Jonah and the Whale

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

            Such words of wisdom from the Bible inspire me to teach Sunday School kids during my “single” days aside from the benefit I personally and spiritually gained from teaching.  I enjoyed teaching that I totally miss it when I stop to tend to my first born child.

            Then just recently I am challenge once again to teach and get involve in the ministry. We only have one Sunday school teacher in our mission church and I have to step in every time she is not able to teach. I never realize how I have missed teaching until I was once again in front of the children.

            More so I am challenge because I can see that there are a lot of things to be done in the children’s ministry. I am challenge when I saw that we lack lot of materials for activities and crafts. I am challenge that their classroom needed a makeover. And I am challenge to make a difference in the lives of these kids. I believe in a good foundation so it is but right to teach children the ways of God as young as they are.

I am grateful that brethren in our mother church are more than willing to give some materials for the Sunday school so we can have something to use. I also scoured some of my materials which I used and keep not so long ago (at this moment I thank God that I am quite such a hoarder) =) at least we have something to use and I don’t need to buy much.

            My journey once again as a Sunday school teacher began, this time it is more challenging and quite difficult because I have with me my one year old son as I taught. Just blessed that he is not so hard to handle during class time (though there are times =)

            Last Sunday I taught them about Jonah, his disobedience to God and him learning that Salvation is of the Lord. The kids are excited to learn, I can see that but they are more than excited during crafts/activity time. I can tell that they enjoy doing their crafts so much. Below is the picture of the craft they made to go along with the lesson on Jonah and the Whale.

            We made a boat and put some people on it. Use a popsicle stick to stand the sail. And write their memory verse on the sail. The kids then paste their boat on a piece of construction paper (some on bond paper), draw some waves and a whale. You can never tell how creative kids can be when it comes to arts and crafts, so just let them bring out their creativity. Some of them make a little Jonah in front of an open-mouthed whale as if ready to swallow.

            If you are wondering how we made the boat, check this out:

How to make a boat (paper folding)

            There goes our Sunday, how about you? If you are a Sunday school teacher too, you can use the crafts we had made. I forgot to take a picture of the crafts we made when we had our fruit of the spirit lesson. But I made the kids draw nine fruits of their choice, colored it and write the fruits of the spirit on each fruit they made. Never forget to tell them to write their memory verse on their crafts/activity so that they will not forget it. I made them bring home whatever crafts they made to show to their parents.

             If you used this craft, don't forget to leave a comment and maybe some pointers too=)

            Happy crafting! =) God Bless!

            

A New Journey

Many times I tried so hard to be up to date in publishing new posts here in my blog but poor me I couldn't keep up. With my husband finally commissioned to be the Pastor of a mission church, we basically come and go from our house to the mission place.

I know there will be great adjustments and some difficulties and lots of challenges ahead of us but on top of that I am actually excited to what God has prepared for us in that new place. Being a missionary family and a missionary wife post great responsibilities but I know that God had chosen us to be in that place and God will enable and will qualify those He had chosen.

We had been living in two places and sleeping in two houses for the past months since we did not fully move in yet to the new place. We are here in our old house (staff house actually of the church where my husband is working) during weekdays and go to the mission place on weekends. It’s not that far but sometimes travelling is a challenge if we won’t go early in the afternoon of Fridays. No taxi will say yes to us especially if they see that we had tons of loads =) (that’s because we are slowly gathering and moving our things and we carry what we can every time we go there).

So those are the things that are going on with me and this family of mine for the past months. And so now we love what we are doing and loving the new place and loving the new journey God has given us.

And I am excited to tell you all that finally we had our first Ladies Fellowship last Saturday. We are using Myrna Alexander’s After God’s Heart Bible Study Series on Loving and Obeying God based on the Book of 1 Samuel. It’s a great study and as a Christian Woman it is my desire to be a woman after God’s heart. I am happy that God had given me the privilege to lead a Bible study as part of our church’s ladies ministry.

We finish our first topic, Coping with Pain where we study how Hannah coped up with her pain of being barren and for being constantly ridiculed by her adversary. We learn some Biblical ways and principles on dealing with painful and difficult situations. We also discover about faithfulness both of Hannah and of God.

And one thing I could not shake off is the principle that when we are facing life difficulties, we should turn to God first not to anything or anyone else and just give Him our emotions and tell Him everything. Oftentimes we seek relief in life’s hardships by turning to people, friends and relatives or by going out and relaxing instead of facing them and laying them at the feet of Jesus first.

So there goes my week =) Thanking and Praising God for His blessings! =)