The Story of Joseph

Today we taught about Joseph and how he was sold by his brothers into slavery and into Egypt. Nagisa was our only student today. Praise the Lord for her faithfulness! We began our time together with prayer for the first time. Obviously Setsuko and I pray for this time constantly through out the week, but today the Lord put it on my heart for us to pray together with Nagisa and so we did. Praise the Lord! Then we sang our usual good morning song and reviewed the English names of colors. We played the "slap" game with the color flashcards and then we read the story about Joseph. As usual, I read in English and Setsuko translated. When Joseph's multi-colored coat came up, we made reference to the colors we had studied. We told about how Joseph's brothers hated Joseph since he was Jacob's favorite son and how they ultimately sold him into slavery and told Jacob he had been killed. Then we told of the famine that came over the land and how Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to get food. Finally, we shared how Joseph forgave them despite their hatred for him and that God had allowed for Joseph to undergo such suffering so that he could ultimately be used by God to save many people. The theme was forgiveness and after we told the story, we reviewed the story and talked about how God gave Joseph the ability to forgive. Then we went to the beach. It was a beautiful day despite the usual Spring haze which made for a rather overcast sky. As we sat on the pier and looked down at the water I asked Nagisa if she remembered the story of Noah and the Great flood that we had read a few weeks ago and she did. So after some more talk about the flood and imagining the earth having such a great amount of water during the flood, I made sure to remind her of God's promise that He would never flood the earth again. It was a blessed day and am so thankful Nagisa. Praise the Lord and may the seed being planted in her begin to grow.