Commandment Two

For our story about not worshipping idols, we chose the account of Daniel's three friends and the fiery furnace. Started out by re-introducing King Josiah from last week's story & recalled that God was not going to punish Judah until after he died. So now—he's died. (Gets plonked back onto chair.) God indeed punished the people with exile to Babylon. (Two guys with swords escort everyone around the room.)

The king of Babylon wasn't a humble guy like Josiah. In fact, he was so proud, he didn't want to be just respected, he wanted to be worshipped! (This is my "free" version of the Bible story, which does not actually say what the image was that the people were supposed to worship. I'm just guessing it was likely an image of the king himself.) So we dressed a second child in the same purple-tissue-paper robe and gold-paper crown as the king, and had a couple of adults lift her onto a stool. (We're short of boys these days!)

During the announcement of the "rules of worship" we played snippets of each type of musical instrument we mentioned, from a little toy keyboard. Of course then the three friends didn't bow to the idol when the bad guys played the music when the friends were near the statue. So they got thrown into the "furnace" which was one of our side bedrooms, with paper flames taped along the sides.

When the king peeked into the furnace and saw something he didn't expect, we had him tell everyone to come look. Which gave the pre-cued volunteer the chance to slip into the "furnace" from the back via the connecting bedroom—picking up a halo for himself along the way. :-)

When the king called the friends to come out, he had to sniff at them all to see if they smelled like smoke. (They didn't.)

Again, a slight poetic re-write: we ended the story with the king declaring that Yahweh was clearly the right God to worship, so we wouldn't be needing that statue anymore (pull it down).

Although unlike idols, God is invisible, He still showed His power over the flames. Just like an invisible puff of air can blow out a candle flame, right? Game time had everyone blowing up (with or without help) balloons and then aiming them at candles to try and blow them out. Most of the kids got the right idea about pointing the balloon in the right direction and letting the air out, but it was harder to convince them that they needed to let it out fast. The "slow leak" stuff didn't do the job! It was fun trying though!

For a craft we made what one of the kids called "fire popsicles." (Popsicles translate as snow sticks; so these were then "fire sticks"). Cut-down juice-boxes wrapped with "flame" paper; a hole on the bottom letting you slide a popsicle stick up & down with three cutout boys glued to the end, going in & out of the furnace. A lot of work to prepare the materials (drank a lot of juice last week!), but easy to assemble on the day & everyone liked them.

Commandment One

First thing to do was to have one of the kids paste the first commandment up on the big "tablets" at the front of the room. Only as I was having him read it out did I realize that I had made a typo & written 耶和話 for耶和華. Oops!

We told the story of King Josiah and the discovery of the scroll in the temple that made him realize how far the nation had gone away from God, and the danger of having done so. That morning I had put several drawings of altars or "totem poles" up on the walls, which were used during the story to illustrate how the land was filled with worship of false gods. So at the end the kids had to take them all down and tear them up.

Our game followed the theme of "destruction"—a relay race with two stacks of fairly simple puzzles that had to be completely taken apart, no pieces still stuck together, before the next person in line could go. Should have been a good game but between two adults needed to receive the puzzle pieces into separate bags (so we wouldn't have to sort them all out at the end), and one to keep the kids waiting in line instead of running up & surrounding the players as they like to do, no one was watching the ends of the lines. So somehow they didn't come out even & we never did figure out who had been left out of the race. Sigh.

We made little "phylacteries" for craft time which worked great three years ago, but this time I used the wrong kind of paper, I guess; the glue just didn't want to stick it together well enough. The kids had these flapping-open boxes bobbing on their foreheads…I am not batting 1.000 on crafts these days!!

Receiving the Law on Mount Sinai

We started our story with a little question-and-answer time. We had seen how God had taken care of the Israelites—besides God, who takes care of YOU? (mom & dad) So, what should you do to show them how thankful you are? (be obedient) What are some things you should do to be an obedient child? Here each one had to come up with an example, or, for the non-verbal kids, had to nod agreement to a possible suggestion. Fun to get the kids of all types involved & thinking!

Next question: is it important to obey God, too? (yes) What should we do to be obedient? The good thing is, He tells us through His Word, and in today's story we will see how He first told His people about His law.

