We were very happy to see two new young children come and give JAM a try today.

Our story this session reminds us of how much God cares for us, especially when we are feeling discouraged and fed up.

We started with serving breakfast (bacon rolls or fish fingers) to the JAM children as they arrived because it linked to our story, as you will see.

The story is found in John’s Gospel – written around 80AD by the disciple of the same name.

We recapped the Easter story, Jesus appearing to Mary, and then to the disciples and other friends.

All Jesus’ friends had seen him now, they knew for certain he was alive again but some of the excitement had died down. The friends leave Jerusalem and go back home to Galilee.

Peter suggested they go back to fishing, and this is what they do. We hear how they fish all night and catch nothing. Weary, tired and hungry they started to return to shore when they see a silhouette of a man on the beach. The man called across the water to them… “Have you caught anything”? (a typical question to ask fishermen).

Peters replies and calls back “Not a thing”.

The man shouts “Throw your nets on the other side of the boat!”

The bemused disciples have nothing to lose, so they give it a try. Before they know it, they have caught so many fish they can hardly lift the net in.

John realises who this stranger is on the shore, who else could make sometime like this happen? He tells Peter, “It’s the Lord” and then Peter jumps into the water and plunges towards the shore, leaving the others to drag in the net.

Jesus is already preparing breakfast when Peter arrives.

The disciples are reunited again with Jesus over a meal, and it was just what they needed at the end of a long night fishing. Jesus is waiting to welcome and feed those hungry friends.

We watched the Superbook video to reinforce the story; you can see it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYzkDbZcpwM you need to skip past the first 12 minutes and 10 seconds (unless you want to see the episode about The Tower of Babel!)

We see Jesus caring about the disciples needs, to see him, to believe he’s alive and to be fed with a wonderful breakfast.

God cares about each one of us, just as he did the disciples, and the children were encouraged to bring any concerns or fears to Jesus in prayer.

We listened to “Be Still” as we tied different coloured wools to a net to represent each prayer request. You can see and hear at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7pJb49vVQY

We prayed:

Thank you, Jesus, that you know and care for each one of us just like you cared for the disciples.  You care when we are afraid.

Please, calm our fears and fill us with your peace.

Please bless the people and situations we are worried about.

When things seem to all go wrong help us to trust in you, that you know and care about how we feel, and you know our every need.

You will take care of us today and in the future.

Thank you that you love us so much.

Amen.

We learned the song with actions to “Great Great Brill Brill” … you can try them at home!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2xnKBHFw3g

We learned about the Christian fish symbol… In the days of the early Christian Church, the Romans did not like Christianity and so you could be punished for openly being a Christian. When two Christians met each other, they would draw the sign of the fish into the dusty ground as a secret code that they were both disciples. Some believe that one person would draw the first arc of the fish and, if the other person was also a Christian, they would draw the second arc, completing the fish.

We had a go at making the fish sign in sand.

The disciples counted the fish they caught that day -there were 153!

We hid 153 different coloured paper fish for the children to find.

Mixed age teams enjoyed finding and counting all the fish into buckets.

We then played a magnetic fishing game, followed by a craft of decorating foam fish with coloured pom poms.

Sorry, no photos, forgot to take any!