Catching Up Part2

OK, so now about me. Well, first let me talk about our Bible Blasts. Earlier I mentioned the Saturday Bible Blast, how it’s like a VBS but it’s every Saturday for 5 weeks instead of every morning for a week. Remember all that? Well, the 16th was our last Saturday. I believe that the Lord really did use the program in several children’s lives, especially in a few of them. I would like to ask for your prayers for a few specific children. I won’t mention full names, because I don’t have their families’ permissions to do so, but the Lord knows their names.


A is going into the fifth grade. He and his family are Mormon, but his mom was very enthusiastic about the whole program, and he attended every one of the five days. He memorized nearly all the Scripture verses that we assigned the kids (the Romans Road, basically). We have been praying that he would keep these Bible verses in his heart, and that someday he would realize that there is a big difference between what the Bible says and what the Mormons say the Bible says. Also for his mom, who watched one of the puppet skits, and helped A with the verses, that her heart would be touched and she too would see the emptiness in Mormonism. He actually won the Bible Blast contest by getting the most stickers for attendance, memorization, and bringing friends, so he will be getting a bicycle.


F and R, sister and brother, are from a Muslim family. They were brought by A last Saturday. They both participated in the games, and appeared to have fun. During the puppet skit and application, however, R did not seem very interested. F, on the other hand, probably prayed the prayer to accept Jesus into her heart. At the end of the program, we gave a Bible to every child there, but R refused it. He stated, "We are not Christian or Jewish or anything, and we don’t have anything like that in our home." He also attempted to stop F from taking a Bible. She, on the other hand, wanted the Bible, and took it, even though R tried to talk her out of it. As she was given the Bible, she held it and said, "I believe everything that’s in it. I believe God wrote it. And I want to memorize more verses." If that doesn’t touch your heart, I don’t know what will!! We have all been covering her in prayer, asking the Lord to strengthen and grow her, to keep her safe, to let her be a light in her household, and to keep her strong despite the antagonism in that family. Sunday night after church we saw her in the neighborhood, and she said to Pastor Daniel and Miss Melonee, "I did a really bad sin today. But I did what he said." Miss Melonee asked, "Did you pray?" F answered, "Yes, I prayed." Please, pray with us for this girl and her family.


D and D (twins) live with their single dad and their grandfather. Their dad is searching, and he is willing to admit it. Pastor Daniel and Miss Melonee have talked with him, and they believe his heart may be open to the gospel. D and D had fun and seemed attentive, and they also will be receiving Bibles, although they were not there last Saturday. Pray that D and D and their dad and grandpa would be open and would see the truth, see what it is that they have been looking for for so long.


D and S, brother and sister, with their cousin S, are all Christians, and they and their family have attended our church a few times. They came faithfully, and even brought friends sometimes, and really were a light in the group. They were always polite and nice, and D really gave A a run for his money on winning the contest. D was just too funny sometimes, when during the application to the skit, Pastor Daniel would ask a question and D would give an answer that was correct but way off topic. For instance, one time Pastor Daniel asked the question, "What is a gift?" D eagerly answered, "It’s when God sent Jesus His Son to the earth to die for us all so we can go to heaven and not go to hell and Jesus died on the cross for us and…" You get the idea. It was all correct but it wasn’t exactly what had been asked! But these children were salt among the other children, and for that we ask the Lord to bless them.


There were several other children who only attended once at some point during the five weeks, including D, A, A, and others whose names I have forgotten, but I know God hasn’t forgotten them. Pray that the Lord will work in their hearts, that they will be touched by what they heard, even just in that time, and that they will understand what they heard and believe.


Before I finish with this post about the Bible Blasts, I want to show a few pictures of the puppetting that Mom and I did. You’ve already met Gertrude and George:




But you didn’t get to meet Yolanda. Anyway, here are the three puppets dressed up for the skit ‘A Good Horse’. Gertrude is Rodeo Bob the cowboy, Yolanda is Kylie the girl, and George is Doug the boy.


They rode horses in the skit, so Mom and I drew up horses for them. The palomino is Rodeo Bob’s horse, the bay is Kylie’s great horse, and the gray is Doug’s good horse. You would have to see the skit to understand, but the whole thing was about how some horses are great horses, because they always know who’s boss, but some horses are just good horses, because they don’t always remember to follow the one who leads them – the application being, obviously, that we should follow Jesus’ example and obey God. Like I said, you would’ve had to see the skit to understand.

And yes, we did some clowning around behind the scenes. Gertrude, Yolanda, and Miss Melonee getting tanned. Don’t ask. We really aren't hams, oh no we're not!! *grin*

I never got pictures of the costumes for the skit ‘Wake Up, Sam’, about Samuel being called by God, which is too bad because my mom made wonderful cotton-ball beard, mustache, and eyebrows for Eli (aka Gertrude). But we did get pictures from last week’s skit, ‘Take a Bath’, which was about Naaman’s healing. George did Naaman (in the middle with the blue turban and bandaids), Yolanda was Elisha’s servant (whom we know as Gehazi, but they didn’t go into all that in the little skit), and Gertrude did Naaman’s servant. By the way, if you ever decide to try a skit like this, let me tell you something we learned – BandAids *do not* come off of puppets. It’s really not funny. We did get most of them off, but we have to say that George has a birthmark on his arm. It’s pretty embarrassing. Thankfully, though, we figured it out before it was time to do the skit, and I made some paper ‘bandaids’ which came off easily as he was dipped in the ‘Jordan River’ (a blue sheet).

Another thing I learned is that your arms get tired really fast when you’re doing puppets…especially when the puppet stage is above your head… Not to mention if you ever try to do two puppets at once, like I did for the singing last Saturday. It hurts *so* bad…

But the kids loved it. This is what they saw:

That about sums it up for the Bible Blast update.