This may be a cheesy name for it, but I’ve been thinking for the past couple days about this assignment, which I take with the utmost seriousness:

⁴ “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. ⁶ And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. ⁷ Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.  Deut 6:4-7  (NLT)

So…my job is to figure out how to get As Much Scripture As Possible into my kiddos.  Thus, “Mission: AMSAP.”  At home, on the road, going to bed, and getting up.  That pretty much covers it.

Someday I’d like to write more deeply about this, about the hope of raising godly children and the promises of God over our kids; it’s a deep passion of mine.  But tonight, I’m just going to ask for help on a very practical level.  I know I’ve got some mommy friends out there (Hi, Kates and Carrie!), and we’re all searching for ways to write the word of God on their little hearts.  I heard a woman speak so practically a few weeks ago, with a bunch of materials displayed at the front of the room.  But get this!  She wasn’t a ’speaker’ or a ‘presenter,’ she was a mom who had done it, raised fiery kids brimming over with the Word, and her “display” was the dogeared books that she’d read her kids for years, CD’s and movies from her home collection.  And I took notes like MAD!  That wasn’t just valuable to me, it was a goldmine.  One of her ideas was to put on CD’s of the scripture (starting with the adventure stories of the OT historical books) for her boys every nap and nighttime, when they were little. So simple!  She used a production read by actors using the New LIving Translation called Bible Alive. So Ariel got a CD player for Christmas!

The point is, the practical stuff is gold.  So I’ll share what I find, and please share with me what you find!!!  I’ll provide updates on Mission:AMSAP periodically if there’s something worth sharing.

If you began to read this blog hoping for wild adventures in travel and evangelism, and feel tricked into reading a preschool periodical, I apologize.  This is currently my main mission field, although not our only mission field.  Three little disciples who share our last name and penchant for verbosity…  This will not be the only adventures in travel and evangelism we have to share, but in this season, it’s our forte. But if you’ve ever met Judah, you’ll agree that the adventures are still pretty wild.

On that note, I was trying to find some new music today.  Scripture songs.  You know you love ‘em!  I’ll bet most of you will start humming the same tune I am as I write these words:

“This is the day, (this is the day) that the Lord has made (that the Lord has made), I will rejoice…

Okay, so maybe that little ditty doesn’t bring back the remembrance of transformational encounters with the living God, but His word never returns void, so even if you learned that in the basement of a veteran’s hall with sheets hung on clotheslines to separate the sunday school classes by age (a window into one of my childhood church facitilities), that truth will never ever die for all eternity.  And any day we actually choose to believe it immediately is instantly transformed.  How about that for a nursery rhyme?

So today I was searching for nice (free, I’ll admit it) downloads of scripture songs for kids.  It didn’t go so well!  Here’s a sample of what I found:  01_behold_a_virgin_shall_be_with_child_mathew_1-23.

Umm…didn’t go over real well with the munchkins.  In fact, I couldn’t get them to even listen.

But then there’s the Bentley brothers.  I can’t peel the kids away from this, and it cracks me up, too:

They’re on a fabulous site called jellytelly.com, produced by Phil Vischer of Veggie Tales fame.  The Fabulous Bentley Brothers are making songs for every book of the Bible, and they always start by listing the previous books, as you’ll see at the beginning of the clip.  My niece Glorie’s been watching these for a while, and now recites effortlessly the book order.  And she’s two.  Once again, GOLD!

So I’m searching for gold, friends.  I’ll throw out one more thing that I love, and then leave you to hit the comment form or shoot me an email with your finds.  Here’s my favorite children’s book.

I cry every time I read the kids Blind Bartimaeus’ story out of this book.  Getting emotional right now, just thinking of it.  in fact, I can’t think of a better source for a closing line.
“…But best of all, Bartimaeus saw Jesus.”

Nighty-night!

…from the driver’s seat.  I had been introducing the concept of a “gentleman” to Judah.

