent that most of the adults missed Jesus' statement about Mary choosing the better part. We wound up by saying that the Bible doesn't say how Martha responded to Jesus. We asked what people thought she might have done: flounced back to the kitchen in a huff, apologized and sat down with her sister, or dragged the table out and finished her preparations while listening to Jesus. We all thought she should have chosen #3.

The game was originally a table-setting race, but there were too many kids to do this well, so we just had kids come up one at a time, overlapping as each one finished drawing all the components (plate, cup, napkin, knife, fork, spoon, and bud vase) out of a box and setting up a placemat to match our model. Still a worthwhile & interesting game for all.

Martha of course would have wanted to set a pretty table, with perhaps nicely folded napkins, right? I had planned on two different napkin folding projects, one very simple and one taking a little more concentration. But we were running a bit late so ended up only doing the simple one.

Later I taught the second one to one of the boys (the only one vaguely interested) during the free time.

The Widow’s Mite

Didn't take a single picture today, oops! Nine kids, including a new one, over six feet tall but fortunately well-behaved!

Another way-extra-biblical story line today. Took a couple of sentences in the passage and let my imagination run wild! Jesus told His disciples to beware of those who were falsely pious but "robbed widow's houses." So we opened with a rich man going to visit a poor widow to demand payment on a loan. She begged for more time. He said, all right, you won't give me my money, I'll just take these chairs instead, and walked off with the only two wooden chairs in the room.

Next we saw the rich man standing by the temple treasury's offering box, loudly ringing a bell for attention. He praised God for allowing him to prosper, and announced that he was giving the required 1/10^th to God. He placed a large handful of silver coins in the box.

Next we jumped to a chance phrasing which actually came right after the "mite" story (did I mention I also re-arranged the sequence for dramatic effect?), where the disciples are pointing out to Jesus the beauty of the temple, its stones and "the gifts". I asked myself, how did they know what were gifts and what were just part of the original temple? We introduced a priest. Along comes a man with a beautiful vase full of flowers. He presents it to the priest who thanks him, puts it on the table next to the offering box, and has the man sign his name on a card reading "Donated by__________" which was then propped up against the vase. Then came a woman with two candlesticks, who signed her name to another card to be displayed with the candlesticks. It was these gifts the disciples pointed out to Jesus, who did not seem very impressed.

But then along came the widow we'd seen earlier. She quietly dropped two small coins in the offering box. Jesus jumped up and exclaimed to His disciples, "Did you see that? Now THAT was truly beautiful!" The disciples asked, huh, what? He pointed out the widow who had given more than anyone else, because she had given all she had. We concluded by having Jesus say, in the eyes of the world she is just a poor widow, but in the eyes of God, she is a princess! And an angel with a halo came and crowned the woman.

Our game involved dropping coins in an "offering box"—a glass jar. The catch was that they had to kneel backwards on a chair, & the jar was on the floor behind it. It was just about the right difficulty. Out of five coins, each child managed 1 to 4. However, for the new boy, we had to move the jar a lot farther away from the chair. His arms were so long he couldn't possibly miss otherwise!

We emphasized that the point of this story was not that you are supposed to put everything you have in the offering box, but that what Jesus really wants is for us to give our hearts to God. So we made simple origami hearts. And then, since the kids don't usually take their crafts home anyway, they placed them in the offering box!

Woman caught in adultery

A couple of our kids were gone today to a sports competition in Guangzhou, but both of their moms came anyway. One brought her other daughter, as usual, but the other mom came all by herself! A first time; she once said she only comes because her son "makes" her come. I'm thrilled!

So: Jesus is at the temple when a group come leading a woman with her hands tied in front of her. They tell Jesus they caught her in the very act of adultery (so where's the other guilty party, eh?)

They ask Him whether they should stone her like Moses' law says. They really want to trap him. If He says no, they can say He doesn't obey the law of Moses; if He says yes, then He's going to lose a lot of popular support. So what does He do? Perhaps He needs a little time to think—he leans over and starts writing in the ground with His finger. (We chose Man Chun to be Jesus, partly because he needs more practice at leaning over. I had to physically push his head down. If I had this to do over I think I would have slowed action and explained carefully to him that he needed to bend over, as I'm sure he wasn't paying much attention to the narrator saying "Jesus leaned over…" So that he would have had more of a clue as to why I was pushing him down. Not that he got upset, he just laughed.)