Okay, so the Israelites have been traveling for some time now (everybody gets up & follows the designated Moses once around the room) and are now in the Sinai wilderness. There is a tall mountain there (a tall, double-sided stepladder), called Mt. Sinai. God has told Moses He is going to come down to meet him on the mountain. Since God is coming so near, everyone had to be clean & nicely dressed & ready to greet him. So first, everyone had to line up & each received a washcloth to dip in a basin of water, to wash their faces. Then all the boys got neckties to wear, and all the girls got "corsages" (more like boutonnieres)—rather than fussing with pins for those, I used masking tape which worked fine & was much quicker & safer!

A white sheet was then held hovering over the ladder by a couple of tall helpers. "God" shook the ladder & blew a horn & climbed up the backside, then called for Moses to come up. He did & then we had to all count to 40, since he was up there that many days & nights. Then he came down holding a clay tablet bearing the "ten commandments" (actually just the Roman numerals I-X). Moses announced to the people that next week, we would start studying those commandments one at a time.

For game time, everyone had to sit down while we blu-tacked the numbers 1-10 in random order on the walls & floor. Numbers were then drawn one at a time. For the first number, everyone was in the race to find & grab the right card. Once any person had a card, however, he/she could not go for another until everyone had "won" one. It went well. A key was making everyone sit back down between each number.

Our craft was making clay tablets like the one Moses had brought down from the mountain. We had pre-cut "double tablet" shapes. Everyone got a lump of quick-drying clay to roll out to smoothly cover the shapes, using wooden or plastic dowels (I had some of each on hand; just enough!). Then they were to "carve" the numbers 1-10 into the clay.

When I was going over this with the day's leader, she said she really wasn't familiar with Roman numerals. We foreigners think "ten commandments" and automatically think Roman numerals but hey, you know what? I bet that even if they were numbered on those original tablets, it wasn't in Roman numerals! So we went "indigenous" and used the Chinese numerals: 一﹐二﹐三﹐四﹐五﹐六﹐七﹐八﹐九﹐十﹗Sorry no photos though; the numbers didn't photograph well in the white clay.

I went back & tried again to take a picture; here we go:

I heard the Bible study generated some good discussion. One interesting point being that God obviously wanted to communicate with His people, which their Chinese gods do not. (All religions are NOT just the same!)

Crossing the Red Sea

Today's story was pretty short—but that was okay because craft time was loooong.

We got all the kids kitted out with their "luggage" (carrier bags with towels inside) and they walked around the room following "God" (a volunteer in a halo), who held aloft a pillar of cloud for the first round (daytime) and a pillar of fire for the second (nighttime). Then we had them "camp" by the shore of the Red Sea, which was two blue-patterned sheets on the floor. Our adult "Egyptians," decided to chase after the trapped Israelites, so God told Moses to lift up his rod. He did so & two other volunteers lifted up the sheets to the right and to the left. All the kids walked through to the other side. Then the Egyptians came along, Moses put up his rod again, and they got the sheets draped over them. Much rejoicing by the Israelites, end of story.

For game time, paper war chariots were fastened to the shower curtain in the bathroom. Kids took turns "drowning the Egyptians" with squirt guns.

Craft time was a somewhat complicated art project depicting the parting of the sea.

Each of the steps was fairly simple; there were just a lot of them. One of the last steps was to punch holes along each side of the two layers of the project to sew them together. That's what the directions in the craft book said. When I translated them for the leader, I suggested it would be better to pass the layers out pre-punched. But then when I did the sample myself, I discovered that I had to glue some things on over some of the holes. So I told the leader to ignore my translation. We didn't have enough hole punchers for everyone, but since everyone wasn't going to be ready at exactly the same time, they could just go to a couple of designated helpers to get the holes punched when needed. Well. I think that would have worked brilliantly if we'd had good old-fashioned scissor-style hole punchers. Instead I had these stapler-style things that just didn't have wide enough openings to get through all the two layers once we'd added the sand and the sea. It was very awkward. One of the parents figured out you could just sew it together without holes if you pushed the (blunt) needle hard enough, so that's basically what we did. What thrilled me so much about all this was that NO ONE made any whiny remarks about how this should have been thought through better. The attitude of every single person there was, "okay, let's work together and figure this out."

I LOVE MY CHURCH!

Ten Plagues—a Double-Header

Between having been sick, and adding four new patients to my physical therapy schedule, I never did get around to updating this last week! So we'll cover two sessions with this entry. Conveniently, last Sunday was the first nine plagues of Egypt, and this morning we had the Passover.

