God's Message if for All - Acts 10

Because this week was the Lebanon County Fair, half my kids were missing from club.  Yet, I am hearing that many did extremely well with their animals and other projects.  Unfortunately, I did not get to the fair this year.  My kids had dentist and eye doctor appointments. 

Although my groups were small, we had lots of fun.  Having smaller groups allow me to interact one on one with the kids that I can't do with large groups.  

This week's craft was prayer boxes from altroid and mento tins.  I had the paper pre-cut.  So the kids got to Modge Podge the paper to the tin.  Then decorate the paper with stickers before giving it a second coat of Modge Podge.  On the inside lid, they Modge Podge this poem, "When your head starts to worry, and your mind just can't rest, put your prayers down on paper, and let God do the rest."



For the playground activity we played Tenzie and/or Pass the Pigs (party version).  After having my Tuesday group almost lose their pigs, I decided to give each child a pie pan to roll their dice/pigs into.  What a difference that made.  No longer were we chasing pigs and dice all over the place.

In tent time, I introduced John 15:12.  We played a game called, "First Letter."  I had a child chose a letter that began one of the words in the verse.  I had pre-arranged an action for each letter (ie. T = jump, I = clap, and so on).  Then we said the verse, but when we got to a word that began with the chosen letter we said the word while doing the action.  Each time we added a new action, we still did the old actions.  Usually, we could do 5-6 different actions before we messed up.  The kids love this activity.

To introduce the Bible lesson, I gave a Bible Buck to everyone who had green eyes like mine (or just the girls).  It didn't take long before someone yelled, "Hey, that is not fair!"  Then said, "In today's Bible lesson, the Jews thought that God only loved them.  This is kinda of like me just giving Bible bucks to only those who have green eyes.  But lets see what God thought about this.  Then at the end of the lesson, when I re-emphasis that God loves the Jews and the Gentiles.  God loves everyone.  I gave a Bible Buck to the rest of the kids and told them I love them also.

We also FINALLY got out of Jerusalem.  As I pointed out Ceasarea and Joppa on the map, someone from each group asked if these towns were in Judea and Samaria.  I could have jumped for joy that they made the connection from Acts 1:8 (a previous memory verse) and today's lessons.  The answer to this question was YES.  The Gentiles (Romans) viewed both cities as in Judea with Ceasarea being the capital.  But to the Jews, Jerusalem was the capital.  Joppa was located in the northern part of Judea and Ceasarea was in Samaria. 

The kids loved naming the animals that Peter saw in the sheet.  They also enjoyed repeating what the angel told Cornelius to do.  "Send men to (Joppa).  Find (Peter), who is staying at Simon, the tanner, (who lives by the sea)."  When Peter finally understood that God wanted him to share the Gospel with Cornelius and his household, I used CEF flipper, flapper to share the gospel.  This was such a fun lesson to teach. 

Because it was so HOT this week, we played water games again.  I learned a new favorite game.  The kids got into teams for a relay.  The first person pick up a car sponge in the bucket of water and ran around the cone.  Then he squeezed the water out of the sponge on the next team member before throwing the sponge into the water bucket.  The kids got soaked, but they loved it. 

Our missionary story was about Valentinus, the courageous Christian man behind Valentine's Day who lived in third century Rome. We follow him as he went against the Roman emperor's edicts by performing secret marriage ceremonies in the woods and how he refused to worship Roman gods. We saw how he faithfully followed Christ, even to his death.

We have only one more week of Backyard Bible Club for 2016.