MISSIONS#3 FAMOUS MISSIONARIES K/1 st GRADES KENYA

Transcription

1 MISSIONS#3 FAMOUS MISSIONARIES K/1 st GRADES MAIN POINT KENYA Christ loves all the different kinds of people in Kenya and desires them to have a relationship with Him. Like missionaries, we can choose to follow God and have a great impact in reaching others for Christ. PASSAGE: I PETER 4:11 Key verse: If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised 1 Peter 4:11 PRE-CLASS CHECKLIST: Pray with the other teachers for the day s lesson. Activity Stations Printed Masai shield on white cardstock, 1/child Red, black and green crayons/markers Passports Pre-made passports (for those children who don t have one) Date stamp and pad Kenya flag sticker, 1/child; Culture stickers, 2/child Picture book on Kenya* Ethnic snack* Mission Possible sheet (front only), 1/child Introduction/Lesson Inflatable globe or map Laminated flags of USA & Kenya Object Lesson #1 Swahili language sheet Laminated picture of Masai tribe members Small Groups Prayer balls, 3/classroom Game 2 blind folds *Missions teacher to bring

2 LESSON PLAN SET UP INCORPORATION MIN Take the pictures of your adopted missionary child from the poly envelope in the bottom drawer of your carts, as well as any laminated pages for the current giving campaign. Put them on the white board to remind everyone to pray for them during small group. PLEASE REMEMBER to put them back in the poly envelope/bottom drawer at the end of class. Activity Stations: Craft Traditional Shield from the Masai tribal group 1 Instructions: Children can color the Masai shield with the African colors of green, black and red. (See lesson attachment for information about the Masai tribe that you can share.) Passport Station Instructions: Have each child pick up their passport. New children will need to get a passport and write their name in it and draw their own self-portrait in the provided space. Give each child a Kenya flag and two cultural stickers to place on the Kenya page (page 5) of the passport. Stamp the page with today s date. The children can also look through the library books and enjoy an ethnic snack in this station. INTRODUCTION/ INSTRUCTION 10 MIN LESSON LG GROUP MIN It s missions week again. Do you all have your passports? Do you remember why we each have our passports? Whenever anyone travels to another country, they need a passport to prove what country they have come from. For missions this year we are pretending to travel around the world and visit other countries. Today we are visiting Kenya. Did you visit the Kenya station we have set up? You should have put the Kenya flag and a couple stickers that represent Kenya on one page in your passport. And did you get your passport stamped with today s date? Let s take a look at the flag of Kenya. (Hold up laminated copy of flag.) Each country has a different flag that tells us something about how they became free. Look at the American flag. It has 50 stars, right? That s because there are 50 states in America. Just the same, the flag of Kenya tells us something about Kenya. The top black stripe represents the Kenyan people; their skin is black. The red stripe tells of the blood that the Kenyan people spilled in their fight to be free. The green stripe tells us there is good land for farming. The white stripe tells us they want to live in peace with other. The Masai shield, like the one you made, and spears stand for defending their freedom. Let me show you where Kenya is on the world map. It is in the continent of Africa. (Point to where Africa and Kenya are located.) Kenya is located on the equator, which means it s very hot there all year. There are about 69 languages spoken in Kenya, but most people speak Swahili and English enough to talk to one another. At home with their families, though, they may speak a different language. OBJECT LESSON #1 Speaking Swahili Let s see if we can learn to count to 5 in Swahili. Work with children a couple minutes on this. (Laminated sheet has Swahili numbers and phrases.) How about the word safari? This is a Swahili word that we use in English. Who can tell me what a safari is? (Let kids answer.) In Swahili safari means journey; Kenya is one of the most famous places to go on safari because it has beautiful scenery and lots of different wild animals. Part of Kenya is flat, dry and covered with trees and bushes where many people go for their safari, but the coast also has beaches with beautiful white sand. There are some areas that have lots of high hills and mountains. So, Kenya has many different types of land. Kenya has many different groups of people, too. Some live in the city in very tall buildings, others live in the

3 country in grass huts. Some live in palaces. Others own lots of cows and live in tents, so they can move around to find more grass for their cows to eat. Most Kenyans farm land far away from big cities. (Use the book provided to show the children some pictures of the Kenyan culture.) I d also like to share a little about the Masai people. They carry shields like the one you colored. (Hold up laminated picture of Masai people.) (Share information here as desired.) Now it s time to hear from a famous missionary who lived in Africa. There will be no music. LEARNING ACTIVITY #1 SM GROUPS LEARNING ACTIVITY #2 LG GROUP 10 MIN FAMOUS MISSIONARY David Livingstone (or Mary Slessor) Discussion: Spend some time summarizing the presentation. Do you think <<famous missionary>> had an easy time following God all the time? It might seem like it, but I m sure there were times they wanted to go back home. Why didn t they go home? Mention a time when things were difficult for <<famous missionary>>. There was nothing more important to them than following God, was there? These seemed to be the times that they really prayed and asked God to give them strength to do the right thing. How about when you are sad or mad? How can you trust God and let Him help you to do the right thing? (Talk to your mom or dad, pray and ask God to help, apologize if you need to, etc.) Does God want us to turn to Him for help? Let s look at our verse. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 4:11). Yes, God wants us to depend on Him; when we do, people see God s great power and love. God has great things He wants to do through your life, but first you have to begin a friendship with Him through Christ. (Clarify the gospel message if needed.) Prayer Give each small group a prayer ball. Remind the children to squeeze the prayer ball as they pray. As they are praying and changing the shape of the prayer ball, God is changing the shape of the real world through their prayers. Let s pray for a few minutes. Remind the children about our current giving campaign. (Take them to the bulletin board outside the Oasis storage room; show laminated picture on white board.) Pray for ways to be a generous giver! Pray for the people of Kenya and all of Africa. Pray for the students and their decision to trust Christ in different areas of their life. Don t forget to pray for your adopted MK. (Refer to laminated pictures.) Game Mbube, Mbube (African) Mbube (mboo'-bay) is one of the Zulu words for "lion." In this game the lion is stalking the impala (a southern African buck). Instructions: All players form a circle. Choose two players one is the lion, the other the impala. Blindfold them both and spin them around. Players in the circle start by calling to the lion, "Mbube, mbube!" The closer to the impala the lion gets the faster the chanting becomes. Likewise, if the lion is far away, the calling decreases in volume as well as repetition. If the lion has not caught the impala within a minute a new lion is chosen. If the lion catches the impala, a new impala is chosen.

4 Other sources: Remember to send the Mission Possible sheet home with each child. There are a few activities on the back of the sheet they can do with the help of their parents.

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6 Masai Tribe Information Introduction: The Masai tribe lives in Kenya. They are predominantly a warrior tribe whose lives revolve around herding cattle. One of their beliefs is that God entrusted His cattle to them. Thus, they measure their wealth by the number of cattle they aquire. A stereotypical image most people have of the Masai warrior is that of a tall and slender man clutching a spear in one hand with his red cloth wrapped around his waist or over his shoulders. Masai settlements: People of the Masai tribe live in small settlements of 8-15 huts per kraal. Their settlements are enclosed by a thornbush fence as an extra form of protection. The two-inch long thorns of the thornbush are as sharp as barbed wire and it is the men's responsibility for tying branches together to form the fence. In the evening, the cattle, goats, and other domestic animals are brought inside the kraal to protect them against wild animals. The women of the village usually build the huts which takes them about 7 months. They are built with branches, twigs, grass, and cow dung and urine formed into a plaster and applied to a branch frame. The mixture is as strong as cement after it dried in the sun and does not smell. They cannot stand up straight inside the hut and the only openings are that of the doorway and a small opening in the roof or wall which allows smoke from a continually blazing fire inside to escape. The fire is used to cook and to keep the family warm during the winter season. Dried cow dung is used to fuel the fire. The family sleeps on beds of woven branches cushioned with dry grasses and animal skins. Every so often small animals are brought into the hut in the evening to help protect the family from larger and more dangerous animals as well as the cold. The Masai stay in an area close to the front door. The only western pssessions you will find in a Masai hut might be an iron cast fry pan, a tin drinking cup or a few pieces of western clothing. Masai Women: Masai women and girls have numerous chores besides building the dung hut. It is their responsibility to milk the cows and fetch water, whatever the distance far may be (even 36 miles in some situations). The Masai women are also expected to pick calabashes or gourds from vines and clean the insides of the gourds as well as decorate them with leather and beads.