“Men are big mans, Judah, and when they are gentle to us then they are a gentleman.  You have to be gentle, Judah.” (Ariel)

“Yeah, but I’m gonna be a man an’ shoot fire at them with my hose.”  (Judah)

“I think you mean a fireman, Judah.”  Me

“Yeah.” J

“No, Judah, because when people are on fire then that’s dangerous for them, so the fireman has to shoot water at them with his hose so that the fire is not so hot, so they don’t get burned as bad.  So you’re not gonna shoot fire out of the hose, right?” A

“Yeah, I’m gonna shoot the water out of the hose and the fire out of the hose at the people.”  J

Ariel restates her explanation.

“But Ariel, that doesn’t make sense!”  J

“NO, JUDAH!  IT DOES MAKE SENSE!!!  YOU’RE WRONG!”

At this point I intervened.  I think the world looks different from 40″ tall.  There’s a lot out there, and not all of it makes sense. 

But I’m gonna do it anyway.

This is the story about the time that Suz got her sister Lizzie embroiled in a classic “Come on, it’ll be fun” type of adventure involving sunburn, evangelism, multiple near car collisions, multiple real stroller-on-toe collisions, horse poop, post-partum (am I still allowed to classify myself as such?) sprints, and a whole lot of GREEN.  No, this has nothing to do with Al Gore, and I’m definitely not talking about money.  Ireland, baby!  St. Patty’s day!  Erinn go bragh! Am I the only one who looked up pics of the Old Country (Chicago) with the river dyed green today?

Let me just start by saying that I had gotten up at the bright and early hour of 3:15 a.m.  The reason for that was that I had been so tired the day before, that I had crashed while putting the kids to bed at 8 p.m.  So when Samuel cried at 3:15, my body thought that the 7 continuous hours of sleep was likened to a mighty angelic visitation, and would not go back to sleep.  One thing about me is that if I’ve had sleep, I get ideas.  Lots and lots of them.  And if I have several hours before the kids wake up to concoct these ideas, it just gets crazy.  You’ll know I haven’t had sleep if I don’t have about 3 x’s as many things planned for the day as are actually possible.

The International House of Prayer (IHOP), where we are fellowshipping here in KC, has an evangelistic outreach at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade that everyone’s invited to join in, marching behind their float.  My sister Amy had challenged OJ and me to go, but I had scoffed at the time.  “If you’ll babysit!” was pretty much my response.   But I must have not had much sleep…for the last 5 months.  Because after my rich seven hour stretch, what did I wake up and think?  “Let’s go to the parade!  Lizzie and Glorie (my niece) can come with us!”

So, we loaded up the minivan, even transferring Glorie’s sacred carseat (I don’t think it had ever been transferred before, and she’s two!) to our car, and headed into town.  Neither of us had ever been to this `parade, and it’s been too many years since I did anything of note in Chi-town, so I forgot what events in a city of any size actually are like.  Only one word for it…fwam-packed.  Fwam-packed with cars coming from the highway, fwam-packed with pedestrians trying to get hit by cars, (Which makes sense.  If you’re going to get hit by a car, do it when they’re only going 3 mph.) and, of course, fwam-packed with the neighborhood folks wearing all sorts of insane getups that they can justify because they are green.

By the way, this neighborhood was no Sesame Street, people.  Think Boyz N the Hood.  Did I spell that wrong right?  Right wrong?  Anyway, we knew we were in for an adventure from the moment Lizzie pounded that auto-lock, and warned me to look out for the jacked-up Grand Marquis that was about to t-bone us.

All joking aside, our hearts grew really heavy as we drove through the poverty closer to the parade.  My words were, “This is a wasteland.”  The IHOP-ers had carpooled in together hours before (not feasible for us with the kiddos)nd had to find some reserved parking.  Long story short, God’s favor was on us, and we scored a ridiculous spot right next to the action when a police officer lifted the police line to let us through.  So we all piled out, with that odd feeling you have when you’ve worked so hard to get somewhere that you feel that the whole ordeal should be over.  But no, it’s just beginning.

Our task was to find the IHOP float (#92) several blocks down behind the starting line.  The parade had already started and the streets were lined (fwam-packed) with people.  Crazy people, mostly.  Or maybe those were really the only clothes they owned that were green; I don’t know.  So Lizzie led with the Graco and I followed with Ariel and Judah in the double jogger and Samuel strapped to my chest in the Ergo.  Despite all efforts, we were neither subtle nor unobtrusive, and I heard the words “big a– stroller” more than once, my friends.  Or this comment, “That is a lot of kids.”  I tried to make reassuring remarks to the kids, who could not hear me anymore than I could hear them.  I said “Excuse me,” more times than I can count, and for the most part received friendly efforts at making way.  But there were exceptions.  There was one time that a lady with a rotund belly protruding into the tiny space stopped us cold.  The stroller itself rolled past under the belly, and I was concentrating so hard, it was not until the handle itself reached the height of the obstruction that I realized we were blocked.  I repeated, “excuse me,” but to no avail.  She just watched disinterestedly as I lifted, twisted, and pivoted the double jogger around her waist.  Other times, the oncoming flow of foot traffic just didn’t stop, and so I stood waiting while Lizzie got further and further away, completely unable to move and sardined in between way too many shades of green.

It was an intense battle, but eventually, we ended up walking away from the parade, two blocks down, to be able to move freely, and then down and back up to find our group.  They were a sight for sore eyes!  A huge float in the shape of a green mountain, with a young man dressed like St. Patrick at the top, and hundreds of green t-shirted IHOP-ers milling about.

We walked up to be warmly welcomed with this warning, “Don’t step in the horse poop!”  Apparently, the next float after us was not a vehicle, but an equine attraction.  Fortunately, as a mom of three, I am very comfortable around poop, so that was not problematic.  How to feed the baby his bottle, sunblock everyone, and take Ariel to the (port-a?)-potty, however, was.  But I assured Lizzie I had it all under control.

Lizzie and Suz sunblock the kids

Handing out the snacks, whipping Samuel out of his carrier for the bottle, and spraying everyone down was a piece of cake, but then came the potty trip.  Word on the street was that a block down there were actual flushing toilets, and I knew I couldn’t risk a potty accident in the middle of the parade, so Ariel and I made a run for it.  It seemed like there were still 20 or so floats to go ahead of us, so I left Lizzie with the strollers and a young friend holding Samuel, and ran off with Ariel on my hip.  When we returned to our waiting area, it looked really empty.  I thought maybe I had come to the wrong spot until I saw the telltale horse poop and the awful reality dawned on me.  So I grabbed Ariel and began to run wildly through the street to catch up.  Mind you, this is a parade, so, yes, there were hundreds of people along the road to see this, my first post-partum jog.  As we got closer, this is what we saw…

Here we go!

They were not moving slowly, either.  Lizzie was towards the back holding Samuel, with two friends pushing the two strollers.  Running alongside, I dropped Ariel in the jogger, and did an intricate dance with them all, involving exchanging strollers and babies and vice versa, until all three of my children were again with me.  And then…there we were.  In the parade.  “Wave to the people!” I yelled to the kids.

“What???”  they yelled back.

You’re probably picking up on how difficult this had been.  But here’s the good part.  Over the loudspeaker came St. Patty’s brogue, briefly presenting in the time span of a watcher’s hearing a warm greeting and clear appeal to repent and follow Jesus.  After his fifteen second speech, an awesome worship song would ring out, “HALLELUJAH!  Grace like rain pours down…Turn to Jesus…HALLELUJAH…all my stains are washed away!”  And there were several hundred of us, with streamers in our hands, getting to walk right straight through that wasteland, shining with jubilant joy.  The more times we heard those lines…HALLELUJAH!!!…the more fun it got.  People began jumping and skipping down the street, rejoicing and waving to the crowds.  HALLELUJAH!!!  There’s an answer.  There’s an answer!!!  You don’t have to live like you’re living or be who you’ve been or die in your sins…HALLELUJAH!!!  It was the most shining contrast imaginable to the mobile deejays and casino floats around us.  WOW!!!  I got too excited several times, losing Samuel’s hat and then almost overturning the jogger when I bent down to retrieve it.  That was another scene.

