A-B-C-D-E-F-G
Jesus died for You and me
H-I-J-K-L-M-N
Jesus died for sinful men (AMEN!)
O-P-Q-R-S-T-U
I believe God’s word is true
V-W
God has promised you
X-Y-Z
A home eternally!
As you can see the gospel is in the song which I think is rather ingenious. Hearing the kids sing it loud and clear (and never ever tire of it) is something I’ll never forget. The kids had a break where they would sit in an orderly manner to pray after washing their hands, and have a snack of water and biscuits. After that we had a game of ‘London’s bridge is falling down’ and I witnessed havoc. They obviously didn’t really understand what the game was about and we couldn’t exactly explain it due to the language problem. In the end the kids were running and shoving and trying not to get caught. Aunt Lucy had to firmly put a stop to it... I began to have second thoughts about cute little kids sitting on chairs who listened to every word you say in awe and wonder. One particular kid caught my eye coz he was so hyperactive and just kept running and running around. I would get to know his name during the camp and the rest of the kindergarten program.
Uncle Gilbert, Uncle William, Darren and Esther accompanied my dad to a wedding after lunch. Zhi hong, Aunt Lucy and I decided to stay back to prepare the stuff for registration and to make sure some of us were around during registration. I heard that the traditional wedding has some sort of war cry. For this you have to ask those who went. Apparently I don’t know much about my roots. Anyway we who remained thought up of last minute things we had to do that we hadn’t initially thought of. We wrote up evangelistic memory verses on big sheets of paper and which really came in handy as time fillers. And the kids really put effort in memorising them and learnt a few English words since we presented the verses in English and Indonesian side by side.
The kids came an hour before four. Some had even come before 3 and we saw this propensity to come early during the our stay in Nias. Not only do kids wake up at super early hours of 5.30, they also come an hour early or even more than that when it comes to appointments. We postulated that the reason for this trend was that the kids had nothing to do at home anyway. Anyway I couldn’t help but contrast it to Singapore coz registration started at 4 and it was a Saturday. A typical Saturday for me in Singapore would be to have yf at 4pm and have almost everyone come at 4.30pm. Rather interesting how majority of the people here would come half an hour early and people on the red dot would come half an hour late. Contrast the laidback lives of country people with the busy busy busy lives of city people. Affluence and technology put together have an interesting effect.
So there we were, registering the kids above the noise. Most of them were playing in the playground while some crowded around the registration table. Aunt Midar (one of the kindergarten teachers and another relative) was shouting in her loud commandeering voice to get the kids registered in the different age groups. I was glad she was there while I wrote their names and ages on the name tags, evenly dividing the kids into different coloured groups. Red, Green, Blue and Yellow (Merah, Hijau, Biru, Kuning). The age group was a bit off, we had kids as young as 5 and people as old as 14. We had prepared 72 name cards...we ran out.
The initial plan was to have the kids come in and register at 4pm and then watch an Indonesian bible cartoon story while waiting for the rest of the kids to register. However due to the fact that the kids redefined punctuality for us, registration was done in no time and we were left scratching our heads on what to do with the kids. We gathered them into the room and called them out one by one to give them their name tags. With my mom as the translator, zhi hong asked the kids to come out in front to say their name and age and their hobby. This went well for like...the first 5 people. After that... no one was really listening, the kids were soft, the loud hailer was a bane. Instead of amplifying our voices it just kept on having those frequency problematic sounds which added on to the noise that the 80 kids were making.
Change tactic. Time for ice-breakers. We painstakingly had to explain the game of Simon says like a lot of times before they managed to understand the concept of the game. It didn’t help that we were speaking in English. At least by that time, my little bit of Indonesian knowledge was coming back to me and I was attempting to translate to the kids whatever zhi hong was trying to say. There were no translators there yet. Seeing a group of 80 kids playing Simon says can be quite entertaining... for a while. We then moved on to the Jesus jigsaw puzzle. Well there were quite a number of kids in each coloured group and one of the girls in my group wasn’t too pleased that she couldn’t get to even touch the jigsaw puzzle coz everyone was huddled around it. With a little compromise she managed to contribute in the end. And I must say the green team did a pretty good job!! Biased, I know haha. You can see the eagerness on the kids faces as their attention turns to you in expectancy as you speak.
We had a time of songs. We had a very very very long time of songs. It was the only thing we could do to keep the kids entertained while we waited for the food to come. Dinner was late since it was the first day and we ended up not knowing what to do for one hour. We attempted to watch the Indonesian cartoon but the speakers weren’t loud enough. The One Clap-Two Clap activity that Darren introduced was a very good time filler and helped to get the kids attention. We recited the 1st memory verse – Romans 3:23 a number of times. Finally a translator came, Tina, who you could say saved the day. We had to push our whole program forward and we needed her to translate the skits for us. Oh and she led the kids to sing a beautiful Nias song that I didn’t know could be split in two groups and be sung in rounds. And when it’s sung together you can hear the beautiful harmonies that the kids are making. Lovely. The Indonesian songs that Pastor Alvin taught us came in handy such as ‘Betapa baiknya engkau Tuhan’. Uncle Gilbert said it was a nice feeling to come down after their bible study session and hear the kids singing out loud “Hosanna! Hosanna!” so loudly. You can tell that the kids are more comfortable singing songs in their own language that they know. But overall, they really love to sing. ‘Dalam Yesus’ was another popular song that pastor taught us which we heard almost every single day.
The Parable Package was on the prodigal son with a craft of a heart of love that the kids were supposed to give to their parents.
The younger kids were ‘secretly’ ushered out to eat their dinner first before the older ones finally got to eat. The poor souls were hungry and tired and so were we actually... Well we had packet food that created a bit of a mess since it was on the floor. Anyway after dinner we found out that not everyone was staying. In fact less than 20 would be sleeping over because their villages were too far away. The rest either walked home or had someone pick them up.
Anyway during the daily debrief...
- Age was a problem. Comprehension levels for the wide age groups varied and it was difficult to control the younger ones. A camp meant for 8 to 12 year olds became a mix and mash of 5 to 15 and this was extremely difficult to control. Younger ones felt left out, older ones felt bored having to wait. In our discussion, we learnt that we should stick to the age group set out.
- Translator woes. Before Tina came, we had quite a bit of a problem. Translators are essential for us to communicate with the kids
We went to sleep not knowing quite what to expect the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment