Beirut - Day 5

Today is Sunday, so the schedule is different. We had breakfast of course and our team meeting. Then we went to the main church service here at the Life Center. There are also a number of other church services that take place here throughout the day, including a Fillipio service and a Kenyan service. Two of our team members (Glenn and James) went to the Fillino service after the main service and shared during the service.



About midway through the service they released the kids for Sunday School, which a number of us from the team ran today. Katie and Luis took the kinder and under age group, whereas Larry, Glenn and myself took the elementery age kids. I took the kids through a memorization of Phillipians 2:10-11a in Arabic (pretty cool given that I only know a handful of words in Arabic!).

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

10 لِكَي تَسجُدَ إكراماً لاسمِ يَسُوعَ كُلُّ الكائِناتِ،
سَواءٌ الَّتِي فِي السَّماءِ،
أمْ عَلَى الأرْضِ، أمْ تَحتَ الأرْضِ.
11 وَلِكَي يُقِرَّ كُلُّ فَمٍ أنَّ يَسُوعَ المَسِيحَ هُوَ الرَّبُّ،
فَيَتَمَجَّدَ اللهُ الآبُ.

Then I had them do a Bible drill, in which they were broken into 3 teams and I gave out a scripture reference. The first team to find and read the passage got 3 points, the second 2 points and the third 1 point. We then worked on a craft (a crown they could decorate to remind them of the name above all names). Then we played games until the main service got out.

While we were waiting for our own lunch to be served a few of us (Rodgett, Katie and myself) went in and visited with Glenn - who was having lunch with the Fillipio church - and sampled some of their lunch.

After lunch a few of us (Pastor Kelly, Katie, Luis, Larry, David, Glen, Justine and myself) walked to the local shopping district. However, either because it was Sunday, or Ramadan and/or both, most of the shops were closed, though we did find an ice cream shop that was open and stopped there.

Tonight was the last night of the Fun Fair (Keremesse). I ran the foosball table (called baby foos - "baby football" - here). Not that I saw a whole lot of action. That game and the rope game that David was on were the only two games that they charged money to play, the rest were free. The issue was that if those two games were free we wouldn't have been able to handle the number of kids that wanted to play them. As it was, the rope game only saw a little action and the foosball game only had one playing customer. The rest of the kids playing foosball we either let in for free or I bought their ticket for them.

We did another cross craft tonight. This particular cross had a multicolored background covered by a think layer of black material you could scrape off. The kids got plastic sticks as well they used to scrape designs in the black material, so that the colors showed through.

A short while after that we started by trying to give away the toys that Larry bought earlier. The problem was that we didn't give them away as the kids were entering (they were only supposed to get one if they brought a friend). When we asked who brought a friend, the kids paired off and claimed each other, and we didn't have enough toys to give one to each pair. We ended up raffling them off at the very end of the fair, which we didn't feel particularly comfortable with, but couldn't come up with a better way of handling it.

Then I started to do a magic trick with Katie where I "pulled" a sponge ball out of her ear and then caused additional sponge balls to enter her closed hand. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned on using the trick earlier in the week and so had shown a number of kids how it worked. They were in the audience and spoiled it for the rest of the kids by shouting out what was happening. At that point, I told the kids there were too smart for me. I pointed out that the tricks I had done all week weren't magic, they were illusions, and they weren't true, but what I told them all weekend about sin and Jesus' having paid the price for it and offering them the free gift of eternal life. I demonstrated the 'free gift' part by offering one of the sponge balls to the interpreter but noting that if he doesn't accept the free gift, he doesn't have it. I asked who wanted to recieve the free gift (not the sponge ball, but eternal life) and then lead the kids who responded through the sinner's prayer.

After that was the raffle for the flying toys, and then the fair ended. We spend another couple hours tearing everything down.