We greatly condensed the story of the plagues. Had Moses and Aaron go straight to Pharaoh & ask that the people be let go. When Pharaoh said no, Aaron threw down his rod & it "became" a snake. Then three kids in fancy hats threw down their newspaper rods & they became small snakes which got "eaten up" by Aaron's. This was insufficient to impress Pharaoh. We skipped the bricks-without-straw part of the story and went straight into the list of plagues that were supposed to soften Pharaoh's heart (but, of course, they didn't):

1. water into blood—a small jar of "ripened" beef blood for everyone to smell—eeuuww!!

2. frogs—everyone had to get down & hop

3. fleas—everyone scratched

4. flies—one of the kids given a flyswatter to swat imaginary flies. (Had to borrow this from a friend who'd brought hers with her from the US. Couldn't find them anywhere here! Strange. It's not like we have no flies (though, granted, not as many as in Minnesota!)

5. animal sickness—had a couple of kids imitate cows, sheep & pigs, then on cue, fall over & die

6. boils/sores—everyone got bandaids

7. thunder & hail—everyone crowded for cover under three umbrellas

8. grasshoppers—gave brooms to a couple of kids to try to sweep out the invisible invaders

9. darkness—covered all the kids' eyes for a count of three (days)

That week's game involved trying to get all the grasshoppers and/or frogs out of your house—by throwing them into the opposing team's house! Kids divided into teams on opposite sides of a tape line, & bags of a few dozen newspaper wads were dumped on each side. The game was to keep picking up & throwing the things over to the other side until time was up; the winning team had the most pest-free house.

For a craft we made these darling grasshoppers out of clothespins. Very simple & a lot of fun, but I can't post a picture until I take my memory card in to the photo shop; something went flooey with it today & it doesn't fit in my computer…

So then this morning we finished with plague #10, the death of the firstborn. Started by distributing bits of jewelry to all the adults {"Egyptians"}. Then briefly reviewed the previous plagues. Since Pharaoh was still holding out, Moses warned him that this plague was going to be more horrible than any of the rest, with all first-born being killed. But in spite of all other plague warnings coming true, Pharaoh wasn't going to take this seriously.

But God did! He instructed the Israelite families to take a lamb (a small water bottle with a sheep's face on the lid and covered with cotton balls), slaughter it (saw at the neck with a plastic knife) and catch its "blood" (ketchup) in a bowl. We'd made two doors, with frames, out of brown poster paper. Different kids then dipped some plastic flowers into the ketchup and painted along the top and sides of the doors. I love this visual!

The next instruction was about not leavening their bread—a fluffy bread roll was a reject, saltine crackers were displayed as acceptable. The kids then had to go "plunder the Egyptians" by collecting the jewelry from the adults and placing it in their prepared carrier bags. Then they had to stand, with their bags over their shoulders (but no staves; I didn't manage/bother to have enough for everyone), and eat their crackers. While they were doing this, the "angel of the Lord," (a parent in a halo), walked around the room looking at the six(!) wooden doors and our two paper doors. None of the wooden doors had blood on them, of course, so they got a thumbs-down from the angel, while the paper doors with their markings got thumbs-up.

Then the wailing started by the Egyptians, and Pharaoh yelled at the Israelites to get out of there NOW. So they all trooped to the end of the room, end of story!

I thought the game was going to be simple but for some reason it wasn't. The kids sat in a circle & when music started, were supposed to pass cards around the circle, so that each child would always have a card. Some kids were collecting cards & not passing them on; one boy started standing up and throwing his cards to the four winds. I interrupted the leader at this point with my trademark yell and told the kids that if they weren't going to listen and play according to the rules, we were not going to play any games. My, it got quiet! And the game went much more smoothly after that! When the music stopped, a number tile was drawn from a bag; whichever child had that number sticker on his/her shirt would have his/her card checked. If it was a white one (no blood), the child "died" and was out of the game; if it was a red card (blood), the child got a cracker. We were going to play until the white cards were all gone, but with the confusion at first it was taking too long, so we quit before everyone died who was eligible. :-)

Craft time went well. We did smaller versions of our water-bottle sheep, using bubble-stuff jars (I've got enough bubble solution in some other containers at work now to blow bubbles until I retire, I think!)

With most of our core group folks gone for World Vision's Famine Day, and Bruce preaching elsewhere, I got to lead the adult Bible study. I really enjoyed preparing it. Application verses were from I Cor. 5:6-8 about cleansing yourself from the leaven of sin because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. It struck me that, if the children of Israel had not killed their lamb & come under the protection of its blood, they would have died. If they had gone with leavening their bread and wanted to wait around for it to rise, they wouldn't have been killed by the destroying angel, but they might have gotten left behind in Egypt and have been stuck being slaves for the rest of their lives. Just so, in the Christian life, we are saved from eternal death by the blood of Christ, our Passover lamb, but we need to get rid of the sin in our lives (also with His help, I would like to add!) in order to not live as slaves to it.

