Every year, at the end of March / early April, each of the two churches have Entrance-Exit Ceremonies for the kids entering Sunday School / moving up / leaving Sunday School. As usual, I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there so was a bit nervous but everything turned out OK - phew!
It was Juhee's and my first time ever taking part in a Sunday School event so there were lots of new and interesting things...
There was a big white poster (pic below) at the front decorated with light blue and pink flower paper corsage type things and after trying to "decode" it for a long time, I realized that it was the program for the ceremony! So after that, I sometimes kind of had an idea of what to expect. =D
One was that we got to see how few students there are. Not everyone was there as it was Spring Break, but most were, and there were only a handful. Of the top two pics in the photo collage below, the one on the left is of the Children's Ministry kids (Preschool & Elementary) and the one on the right is of the Youth (Jr. & Sr. HS) Ministry kids. However, if you take into consideration that an estimated 30-40% of churches in Japan don't even have a Sunday School program, we're very fortunate to have enough kids for there to be one. Sunday School at the two churches is from 9:00-10:00 and then the kids sit in the main service with their parents from 10:30-11:30. They're amazingly quiet and well behaved!
There's only one boy in Elementary School. The others are all girls. It must be so hard for him... Juhee is one of three 3 year old girls in her 3-5 year olds preschool class. One of the other girls rotates between the two churches too, like us, so she's only there every other Sunday.
The kids with perfect attendance for the year receive an award. I remember receiving them at church during the short period that my family lived in Korea when I was little. Brought back memories (bottom two pics above)!
Instead of using powerpoint, they write the words to praise songs on what looked like cardstock type posters, decorate it, make it into a book, and then a teacher holds it up and flips the pages as the kids sing along (pics below).
Juhee had a great time, really likes her new teacher (pic below) and really enjoys going to Sunday School. Yaaay!!! :)
Please pray for the churches of Japan, that there will be a growth in the Sunday Schools, that there will be more families attending as a whole family. Only 0.4-0.5% of Japan's population is evangelical Christian but with the average age of church attendees being 60 years of age, the Christian population is literally dying. Japan's churches need more young people and we believe that this is one of the reasons why God sent us now while we're young (relatively speaking =D) and have young kids, so we can reach out to this younger generation. Please pray for the next generation of Christians in Japan!
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