7 Milk, blood, water, honey and cornmeal are preserved inside the gourds. Generally the Masai drink milk from the cow or goat and when they don't have enough milk, they mix cow's blood with the milk. To get the blood from the cow, men shoot an arrow in the jugular vein in the cow's neck. The blood pours into a gourd and is stopped with a wad of dung and mud applied to the arrow hole. The Masai believe the blood makes them very strong. In addition, women spend most of their time doing bead work. They decorate animal hides, gourds, and make beaded jewellery including arm and leg bracelets and amulets. Young Masai Men: At the age of 15, the young Masai boys have their coming-of- age ceremony. This important ceremony initiates them into manhood. They create headdresses of ostrich plumes and eagle feathers, shave their heads, are circumcised and become Morani or young warriors. The boys then colour their skin red and braid their ocher colored hair intricately and set off on their journey to learn survival techniques. Traditionally in order to be considered a man, they had to hunt a lion with only a spear. However, the government of Kenya has declared this practice illegal. The young Masai warriors live together in a boma until they have passed on to manhood (generally 5-7 years). Subsequently, they get married (sometimes to more than one wive) and continually live together raising their families and herding their cattle. Generally people of the same age live together in bomas. Therefore, the elderly will all be together, but visit the to the younger bomas to help teach traditions and skills to their grandchildren. The elderly are responsible for organizing and leading the celebrations and ceremonies.

8 David Livingstone (this script was used previously for 4 th /5 th grade, so will need to be condensed) Good Morning! How many of you here think that you are pretty rich? How about poor? How many of you think that you are poor? When I was growing up, I was pretty poor. In fact, when I was just a little older than you are now I had to work in a cotton mill in order to help my family with the rent for our apartment. I worked 14 hours a day, and got less than 5 shillings a week! That is not very much. Where I worked they made cloth, and it was my job to keep a lookout for threads that had come loose in the cloth. When I saw one I would crawl into the loom and tie the threads back together to keep the cloth looking nice. It was very hard, and the hours were long, but there were some good things too. Because the government said that they had to, the company that I worked for made school available for us kids. They did it in the evenings, and after working a 14 hour day boy was I tired! I would work that long, long day, then stay up in the evenings going to school! (Big yawn) When I was at work I would keep a book with me so that I could read some of my lessons when I was not working. And I slowly learned things. Then one day when I was at church a minister talked about how there are many, many people in the world who have never heard how Jesus died so that we could be right with God. He said that when we are born we are all sinful, and separated from God. But to be forgiven by God all we need to do is to as for forgiveness of our sins through Jesus death on the Cross. The we would be forgiven by God and be with Him forever. Do you know that the same thing is true today? We all need to be forgiven by God, and the way to do that is by asking for forgiveness of the things we have done wrong. We ask for forgiveness by talking to God and telling him we are sorry that we have done bad things, but would He please forgive us because of Jesus' death on the cross. Then we will be forgiven! Do any of you here today still need to do that? You can do it right now if you want to. Just talk to God to yourself and ask that He forgive your sins through Jesus death for you. But that is not all that the minister said. He also said that to take the message of Jesus death to people, we should consider becoming doctors! That was a way that we could go to other countries and be welcomed. So after talking to my dad, I started thinking about becoming a doctor. Boy, was that hard! One term of medical school cost 12 pounds, and having a place to stay and eating cost another 12 pounds. I had to save 24 pounds! But I was helping with the rent and paying for my own cloths and giving money to the church, which I knew was important. I figured it out - it was going to take me 3 years of saving to go to school for a term! So I started saving. I saved a long time. But it was worth it. I got to go to medical school, and then after some medical school I also wrote to the London Missionary Society, so that I could become a missionary. They accepted me, and trained me in both being a missionary and more medicine. When I became a doctor and graduated from missionary school I looked around for where to go. I thought of China, but I heard a man speak about the needs of Africa, and that was where I decided to go. So I sailed (refer to map) from here in England down past Europe around this top part of Africa. But I didn't stop there - I sailed all this way to the bottom of Africa. But I didn't even stop there! I walked from there North to here - to the inside of Africa. There was a missionary post there and I joined some other missionaries. That was a long walk! But I didn't stop there. The people around the missionary camp had already heard about Jesus. I wanted to go and meet people who had never had the chance to hear about Jesus! So after some planning I took some wagons and a group and went North. It was wonderful! I love exploring! I remember this time when I came over a ridge and looked down on a big valley. I saw the smoke from what must have been a thousand cook fires spread out across the valley below me. And around every one of those cook fires would be people who had never seen a white man. Never heard about the love of God through Jesus! Just the idea of it was amazing. Sometimes what happened was funny. When I first started exploring I used an interpreter to talk to the natives. But before long I wanted to be able to talk to them myself and so I started learning the language. This was a good idea, but it was a language that was not much like any that I had heard before. It was tonal. That means that just one "word" might

