a neat experience at church

This past Sunday we had gone back to a church that we had tried for the first time two weeks ago. Last week there was no church due to the snow. Some of you know that we have been looking for a church to call home. So far in the past few months we have been to two other churches. Both were God sent! They truly ministered to where we were at. We knew that our current church we had been attending was not going to be long term. We were not sure when the Lord would have us move on, and so we kind of left it up to Him to tell us. Well we came across a situation that seemed to have just "dropped into our laps". So we decided to check it out and see what was in store. We have only been there two times and we will not know for a while if this is our church or not, but they had an amazing take on special needs.

I don't want to go into the hows and whys and any other needed information, but for now we have let our children partake in children's Sunday school. We are all together as a family for worship and then we break up to go to age appropriate Sunday school. To be honest I was very against this idea in the past. And I can honestly say that I still don't know exactly where I stand with it all, but so far it has been a blessing. Jeremiah and I see that it is our job to teach our children (whether that be arithmetic or the Bible). We have family worship here at our home during the week, and we worship together on Sundays as a family in corporate with other believers. After seeing what was not accomplished in having the bar raised far above our children's heads in terms of Biblical instruction we decided to bring the bar down to their level. That meant that we purchased new bibles for the children with a new translation geared at giving the message in plain English. The girls have had a much easier time in understanding and enjoying our family worship. And they have been thoroughly enjoying their Sunday school. So for now we will keep things the way they are.

Phew! I got a bit long winded there, sorry! Ok, onto what I wanted to say about their new Sunday school classes. In the past when we had dropped off Jed, we made sure to explain to the teacher that he has speech apraxia. If he didn't need a tube feeding we didn't go into explaining his other issues. But we found that it didn't take people too long to notice that Jed just isn't quite like the other children. We had one poor lady who was worried that he was going to be starving since he wouldn't eat his snack :-) And then there was Jed's sensory issues that would pop up leaving the teacher a bit perplexed. I really didn't want to label him as special needs, but that seemed to help people understand that they needed to expect the unexpected with Jed. So with this new church we told them up front that Jed had special needs (speech, g-tube, sensory, auditory processing issues...). I was totally amazed when I bumped into the children's program director in the parking lot (I took Jonah with me to our Sunday school and needed to slip out as he was getting a bit fidgety). She told me that she was hoping that we would meet up as she wanted to have a few minutes to introduce herself and to explain the four page questioner that she had for us. It was all about special needs!! It had questions about how your child communicates (had boxes to check for sign language and devices!). It had questions about their eating (including g-tubes!!), and other things that we deal with in regards to Jed! I was totally amazed! But it got even more amazing as she told me that they brought in another adult to be Jed's buddy since they were not sure at that time what needs he had!!! Wow! I thought I misunderstood her, but when I went to pick him up sure enough there was an adult assigned to help just Jedidiah out for the whole Sunday school session.

That really ministered to our hearts! We have been blessed that our past two churches were very understanding and very willing to help when needed in this area. But it was so encouraging to see a church who is ready and able to minister to special needs in that way. In a sense I feel like we have come full circle with Jed and church. We had a problem in the past of people not taking our word that there were problems with Jedidiah. That was very frustrating and hurtful. And little by little the Lord has been putting people in our path to help us on this journey, even if it is only for Sunday school :-)

I am expecting a very, VERY exciting gift in the mail. I was hoping it would be here today. It shows that it arrived at our post office this morning, but that it isn't scheduled to be delivered until tomorrow! Patience, patience. But that means I have time to get the house back in order. I got busy over the weekend (making a cape for Isabella and errands) and it doesn't take long until everything gets out of order. I told myself that work comes before play and that I had to have the house cleaned up before I 'played' with my new toy. I'll show it to you all tomorrow!