Magheragall Parish Church


God the Builder

It was with some trepidation and a great deal of excitement that our team from Magheragall arrived at the Hall on Monday, 15th August for the start of our Holiday Bible Club.

We had previously met with the team from Hillsborough Parish, led by Curate, Willie Nixon, who were all extremely enthusiastic about this joint project.

Our team consisted of Elizabeth Hendron, Nicholas and Bronwen Dark, Jill Belshaw, Grace Park, Chris and Kerri Cunningham and Nigel and Jacqui Adams.

The Theme was ‘God The Builder’ and we were delighted to have 38 children arrive for registration on the Monday night. The majority of the children who attended were from our parish but we had a considerable number from other parishes and other denominations.

Each evening began with a ‘Big Teach’ led by Willie and his team of teenagers from Hillsborough. We also learnt several new songs along with the actions. We then split into smaller teams : Plumbers - P1 and P2, Joiners - P3 and P4 and Brickies P5 to P7. Each team had team leaders consisting of the Helpers from Magheragall. We were responsible for teaching the children memory verses and crafts.

The stories used were:
   

  • Monday - The story of Jonah

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  • Tuesday - The story of Nehemiah

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  • Wednesday - The story of Elijah, which was powerfully demonstrated by the building of a cardboard ‘altar’ in the car park. This burnt beautifully to the delight of the children. Richard Belshaw kindly provided his digger for the children to see and play on.

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  • Thursday - Jesus the cornerstone.

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  • Friday - Was an evening for the children to invite their family members to a table quiz and a BBQ.

    We thoroughly enjoyed our week and found it to be a great learning curve for future projects.

    There were several activities used to demonstrate how the children could express their love for Jesus and both teams felt God’s presence during the week with the children.

    Lessons from ‘God The Builder’:
       

  • Jonah - The people decided to love God

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  • Nehemiah - He discovered that prayer works

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  • Elijah - There is only one God

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  • Jesus - Jesus is the one true God, We must trust Jesus, We must build our life on Jesus.

    Comments from some children who attended : John, non parishioner writes, ‘Dear Leaders, It was an exciting week at Magheragall Parish Church Holiday Bible Club. We had a varied and interesting programme with Bible quizzes, painting, craft and singing beautiful choruses to a keyboard and guitar. Each day our delicious snacks came to the hall in a large green wheelbarrow and this was enjoyed by all. We also enjoyed the prizes for the quizzes’.

    And Jessica, parishioner, writes: ‘The Holiday Club was fun because we sang songs and Herbert the whale squirted water at us when we got very loud’.

    Our own children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, especially the songs and the stories that Willie taught, the crafts and the memory verses.

    Jacqui Adams

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