Prayer meetings and Sunday School (on Monday!)

September 28, 2009
Prayer meetings are often a weekly occurrence in the US. The church usually has a fraction of its members come to an hour of prayer, often on Sunday or Wednesday nights. But here, prayer services are daily, around what we would consider lunch time, and go for about an hour each. It’s kind of neat; there are guys there on break from work, women, some kids, etc. We start at 11 and usually go till about 12. Today, though, Chloe and I found out it was a special prayer service.

Right after breakfast (around 9:45), the girls enlightened us to the fact that we were going to church for a special service at 10. Well, by 10, they meant 11. But, Chloe and I had no idea, so we walked over there, only to sit in the church till 11. To be honest, I was ready for a nap! Eating straight carbs for breakfast (and dinner for that matter) leads to a big ol’ crash about 2 hours after breakfast! I suppose I’ll get used to it :). But, around 11:15, right before the praise band started playing, Uncle walked over to us and told us that he wanted us to do “Sunday School” with the kids as they would be distracting after the worship part of the service. Thankfully, he brought colors and paper with him for us to use!

So the praise band played for about 35 minutes, then we prayed and Uncle sent us downstairs with the kiddos! Well, the Nepali woman who came down with us asked, “what are we teaching the children today?” Chloe and I looked at each other, and she jumped right in and asked, “Does anyone know the story of Noah and the Ark?!” A couple of kids started wrestling for mic time, telling about the animals, the boat, the rain, the branch, etc in turn. Glad that they knew what she was talking about, she said, “Ok. Let’s draw pictures from the story!” So, the kids who understood English jumped to it, and those who didn’t watched those who did and quickly figured out that we were making rainbow animals dancing around on multi-colored boats. Not entirely sure they understood the Biblical background, but they enjoyed the colors :).

So, about 10 minutes later, the boys were finished and beginning to wrestle and pinch and hit and cause no end of commotion. So, Chloe, used to this thinking on her feet thing, said “Let’s make paper airplanes!” A FANTASTIC idea. So, they made them (that alone took like 15 minutes, showing each of them how to do it), and she took them outside while the girls and I continued to color. A few minutes later, they came jostling back in, with semi-crushed planes and laughter in tow.

We asked some of the older girls who had come downstairs if they were almost finished upstairs, since we were now pushing 12:30. “No, they’re still praying upstairs.” Well, we were both very thankful that they were so diligently praying, but we were running out of ideas of what to do with 10 children for an unknown amount of time. Seeing as how the planes seemed to be a hit (and took them a long time to learn) I jumped in and showed those interested how to make an Origami star box. This took about 20 minutes, and then we decorated them all bright like the Ark. The boys quickly realized, hey, we can use these as flying UFOs, so soon colors were swirling through the air as the boxes flew between boys. Unfortunately, the amazingness of the boxes wore off as well, and we were back to slapping, pinching, and yelling.

So, when you’ve got nothing else to do, Duck-Duck-Goose (played on your knees; running was just not an option!) is a great solution, and this game brought much laughter and occupied them for probably another 45 minutes. By that time, my knees and back were “paining” me (as the kids would say!), so I said, let’s play ANOTHER game. “Down by the banks” was my solution, and to my dismay, the kids didn’t have a song to sing in Nepali while we went around the circle slapping hands. They rather enjoyed the game though, so Chloe again had the brilliant solution of counting to ten at the end of the song, so the kids would know that if their hand got slapped on 10, they were out! They loved it, and I don’t think I’ve ever had to sing that song so many times in a row. The kids still didn’t know the song, but wanted me to sing it, so over and over and over again I sang, and then they’d count to 10. This went for another 45 minutes (they have incredibly long attention spans for ridiculous games!), and then we were relieved to find the adults had finished. This was around 3, and we had an afternoon snack at the church. Although it was a loud and sometimes a little stressful afternoon with the kids (mainly due to the short notice!), it ended up rather enjoyable, and I made some little friends :). I guess I’ll be more ready for “Sunday School” each week now!