Fiji Day 5

Mid week Wednesday....the usual hot morning sun.. and we arrive at Church again sweating like pigs and covered with mosquito repellant.

The morning devotion was led by Hsien and we meditated on 1 John 4:7-18. What seems like a simple passage about the Love of God might not seem to simple when you have to comfort someone in pain or grieving. Of course we know that God is love and we should love each other but what do you say without sounding superficial? there is no correct answer....and that left me pondering for the rest of the day.

The kids arrived and started off playing games.. we came up with this "evil" plan to make them play lotsa running games in the morning so as to tire themeselves out by the afternoon. Ha ha.. use up all the energy.. cos they are so hyper. half of the time the evil plan doesn't work. BAH. so round and round they went chasing after each other in the game. they are so cute to watch though.

Today's session was teaching them on how Jesus paid the price for them. We did a short skit to portray how someone else took the punishment for something wrong that they did. In a nutshell - Peter and I are friends but I took Peter's bag to throw into the girl's toilet(!??!!?? - where on earth does Grace Choy get ideas like that????) and I was sent to the principal's office to receive punishment (3 strokes of the cane on my palm). However, when I reached there, the principal informed me that someone had already taken the blame for me and received the caning on my behalf. "WHO WOULD HAVE DONE SUCH A THING FOR ME??? WHAT AN AMAZING FRIEND!!". Then Peter walked out with heaps of red ink and purple ink on his palms to make them look raw and hurt. Even though the kids knew it was just ink, they all understood the notion that God took their sins and died on the cross for them.

One interesting thing that we noted though... when some of the youth leaders were standing in front waiting for our parts in the play, Grace Choy was doing the introduction. When she was explaining about the caning part, she used a long plastic ruler and kept on using it to hit the table. Of course with Grace Choy's brutal force, each whack produced a long sound. We noticed that one of the older kids was cowering away in fear. He was covering his ears, his eyes and just squirming in his seat. After the play, Grace Choy unintentionally did the same action again.. and he was so jittery and did not even dare to look in front. That was really odd and it really looked as if he would have just pee-ed in his pants if Grace Choy had continued hitting the table. We will inform Herbert of our observations at the end of the Kids Club as we suspect that his phobia might stem from the way he's treated at home?? we're not very sure either.

For lunch we had fried chicken and stewed eggplant and bacon slices. Not surprisingly the kids hardly touched the eggplant and during the debrief comments were passed that the colour of the eggplant was like snails (YUCKS) or drowned corpses fingers (PUKES). Not that we didn't finish the food though, we were all so hungry that we finished everything on our plates. The kids had to line up and wash their own plates (Child labour.. ha ha!) and you know what?? They did - and they knew how to do it. Even though some of them were just 5 years old. Well trained. I'm very amazed, so I've made up my mind that my kids will start washing their own plates at 4 years old.

The games session after lunch was charades. Another classic game that entertained the children to the max!!! We gave them really hard ones like Christmas, Cinema and Pen Ink. But a few smart ones managed to guess it correctly. Hsien's cricket actions became "Golf" according to Little Peter and the little boy who had to act out "Grace Choy" made scolding and pointing actions. ha ha ha.

Memory Verse of the day was John 3:16 - the most basic verse. So proud of them when all of them took it very seriously and could recite it within 15 mins.

Art and Craft for the day was them creating a cross and Jesus on the cross with modelling clay. all the kids did a very good job of it and worked hard on their craft.

During the debrief session, we had fresh tuna sashimi, watermelon and ice cream. What a wierd mix but hey! we're in Fiji!! Even Dr Peter Chen and Winnie were happily eating the ice cream!!

When we reached home.. water was back on!!! WOOTSSSS!!!! but another adventure of the night when I broke a metal chair (the leg fell off) ha ha ha.. the worst part was I fell off when i was adjusting my butt whilst telling a story so everyone was already watching me. Grace Choy was in shock for the next 5 mins and pretending to be nonchalent about a black flying cockroach that decided to end its life by flying into our living room at night. Thank God for Little Peter and his cockroach killing skills.

Some interesting snippets of what happened today during Kids Club:

1. Hsien spent 45 mins building a helicopter for a little boy. He was amused with it for 5 secs and then instructed her to take everything apart so that he could use the parts to build something else.

2. Grace Pan (feels so wierd talking in 3rd party) had to clean the bums of 2 little girls today in the span of 15 mins after both of them did a poo. EEEEWWWWW....

3. Ben Li has his knee licked (LICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!) by a little girl!!!

Speaking of Ben...Sorry about the Ben dancing video.. I couldn't upload it as the internet connection is so slow it timed out. I'm still attempting to upload it and will update as soon as I can.