From my perspective...: Little By Little... Line Upon Line.

Last evening at the Chinese study, a couple came in after Nat was done with the lesson, so during the one-on-one time, I quickly brought the lady up to speed on the lesson of the evening ~ the story of Moses. While we were working our way down the Bible study page full of statements and questions, we came across a question worded something like this:

What does God want us to do with our problems?

The verse listed behind the question was Matthew 11:28, so we found the verse on the left-hand column of the page and Y.Y. began to tentatively read the verse... ~ "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Y.Y. then asked the question of the evening: "So we all need to come to God?"

YES!

That's it!!!!

Oh yes, that's what we need to do.... we all just need to come to God. I was so excited because Y.Y. was thinking about the verse and came to the right conclusion. As I shared that with a co-worker today she said, "it's line upon line and precept upon precept". Every step, no matter how insignificant, is still a step; a step in the right direction!

After the one-on-one time was over, we had some cake to eat (we were celebrating Y.Y.'s birthday:o)), and then we decided to play a game. Now this game goes by many names (Mafia, Mobster, Gangster, Murder, Killer) but it's a fun game to play in a big group. This game, however, does not work with only 7 or 8 people... I tried it once;o). The first time I ever played this game was on the lawn of Lehigh University with about 30 people. It was dark out and all of our cars were parked in a "no-parking" zone (oops!), so the policeman came along as we were in the middle of the game. Not believing that a group of college students were "just playing a game" (without beer), he was ready to disperse us when one of the guys described the game to him and actually had him play with us! Whenever he closed his eyes, he kept his hand on his gun;o). But the game goes like this...

One person is the narrator/moderator/overseer who tells the story. Everyone sits in a circle (preferably on chairs so you don't confuse who's dead and who's not) and they make up a town. You can name your town whatever you want (once we called it the town of Happy Sunshine!) and at the beginning, everyone closes their eyes and sticks out their fist. The narrator walks around and depending on how many people are in the group, he picks 2-3 'killers'. We had three killers in our game last night with about 20 people there. Then the story begins... "In the town of ____________, two people will die each night until the townspeople kill the killers. So the townspeople of the town of ___________ go to sleep tonight wondering who is going to die. At this point the killers awake to choose their two victims." (Two victims chosen). "The killers go back to sleep and in the morning the people of __________ awake to find out that so-and-so and such-and-such were stabbed (or whatever else) during the night. Now the townspeople have to find out who the killers are." At this point, there are normally two suspicious people who rise to the occasion because they are loud, boisterous, or just "seem" to be the killer. So after taking votes from the townspeople, one of the suspects dies and sits on the floor with the others who have been killed. And then the whole story repeats itself.

What's really funny is to see who gets accused. Usually it's the one who doesn't have a good reason as to why he's not the killer;o) and usually he dies. Last night two of us did really well as the "killers"; no one suspected us until the end, but by then it was too late:o). This game provides a lot of laughter and is a ton of fun for a big group! All in all, it was a good night at Bible study... if you think of it, pray for our Thursday night studies!