But it was exhilarating.

FOLLOW JESUS!!!

Now I’m really way too tired, but I’ll finish up with this.  We made our way back to the car beet red and blistered, and faced the intimidating traffic to make our way out again.  We gave the kids ridiculous amounts of treats to make up for the lack of naps and long waits, and headed home.  The end of the adventure was far from the parade, near Target, almost hitting a car that was turning right into our lane, honking loudly, and then realizing it was an IHOP-er…the envangelist in charge of the entire parade!  We laughed really hard, and said the same thing, “He must be EXHAUSTED!!!”

Hope your St. Patty’s Day was glorious, too. 

OJ let me have a nap today, and so I’m up late.  So I thought I would relieve some of you who still have “What’s the Name of that Song?” stuck in your head by replacing it with something better.  I started looking at some videos of a hero of ours, Keith Green.  Here’s one that I loved.

Themes in the videos?

1.  Crowds of young people with joy on their faces.

2.  An artist at the piano.

3.  An artless preacher.

4.  Power.

5.  Did I mention the crowds of young people?

I was watching, nearly druelling…how, how, how can we reach thousands of young people?  How can we reach them?  How do we get them rushing to worship together in every city in America?  How can the gospel go out like that?

I had to laugh at this interview.  The poor host…he can’t seem to engage in what KG actually says.  He seems to want to talk about everything but what Keith keeps talking about–the Gospel and obedience to Jesus Christ.  It’s funny, but also not.  (poor paraphrase follows)

KG:  “I preach the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  People are going to church not even realizing they’re not saved.”

Host: “I just love that you’re back in town!  It sure is fun how you communicate!”

KG:  “So we’re supposed to little Christs…the show is easy.  But whether I preach Jesus on streets and live it out at home is the bottom line.”

Host:  “So…you’re Jewish, eh?”

It struck me while watching these videos (as someone who longs for a radical revival among youth in America and around the world) how simple it was.  I was only just born for most of Keith’s ministry, so these videos are precious windows into that time.  With all our crazy efforts, here’s what struck me about Keith from these videos.  He was dead long before his plane went down.  Dead to himself.  The music was an extension of a pure life laid down for Jesus.  The power flowed and the young people came.

When Keith died, he was on the verge of doing a tour around the West coast, recruiting for world missions.  He had personally asked the Lord for 100,000 missionaries to go into all the world.  He died right before the tour started, but Loren Cunningham and Keith’s wife Melody decided to go ahead with it, playing a video of Keith’s last concert, in which he called the missionaries to go.  I once heard Loren say that many more than 100,000 ended up going.

Lord Jesus, where’s the Keith of our generation???  Final thought:

Sometimes we search Youtube for classic sesame street clips, things we remember and want to show the kids.  So around the house, the kids and OJ have been singing the “What’s the Name of that Song?” song.  I’d never heard it, but it’s nothing if not intriguing, so after we got the kids in bed last night, I thought of it as I pulled the computer on to my lap.  I pulled it up:

OJ came over to see what I was doing, and sat down beside me.  The big mistake was doing all this before we were sure the kids were asleep.  I heard little footsteps, and Judah, who’s famous for his “concerned” look, had the most concerned look ever.  I immediately started giggling guiltily, imagining the scenario playing out from his two year old perspective. Oh, the betrayal, to have been put sternly to bed night after night, not knowing what it was being missed out on…well, now he knows.  Mom and Dad put him to bed and then secretly watch Sesame Street.

“Guys?  What are you doing, guys?  Why are you watching kids’ Sesame Street when you’re grown ups?  Why are grown ups watching kids’ Sesame Street?”  He was pained…Ariel came running out.

“What’s going on?”

There was nothing for it, but to invite them up to finish the clip, and then put them sternly to bed AGAIN, trying to convince them there would be no more Sesame Street for ANYONE until morning.  Ha!