Anne of Green Gables prays

After all the talk about prayer last Sunday, Winsome mentioned to me that the movie 'Anne of Green Gables' had been on T.V. the night before. She told me about the clip of Anne learning how to pray. I thought you might enjoy it, so click on the link below.

I'm glad we don't have old-fashioned ideas of how to talk to God! A simple, 'Hi God, it's me... I need your help!" will do!

Prayer is like a Rainbow Cake

Last Sunday we learnt about prayer. Prayer is really just talking to God, and you can do it in lots of different ways.

Dylan made a rainbow cake with five layers. We thought this was a little bit like prayer. A prayer can be a bit like a cake, with lots of ingredients, or layers. Some people pray using their five fingers to help them remember what to pray for, like this:

1. Thumb: reminds us to pray for those closest to us (our family and friends).
2. Index finger (or pointer finger): reminds us to pray for our leaders and teachers - the people who point us in the right direction.
3. Middle finger (the tallest one): reminds us to pray for the leaders of our church, country & the world (they need a lot of help!)
4. Ring finger: reminds us to pray for people who are sick, sad, lonely or who need help.
5. Smallest finger: reminds us to pray for ourself!

We thought that by the time we got through all those other people and things to pray for, and got to the little finger, our problems might seem not quite so bad after all!

Another five finger prayer is this:
1. Praise God ("Hey God, we think you're great!")
2. Thank God for something
3. Say sorry to God for something
4. Ask God to help someone else
5. Ask God to help YOU!

Or, a simpler version is the J.O.Y. prayer:
J for Jesus - thank Jesus for something
O for Others - pray for others
Y for YOU - pray for yourself

Anyway... we decided it didn't matter how you pray, whichever way you do it - God will be very pleased to hear from you!

When we all pray together, like we do in church, or in Awesome Time, or on the Prayer Link Chain - we are all unified, or 'brought together' in prayer (just like all the parts of Dylan's rainbow cake). Wherever we come from, however old we are, whatever language we speak, when we pray together - God thinks that's pretty awesome.

Prayer is like an Umbrella too

We also thought that prayer is a bit like an umbrella in the storms of life. Prayer doesn't stop the rain from falling, but it helps shield and shelter us. We made a prayer umbrella! 

Georgia and Monica wrote on the edge of the umbrella "PRAYER IS LIKE AN UMBRELLA IN LIFE'S STORMS"
Then we each wrote a prayer and tied it to the umbrella.

We made loom band chains to remind us of our church's Prayer Chain, and how we can all be connected to God and to one another, in prayer. We also enjoyed the delicious rainbow cake, and made prayer pillow boxes.

Thanks to Isabella for writing and reading her own prayer in church. You are pretty awesome, Isabella!

Creative Spelling at FISH

Last FISH night brought out the competitive streak in everyone. Some teams were even known to 'bend the rules' slightly. See if you can spot the problem in Sonia's team's bottom word, in Human Scrabble.

Yes, we'll give you 'REPTILE'

Hmmm.... 'PREDITOR' - "Check the dictionary!" says Spencer! Nice try Sonia!

Awesome Video!

The Awesome Kids & Youth made this video last week... check it out and pass it on!

God is Always With Us

Last week our Awesome Kids found many creative ways to get across the message that God is Aways With Us.

FISH family fun night this Saturday!

CHYPS

CHYPS, the Chapel Street Young People's Youth Group started tonight - with loads of enthusiasm, laughter and tons of heavenly food!

CHYPS is a group for intermediate and high school aged youth (in school years 7 to 13). Check out our CHYPS blog for more details.

West Coast Visitors

Last Sunday we hosted the annual 'West Coast Service' at The Chapel Street Centre. People who were born or lived on the West Coast of the South Island at any time, came to our church to share worship and food together.

Our Awesome Kids helped to feed the visitors. We put our Masterchef skills into action and prepared some scrummy dishes for morning tea.

Izak captured some of the behind the scenes action on camera...

April's FISH night

Last month's FISH night had us all exhausted at the end of all the games!

See if you can pick something odd about the photo below...

Mysterious messages

Last Sunday, our Awesome Kids played 'Guess Who' - as some photographs of mystery people were shown on the screen we all tried to work out who they were. Some of them were very hard to recognise! But, with the help of the rest of the congregation we were eventually able to work most of them out.

We heard the story of Jesus appearing to his friends on the road to Emmaus. The friends took a while to recognise Jesus, just as we did with some of the mystery photos. When they realised it was Jesus they were so happy and excited they ran all the way back to Jerusalem to tell everyone they had seem him... and that Jesus and his love lives on.

I had a suitcase with me, which rather embarrassingly started to ring! It was my cell phone ringing from within! I answered the call, to find out it was someone with a message for our Awesome Kids - that Jesus loves us, and is with us always!

Jesus wants us to pass that message on to everyone - and inside my case were lots of different types of messages. Besides the phone call, there was a letter, a treasure map, a tiny scroll inside a glass bottle, a balloon, and the most puzzling of all was a piece of paper with a secret code! 

The code was made up of raised dots. William was quick to work out that the message was written in Braille, which is what blind people use to read. Izak quickly whipped the braille message over to Halina, who was able to decode it for us all:

Love lives on.

We made treasure maps and messages in bottles, to remind us to look for Jesus in everyone we meet, and to pass on the message that Jesus's love lives on, and his love is for everyone.