Taiwaneers

Several Sundays ago Pastor Joel told the church that if anyone wanted to help out there were two ongoing ways we could. Option one: if you are an early riser come early to church and help set up as we meet in a space at a university so it must be set-up and taken down every week. Option two: teach children’s church. I am not an early riser so I very quickly ruled out option number one.

A few weeks ago I approached Pastor Joel and asked for more specifics on teaching children’s church. We talked about getting involved in the church more and he expressed interest in me helping with videographic projects because my Thanksgiving video was such a hit. I told him about being involved in small churches and such back home and how I was up for anything. All of that didn’t hinder him from helping me with my original question though and sign me up to teach children’s church. Today my turn to teach came!

Pastor Joel’s instructions had been that they weren’t using a curriculum presently so I had about 40 minutes to teach the youngsters anything I wanted. What fun! It got me thinking of the children’s church lessons I had given back at Immanuel Christian Fellowship in the States and that got me excited. Following curriculum has always been less appealing to me then just telling stories from the Bible. With curriculum my brain has a certain amount of stuff to get through which gets me thinking about the end-game whereas loosey-goosey makes me zany, childlike, and fun. Sometimes, like now, I realize just how weird it is that I can see these things about myself but for some reason I still can’t make my reaction to curriculum the same as my reaction to loosey-goosey. Self-realizations are strange things.

I just recently finished reading through Genesis so after thinking over a few stories I decided on Joseph. Saturday I made myself a little cheatsheet of the high points in the story so I could find my way if all the pressure of being in front of a group of kids made me lose my train of thought. I also picked out a Bible verse that we could memorize and thought about questions I could ask the kids before and after to stimulate greater reflection and life applications from the story. All this preparation was making me nervous!

Well Emily and I got to church, took our seats and enjoyed ourselves as usual singing songs to praise the King of Kings. Then greeting time came and afterwards the kids and I adjourned to our conference-room turned children’s church facility. Uncle Moses, an extremely sweet older Taiwanese man who teaches children’s church a lot and has basically taken on the mantle of filling in whenever there isn’t someone else signed up to teach decided that he would be my assistant.

First we played an introduction game because “I’m new” I said “and don’t know everyone that well.” The kids were great! There was 1 boy (poor fella) and 4 girls from 10 to 5 years old. Once introductions were over the kids were getting the picture that I was a different sort of teacher then they were used to and conversation was flowing like crazy from all over the room. By this I mean the kids did not sit quietly by and listen respectfully once they realized I didn’t expect them to. It was great! This lack of order did not prepare them for what came next though.

We started talking about Joseph and his family. We talked about how his family was kind of strange. After all his father had two wives and Joseph had all these brothers and Jacob actually had favorite children, Joseph being one of them. Jacob even had a favorite wife. We also talked about how Joseph’s family was kind of like those of us there because his family lived far far away from their relatives in a foreign land which was not the custom and how we live far far away in Taiwan from our relatives in a foreign land. I should mention at this point most of the kids were from America. It was really cool to see light bulbs go off in their brains realizing that they have similarities with weird, polygamous, Old-Testament families. “Who wants to help us act out the story and play the part of Joseph” I asked. This amount of craziness proved to be too much and instantly I was looking at an empty conference table as they all dove underneath it to ensure I didn’t misinterpret anything as a gesture of volunteerism.

Well after they got used to me acting out all the parts myself they decided they wanted in on the action and came up for air. Stepping from side to side, signifying my jumping from Jacob to Joseph in a conversation about the colorful coat my actions made one little girl in between giggles tell me “this is the craziest Sunday school I’ve ever been to.” Pay dirt!

I got no where near the end of the story. We stopped where Jacob has been told Joseph is dead and Joseph has been sold as a slave in Egypt. I asked them if they could remember the story until next week when we could continue it and they said they could. Uncle Moses had brought snacks so we all enjoyed ourselves for a few minutes until the big church let out! The little Taiwanese, five-year-old, adopted girl who’s parents are a mixed-couple so she speaks perfect English had sat on top of the table the whole lesson. She definitely seemed to be in her own little world most of the time but during snacks she looked up at me, smiled, and said “I like you Michael.” “I like you too” I answered back.

Teaching children’s church seemed to change something. After church more people were talking with us and it seemed like there was this threshold we had crossed in terms of how the tried and true members of the church thought of us. It makes absolute sense. Its a very transient church since many foreigners come to Taiwan for 6 months or a year to learn Chinese or teach English in a cram school and then leave. Teaching children’s church seems to have helped communicate our membership into the New Hope community. Not that we weren’t welcomed before because we definitely have been, very warmly. Its just now it seems like we’ve reciprocated that welcome and communicated our acceptance of the community membership. Its a great feeling!