A Happy Sabbath

Yesterday for Church, Roy preached a simple sermon on the Waldensian Christians. This was a totally new subject for our kids. They had never heard of the Waldensians before. Roy told about how the evil "christians" came and made the Waldensians choose between following God, or following the Pope. They all chose to follow God and die, rather than to follow a mere man and live.Pawkuhmooeydee came to me right after church was over. She was excited and wanted to talk. She told me that she would run away from those bad people, she would not let them kill her. I asked her what she would do if she could not run away. She responded that she would just lie to them, and then when they left, she would tell God she was sorry for lying, and then do what is right. This led into a discussion of how God feels about lying. It is always so amazing to me to see something that simple, make such a huge impact on my children. They know that lying is not good, but they figure that it is OK as long as they confess to God afterwards. This gets them out of many scrapes! But, when Pawkuhmooeydee heard from the bible what God thinks of lying, she realized right away that the way she had always done things was not Christ like. It flies in the face of her entire culture and experience. She was rather sober for a while, thinking about it. Then, she got all fired up again. If lying is wrong, then why are the church members and the Pastor still doing it????In the afternoon, another discussion ensued as to how to study the bible. Somewhere in the discussion, I mentioned heaven, and Meme piped up wanting to know what in the world heaven is. She had never heard of it! I have not yet explained since it is hard to overcome the language barrier. I will put together a bible study for her, and then have Pawkuhmooeydee give it to her in Karen so that she is sure to understand. Then I can talk to her about it and explain it to her.Memewah knows all about heaven, and it is a very real place to her. She is always talking about heaven and how wonderful it will be. She talks about Jesus as a friend and is very anxious for Him to come visit. This is due to Jason's hard work with Memewah. He has spent a lot of time teaching her. Sometimes it is easy to think that my kids know it also, since I do. But, it opened my eyes yesterday just how much basic teaching I still have to do! The fun part about it all is that it is no idle tale to my kids. It is real and exciting and they can't hear enough. They act like they expect Jesus to walk in the door at any moment, and they can't wait for him to come! They often ask me if what they are doing will make Jesus happy or not.Instead of hearing Buddhist chants while working around the property like I did when I first came, I hear hymns of praise from the kids...both my kids and the neighbor kids! (The neighbor kids don't understand what they are singing about, but they like the songs anyway) Their favorites are Trust and Obey, When He Cometh, and Jesus Loves Me, and When Peace Like A River. I hear these songs sung by various children all day long. It is so encouraging to see first hand what a difference Jesus is making in the children's lives.