Yesterday and today was the start of the holiday bible club for the kids at the local church. The younger kids (3-11 years) meet in the morning and the older kids (12-16 years) meet in the afternoons.
We were meant to start at 9.30am but the heavens opened at about 8am and we got a call to say that we should stay put until the rain eased. Apparently the children aren’t allowed to be out and about in the rain...probably due to the risk of thunder storms and also because the roads resemble a very muddy river! Try and imagine a rough dirt track with no tarmac in sight, full of pot holes and shared by both people, livestock, carts and the odd car brave enough to tackle the terrain and you have an idea of what the roads are like!! When it is dry and sunny they are fairly o.k. but when the rains come then your main priority is to stay on your feet. We have abandoned trying to stay clean...mud is now our friend!
At 10am we got another call to say that we should set off as the children had all arrived and were ready for us.
We were welcomed by about 35 smiling, eager children so we introduced ourselves and got going. We had been asked to teach on the subject of “A loving God” so we had prepared bible stories, craft activities, English worship songs to teach them and some fun games to play. We wanted to act out the stories and once David had taken one of the parts the other children were eager to volunteer and we were met by a sea of hands shouting, “me...me.” They really enjoyed the craft activities we had organised and they were fascinated by the glue and all the tissue paper we had brought.
Our first activity was to make a huge picture of God’s creation and each child was responsible for making a part of it...flowers, trees, fish, birds etc and one group had to collage the sea. The church is more like an outhouse type building with a rough and dusty floor...so dusty that the wall- paper wouldn’t even tape to the floor...we took for granted that we would have a carpet or polished floor along with tables and chairs. Here, the children sit on wooden benches, which then become the tables as they kneel on the floor. The dusty floor is the favoured place to sit and all the glue, paper, and crayons are placed on the floor in the middle for them all to share. They have all taken so much care over their work and have been very proud of their finished product ...it was great to see them all pointing out the parts they had contributed to the big picture,
The adults were more fascinated by the blu-tack we had brought, to stick stuff on the walls...they took bits and spent the rest of the morning playing with it!!
The main difference we have found is that the children are able to sit for long periods of time and listen. The younger ones will sit and listen for an hour and the older ones think nothing of listening to someone preach for 2-3 hours! In our culture, children struggle after 15 minutes and need to have a varied program with lots of interaction to keep them focussed.
We want the children and the adults to see that we can learn about God and have fun at the same time...and they certainly seem to be having fun. One little girl squealed with delight when we got out the glue and crayons and when we played some team games, there was much laughter (and some cheating!!) Today the head count was 48...we seem to be getting more children each day which is great.
We have yet to do a session with the older ones...that starts tomorrow. Hopefully we won’t have torrential rain in the morning!
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