July 13th – Summer Sunday School outside

… Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus…
… Jesus said to the one who was paralyzed—“I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.” Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God.
Luke 5:18-19, 24b-25.

It was rainy on the first of our summer Sunday School classes in the garden. We sheltered in the small hallway that leads into the baptistry – we arranged our rug on the floor and set out our prayer centre. It was hard to move around. We needed to speak and sing very quietly because the Mass was happening just on the other side of the inside doors. We chanted “Ibariki Tanzania, Ibariki Tanzania” softly and each of us put a stone on the prayer plate. Once again we heard the story of the people who brought their friend who couldn’t move to Jesus so that he could be healed. Then we acted out the story with our special dolls and a stretcher. We talked about how it is good to help each other. We had to step out into the misty rain for a moment so that we could prepare ourselves for getting into the crowded room with “the man who was paralysed”. Our new Sunday School space was perfect … the tiny room was so crowded it was easy to imagine how hard it could be to get the man who couldn’t move close to Jesus.

After we finished acting out the story we focused once again on insects. We broke up into teams and went collecting them. We found two mosquitoes and a tiny beetle and some ants. We let them go again just in time to tidy up and go inside for Communion.