sunday school

after a semester hiatus due to adjusting to life with Caleb, I'm back with the sunday school kids, and I got to jump right in to the fun yesterday. an hour before we were to begin, the lead teacher called to say she was sick, and would I please take the class today? fun!

2 years ago I signed on to help with the 4 and 5 year olds. basically I was crowd control while Abby worked her magic. I learned a ton just watching her teach the kids, and she was good and kind enough to include me in some of the teaching as a caught on. amazingly, the kids loved me! and I loved them too. Abby had to move on, so I took the lead the next year, sharing the duties with Jenny. it was the same group of kids, so I felt very comfortable with them. I just pray that they learned more of Jesus' love that year.

but when Caleb came, I took some time off, not knowing how life would go. so Jessica took the lead, with Jenny helping too. but now Jenny is off to grad school, so it was perfect timing for me to jump back in as a helper. mostly the same kids, just a bit older of course. the wild card is that now Jessica is in charge and I have no idea how she runs the class, but I'm sure she does great.

anyway, the call came in for me to be in charge on my first day back. in charge and probably alone with a bunch of kids who happen to generally like me, but who also know that they can get away with stuff with me (I'm not very authoritarian, unfortunately). I figured I'd bring the guitar, read a Bible story, do a memory verse, and bust out the crayons and paper when all else failed.

thankfully Karen volunteered to help out, and all went rather well. there were 7 kids. we sang some songs, and that went predictably mediocre. as a big group our kids sing OK, but in smaller groups its pretty weak. I dunno if it's a presbyterian thing or what? but after a while most of them were singing and thankfully I even knew the chords for the one request I had (Jesus Loves the Little Children). then Karen read about John the Baptist.

and then we did my favorite part: the memory verse. I wasnt sure if the kids somehow would be "too old" for the somewhat silly fun we would used to have with the verses. I think Abby started doing fun voices as we repeated the verse back and forth, and the kids really get into it, especially the LOUD voices. but thankfully they're still into it and we said Malachi 3:1 back and forth in normal, baby, marching, quiet, REALLY quiet, and LOUD voices. and somewhere in there I did my best to explain what the verse actually means.

anyway, no especially poignant or touching moments, but I pray that the kids learned more of God's love in our time together. sometimes it's just crowd control, and especially when there's no plan or curriculum I tend to focus on just surviving the hour. so pray for me and Jessica and the kids, that we'd all know and love Jesus more.