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!