So anyway, then he sits back up and says whoever has no sin can be the first to throw a stone. To add more visible action, we had one fellow pick up a large stone (a chunk of concrete from some local demolition rubble), look at Jesus, look at the others—and then put the stone down and leave. One by one the others also left. Then Jesus is allowed to straighten up again and asks where everyone went. "So no one condemned you?" He says. "Neither do I." He unties her hands and says, "Go in peace, but don't sin any more."

We don't throw stones at people nowadays if we don't approve of their behavior. But often we will throw ugly words at people. For our game, we set up four double-sided dolls (all with the sad side showing) around a stool. Threaded through the hole on top of the stool was a block on which was written [恨惡] or "hatred." The kids were supposed to get the string swinging so that the words could knock the dolls down. (I had come up with this as a way to avoid actually throwing the words, as one of our boys is just too enthusiastic about throwing things once he gets started. Wouldn't you know, that was the boy who went to Guangzhou—oh well). It took a lot of patience and coordination, so for some of the kids we turned the stool upside down and it was still enough of a challenge for them to swing the string in the right direction. So that worked out well.

Since Jesus wrote something in the dirt, we also wrote something in the "dirt" (squares of clay), and then made them easier to read by pressing little beads into the words we'd written with toothpicks. In contrast to the "hatred" we wrote the words for "peace."

The Woman at the Well

This story has a little more conversation than action, which isn't ideal for our group, but a worthwhile story nonetheless.

We introduced Jesus and His disciples, then looked at a map and explained that while many pious Jews would go the long way around to Galilee to avoid passing through Samaria, Jesus chose to walk straight through. After they walked for a while, Jesus stopped to rest by a well (a large bucket) while His disciples went into the town to buy some food. While Jesus is resting, this woman comes along with her water jug. Jesus is glad to see her, because He is thirsty. He asks her for a drink. She says, huh, you're asking me for a drink? Aren't you afraid it would be unclean? Jesus responds, what you say makes some sense; in fact it would make more sense for you to ask ME for water, because the water I would give you would be better than anything you could get from this well. The woman responds, how could you give better water than from this famous well handed down by our ancestor Jacob? You don't even have a bucket! Jesus says, if you drink this water, you will eventually get thirsty again. But if you drink the life-giving water I have to give you, you will never thirst again. Of course the woman wants some of this water. Jesus says, okay, go get your husband so I can give it to you both together. The woman is a bit embarrassed and says, well, I don't exactly have a husband. Jesus says, I know; you've have five husbands, but the man you're living with now is not your husband. Whoa, now the woman is REALLY embarrassed! Time to change the subject! She says, obviously, you're a prophet, so tell me something I've always wanted to know: Since our famous ancestor Jacob himself worshipped the Lord right here, how come you Jews say you can only worship God at the temple in Jerusalem? Jesus says, it's not where you worship, it's whom you worship that is important. (I skipped the spirit-and-truth line as a bit too abstract for the moment). The woman says, oh, it sounds too complicated; when the Messiah comes, He will explain it. Jesus says, I am the Messiah.

The woman is amazed but before she can say anything, the disciples come back with some food. They can't imagine that Jesus would really want to be having a conversation with a Samaritan woman, so they ignore her and try to get Jesus to eat. In the Bible story, Jesus doesn't eat but tries to explain to them that doing His Father's work is the best food—kind of like the living water He gives is the best water. And I wrote our story this way BUT did not take into account the fact that when our "Jesus" was urged to eat, there was no way he was going to refuse food!! So we scrambled a bit and let him while saying something like, this food is fine but doing my Father's work makes me even more satisfied. The disciples are amazed and a bit skeptical—talking to a Samaritan woman is the Father's work?? But just then the woman, who has been grabbing all sorts of people from the "audience" to come back with her, arrives at the well with a crowd who want to see who this prophet was who had come to Samaria. Jesus talks to them and they all believe in him (he shakes hands with everyone). So—talking to this woman was a good way to do God's work after all! (I hoped people would make the application that we should invite/welcome anyone, no matter how much they do or don't "fit in," because you just never know whose heart God is calling.

We used a game Kevin Hui created several years ago called "drinking living water". Everyone got a small bottle of a popular drink containing live lactobacillus. The twist to make it fun was that everyone also received a long straw made up of five regular straws joined together. They went two by two to see who could finish their bottles the fastest. Ka Ho (on the left) was the star!

For craft time we made these little "wells" out of craft sticks and cut-up toilet paper rolls. (This is after having made toilet-roll dogs last week. I NEVER throw away the rolls any more when I change the paper at home!)