And just like that, it’s a wrap. This will be out last posting for this PREP year. Last week’s class was the last until things resume in the fall.
We hadn’t really planned on teaching a regular lesson on the last night, but we, sort of, ended up doing so anyway. We started with the coming Sunday’s Gospel, with volunteers reading the various parts and discussed it. The Gospel was the story of Jesus comparing God and his people to a vine and its branches. The essential message is the branches/people cannot live unless they are connected to the vine/God.
We then jumped back to an exercise on the Ten Commandments that we hadn’t covered when we taught that week’s class back in February. From the Venture pamphlet, the exercise listed the Commandments with key words highlighted. The students were to search for the key words in a letter-grid. Some words were left to right, some down to up, some on the diagonal, and so on. The students were better at this than I was, and they all did quite well.
We pointed out that nearly all the Commandments are negatives. Eg: Though shall NOT kill. For the most part, they list things you shouldn’t do, but don’t give a lot of guidance about what you should do. That is where Jesus comes in with the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. I wish we had had the chance to discuss the Beatitudes more, but we’ll make sure we include a lesson on them next year for those who will be with us again.
Then we retired to the gym for ice cream sundaes. Can’t do better than that. Don’t scrimp on the sprinkles.
It has been a joy (for the most part) and an honor to teach your children this year. Mrs. Baran and I hope you and your family will have a great summer. We’ll see you around.