I was pretty stoked to get a phone call from my parents a couple weeks back saying that i had a free ticket home as they had some frequent flyer points to use. God in his goodness has timed it perfectly too, in that the only flights available were on the 13th January, which allows me to get the 10 day visa extension and hopefully saves me a trip up to the border as well.
So the diary is filling up quickly over the next few months with weekend trips away with friends, cell group, the school teachers, the sunday school teachers, church camp, a trip to HK/China with my parents, a wedding and i think that leaves me 2 spare weekends, and that's all before december when the short term teams come. Each week is pretty full too with catching up with friends, preparing bible studies, activities for the SS kids each week. There's lots to do and not much time. So your prayer for time management would be awesome.
We're just about to finish a series in Sunday School on 'Jesus, this is your life'. Thought i'd share a few of the activities that we've done with the kids each week. The plan is to make it into a book which we'll bind together, so the kids will have a book of 11 weeks of stories about Jesus - from his birth, his baptism, temptation, calling of disciples, power of sickness and nature, healing lepers, eventually to his death. Hopefully the kids have got heaps out of it and have been understanding important truths about Jesus and his life and what they all mean.
Here are some pics of the first few weeks of activities we did. I tried to make most of them a bit more exciting then just colouring in, so i tried to make little mechanisms so when jesus is baptised, he actually goes under the water, or when the man is lowered through the roof, he actually lowers. It's can be a bit of a nightmare doing it with the kids at times, but hey, it's a bit of fun too.
We can all be part of God's family, no matter who we are
Jesus is baptised (when some friends saw jesus coming and going, they thought it was the story about Jesus rising from the dead. haha)
Temptation of Jesus - tried to get the kids to think about things that they are tempted by that could cause them to do things that aren't pleasing to God
Calling of the disciples
Jesus has power over all. The wool actually lowers and raises the man
Jesus is the good shepherd. i wanted to do it so there was a sliding gate and when you open it, the sheep more down, but all proved to be a bit too complicated, so ended up with an opening gate.
Washing of the disciples feet
Jesus heals the leper - basically tried to show that all the things that make us unclean, are moved to Jesus - so the cloud and yellow cellophane that has words about things we do that make us 'unclean' slides over to Jesus
Unfortunately i could only find a decent pic of a boy to use.My niece wasn't too happy about that idea, so she decided to make the boy into a girl. not a bad effort i reckon.
