We drove into the state of Pennsylvania yesterday so I can help teach at Shiloh Mennonite Church’s Summer Bible School in Reading, PA. You might be wondering, “Isn’t there any Summer Bible Schools in Indiana, or Michigan, or wherever that place is where you live?” Yea, there’s approximately seven thousand churches between Pennsylvania and Indiana that have Summer Bible School programs. The problem is that in a involuntary spurt of goodwill towards humanity I volunteered Janice and myself to teach.  Plus, Tony, my cousin who helps run the shindig in Reading, had his hands wrapped around my ankles and was sobbing in desperation for more teachers. It was kind of embarrassing and so I muttered something about being able to help.

So here we are in Pennsylvania and the first night is in the can, so to speak. On the way to Bible tonight I got a text informing me that my helper for week, Alissa, got sick and couldn’t keep anything down. It got so bad that she actually become dehydrated and went to the hospital tonight. This meant that I had no snack or riot control for my classroom. And if you don’t have any snack, you really need riot control.

Like life usually does, it worked out. I had five of the best behaved 2nd grade boys in the city, I think. I offered my humble (and slightly abridged) version of the Good Samaritan with my homemade bag puppets. I was sitting under a table with my hands above my head. I couldn’t see the kids that well while sitting under the table so I half expected the kids to run off and leave me talking to myself in strange voices with bags on my hands. As I expected, they seemed to think the robber beating up George (the name of the unfortunate traveler) was the hero of the story and encouraged the robber to do a thorough job. It’s good I had a knowledgeable grasp on the subtlety of the story so I was able to explain to them that mugging folks isn’t a cool thing to do.

I have to brush up on my puppet voices. It’s hard to project your voice to a group of kids in a tent while trying to sound like a wise cracking old guy. All in all, it went very well. The boys even offered to help clean up the markers when class was over (which is unusual, in case you are unfamiliar with 2nd grade behavior).

Pray for Alissa, that she could get better, stay hydrated, and keep things down.

Pray that the Bible School could go well, that teachers would know how tell stories in a way that city kids can understand them, and that Satan would be bound so that city kids could hear the message we’re telling them.