Children's fellowship

Stephanie, Vincent, and I have been helping lead our church's Children's Fellowship each Wednesday since early fall. The activities attract anywhere between 4 and 15 mainly elementary-school-aged kids. Usually, Vincent helps out as the kids participate in Children's Choir practice for half an hour, then we spend time - following up on Sunday school classes which some of the kids participate in - reading and talking about the scripture for that Sunday/week (from the unified mainline Protestant schedule called the lectionary), engage in a broader discussion, and join in some sort of arts and crafts activity related to the reading and discussion themes. At some point we break for dinner, usually dinner that at least the adults love cooked by the father of two of the kids. We focused this week on the story of Jesus and his friends Martha and Mary and the death and then rebirth of their brother Lazarus. The story and the discussion looked ahead to next week's Holy Week and the death and resurrection of Jesus (along with the death and new life that we as Christians believe many folks will face). We talked about the experiences many of us have encountered with the illness or death of friends, family members, and even companion animals and how we and others have coped with that. I talked about going to a funeral of a church member's mother last week (in the snow), and Stephanie talked about how she was reaching out to the family of a colleague whose cat had recently died. Working with a great curriculum that another member of our Children's fellowship team designed, we asked the kids to make tissue holders - essentially boats out of contruction papers - with "God is with us at all times" and stickers and drawings (lots of flowers - I started it) on them - and tissues inserted - to put in the pews at church (perhaps for funerals). The kids did a great job and we ended up with about 10 tissue holders which Pastor Jane seemed OK with not waiting for a funeral, but putting them in the pews soon.