9 have different meanings depending on whether my voice was going up or going down when I said it. I preached a whole sermon and I thought that I was telling them about 'sin' and how it separated them from God. Afterwards I learned that I had the word wrong and I had been telling them about how 'poop' had separated them from God. I preached a whole sermon about poop! Sometimes it was hard. The first time I went exploring I went into a village and talked to them. They welcomed me in and we talked. At the end of the day they gave me a hut to sleep in. Me and the friend who was with me lay down and just as I drifted off to sleep I thought I saw something moving. When I woke up I found out what it was - there were bugs called "Taupan" that had burrowed into my flesh and were sucking on me! Their heads were stuck under my skin! Oh it was so gross! Ick! I had to heat up a piece of metal and touch it to them to get them to back out of me! Ick! Another time I was woken up by hearing someone calling out "Tau, Tau!" and that means "Lion, Lion!". There was a big lion eating the sheep on the village flock. The warriors of the village ran out with their spears to try to fight it, and my friend and I grabbed our guns to try to back them up if there was trouble. That lion was huge! It was 400 pounds easily. They surrounded it, but when it *ROARED* and made a mighty leap at them the warriors fell back and the lion bounded away. I thought that it was over - that the lion had gone away. But as we walked back to camp suddenly I saw movement in the grass. I brought my gun up to my shoulder as I saw that lion, hiding in the tall grass. He had not gone away! I shot at him and hit him in the neck, but it didn't kill him. He jumped at me, clamping his huge jaws around my arm, sinking in him long teeth. His claws raked my body as he threw me around by my arm. My friend came to my aid, firing with his gun and killing the beast. I lay there on the ground, barely conscious and you know what? They had to wake me up because I was the only doctor! I lay there in terrible pain, and told my friend to feel along my arm. He found what he called a "bumpy" part - it was where my arm was broken. I told him he would have to *PULL* on it to set it. So he pulled *OW* and set the arm straight so that it would heal. But even with that I still cannot hold a rifle quite correctly even today. I met some great people too. I met a chief named Sechele. He became a great friend. He helped me in learning about his language and culture. And best of all, he listened when I told him about Jesus, and He became a Christian! He was a good friend for many years. I met my wife there too. She was the daughter of a missionary and we met at the missions station. She was one of the most wonderful people in my life for many years. We also had four wonderful children. One became a missionary himself. Another fought in the American civil war. I was so proud of them. There were some harder things that happened too. One of my daughters got sick and died shortly after she was born. That was very horrible. I got sick many times with Malaria, making me feel so exhausted I could not stand. One time I was so tired that even resting almost all the time I could only travel a couple of hours a day. But the rest of the time I traveled. I traveled a LOT. I walked over a thousand miles from the missions station to the ocean and then I walked back! I walked a LOOONG way. I also discovered some amazing things. I found and mapped places to find water through the Kalahari desert. I discovered a huge inland lake which I named Lake Victoria. Another time I was the first white man to ever discover this huge waterfall. It was so big that when I crawled over to the edge of the falls I could feel the vibrations in my chest as the water crashed below. That waterfall was over three hundred feet tall! I named it Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. And everywhere I went I hoped to do the same thing. I wanted to meet the people and find out about them. I would walk into a new village (walk among the kids and crouch down) and ask them about them. Then I would listen. I would find out what life was like for them. What did they do during the day? What did they eat? What did they believe? And I would tell them about God, who is above all gods and about His son Jesus who loved us enough to die for us, so that we

10 could be forgiven by God for our sins. I realize that I have left out almost all of my life. I didn't say anything about my good friend Thomas Steel who helped me immensely. I have not talked about receiving my award from the National Geographic society, nor about meeting Queen Victoria. I didn't talk about the people called the Boers, who hated me because they took slaves and I believed that was abhorrent to God. But I did talk about the most important things - exploring, meeting people, and telling them about Jesus. Now, I will have to be going shortly. Who has a question? Good link