I don't know that any of the parents thought this was quite as cool as I did, but at least we got to take note that there are these two sides to the Christian life. ("What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" –Rom. 6:15)

God’s call to Moses

Between spending this week working at gathering all the props for this Sunday's story, and writing the next week's story to give to the leader, I'm having trouble remembering clearly how last Sunday went!

Let's see. The story started with an introduction of various areas in which Moses would have received a good education as the son of the princess. We had prepared a notebook & pen (reading & writing), a calculator (mathematics), a scroll (law/administration) and a sword (warfare). The idea was to have different kids identify what props went with what areas of education. The leader just went through it with "Moses," however, and rather quietly, so I'm not sure anyone else knew what was going on at that point. Oops. Things got better after that!

Moses had to kneel and propose to an Egyptian girl who wanted nothing to do with him. To show one reason he identified with his native people. He was out walking and saw some of his people working in the fields—one pushing a broom as a plow, the other with a pole over her shoulder with a peanut-butter-jar "water bucket" at each end. An Egyptian took a whip to them; Moses "killed" her and covered her with a blanket. The next day, the same two workers started fighting & Moses stepped in to break them up. They accused him of wanting to kill them too. He was frightened and fled Egypt for Midian. Became a shepherd (picture of flock of sheep on the wall).

Then he saw the burning bush (also a picture on the wall) & heard God speaking to him. Took off his shoes & knelt. Made excuses for not wanting to go to Egypt, which "God" answered in various ways including having him throw down his broom-handle staff which was quickly exchanged for a snake made of a rolled-up towel. Finally God got tired of his excuses and just ordered him to go, so he took off. End of story.

We played "snake" for our game. Tied the whole bunch (ten kids) together with plastic string, making figure-eights between each of them, and then had them walk through a simple obstacle course made of stools and folded tables. Had a hiccup or two when one of the girls wanted to sit on a stool, but eventually they made it through & back, with much hilarity!

We made burning-bush pictures for our craft. Our newest girl, Sally, really likes craft time!

I had been praying about how aggressively I should pursue our "problem" boy who hadn't come in over a month. And then one day last week ran into him & his mom on the street near our home, which is nowhere near where they live. So I took that God-presented opportunity to invite them to return, and they did come back this Sunday. Somewhat late, but early enough to participate in the game & craft. He is drooling more than ever, though was a bit better about being willing to use a towel to wipe his face rather than other surfaces. Thankful for that!

Birth of Moses

Going back to where we left the descendants of Israel in Egypt, we began by explaining how things had changed for them. As relatives of Joseph they had enjoyed a somewhat privileged position; now, they were slaves. To illustrate this we had an "Egyptian" recline in the lazy-boy, while one child fanned her with this huge wall fan (if we'd opened it all the way it would have taken two kids to fan the girl!), and another knelt to present her a glass of water on a tray. Of course, worse was yet to come; Pharaoh stood and read out the decree that girl babies could live and boy babies would be thrown into the Nile. We passed out paper cutouts of boy & girl babies to all the girls & women, then had a "soldier" with a sword come and inspect them all. He gave the girl babies back but the boys got ripped in half and thrown onto our blue tissue paper Nile. (I was careful not to give boy babies to our most not-want-to-let-go-of-anything girl, or our new visitor!)

Next we introduced a certain mother, her son Aaron, her daughter Miriam, and her new baby (doll) that she was very reluctant to throw in the Nile. She got a basket, lined it not with pitch (too messy!) but a plastic tablecloth, then towels to wrap the baby in. She put the basket in the "Nile" and set Miriam to stand guard. Along comes the princess who rescues the baby. Quick-witted Miriam suggests finding a wet-nurse & comes back with mom. The princess gives her a bag of coins and she promises happily to keep him until he is weaned.

Our very popular game involved fishing "precious things" out of water. We played hot-potato with the baby doll & whoever ended up with it had a go at fishing bobbing malted-milk balls out of a bottle of water with a 3-cm. neck, using chopsticks. Took a little patience, but if our kids are motivated by anything, it's chocolate! (What can I say? Me too!)

For our craft we folded little paper "Easter baskets" and tucked in our little cardboard clipart babies with pocket tissues. Minor emergency when more kids wanted purple paper than I had prepared; fortunately I found just enough extra pieces to dry up the tears!