Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJYcEZdyrk

Get it? A SCHOOL of fish? Just kidding. Fish are dumb.

VAL: Well, what about the donuts with jelly in the middle?

RALPH: Nobody eats those!

VAL: Sometimes there's pudding-filled ones.

RALPH: Okay, those are good.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3rK_PcEMfA

Has anyone ever moved before? Tell a story about it. [kids respond] What would have happened if your Dad and Mom got the moving van, packed up all the stuff into the van, and drove halfway to your new house, and just stopped. What if they stopped halfway to your new house, unloaded the van and just stayed there? That's what happened to Abram's father.

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah was headed toward Canaan, but he stopped halfway.

Abram and his wife Sarai lived in the city of Ur in the Chaldeans (modern day Iraq). God told him to leave the city and travel on a long journey to live in the land of Canaan. God promised Abram he would bless him and make him the father of a great nation. Those who blessed his descendants would be blessed by God and those who cursed his descendants would be cursed.

So, POP QUIZ! Who are the descendants of Abram today? (Descendants means his kids' kids' kid's kids' kids. All the people who have Abram as their great-great-great-great . . . . . granddad.)

Right! The Jewish people! And they live in what country? [kids answer] Israel! So, if God promised Abram: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Right! The Jewish people! What country belongs to the Jewish people? [kids answer]

Right! Israel! So, God promised Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

So, if America wants to be blessed and not cursed, what country should we befriend? With whom should we be most friendly? [kids answer] This is why

So, back to our story. God told Abram to leave the city of Ur of the Chaldees, and he obeyed.

God wanted Abram to get away from the people who worshipped false gods. The people in Ur built huge ziggurats in honor to the false gods. It must have been tempting to worship the same fake god that everybody else worshipped, especially since the people there were so proud of the ziggurat to honor their fake god.

The most important false god that they worshipped in Ur was Nanna or Nannan, the moon god. How silly! They worshipped the fake god of the moon, not the real God who made the moon!

The moon god had different names: Nanna, Nannan, and Sin Al-ilah. (Al Ilah means "the god.")

Pagans in the time of Muhammad still worshipped Allah, the moon god, and Muhammad's father was named Abdullah, which means "slave of Allah" (the moon god). Muslims worship the god Allah and they say that he is the same as Abram's God and our God, but their mosques and minarets (prayer towers) feature the crescent moon. God told Abram to get away from that stuff. No worshipping the Nanna or Sin Al-ilah the moon god.

By now Abram was 75 years old. God told him to continue on his journey to the land of Canaan. Abraham obeyed and they travelled south into the land of the Canaanites. They came to a great tree at Shechem and settled there.

God told Abram, ‘I will give this land to your offspring.’

Abram built an altar to the Lord at Shechem and worshipped Him.

God spoke to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’

Abram protested, ‘Sovereign Lord, You have not given me any children and the person who will inherit all I have is my servant, Eliezer of Damascus.’

‘Eliezer not inherit but a son of yours will,’ God replied. God took Abram out to look at the night sky. ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars —if indeed you can count them. Your offspring will be as numerous as the stars.’

Abram believed what God told him. God declared, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land.’

‘Sovereign Lord, how can
I know that I will gain this land?’ Abram asked.
God told him to bring a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram obeyed and sacrificed the animals cutting all but the birds in half.

He laid their carcasses, arranged in the halves, opposite each other. Birds of prey came down but Abram drove them away.


As the sun set Abram fell into a deep sleep and a dreadful darkness came over him. God warned that Abram’s descendants would be mistreated as slaves in
a strange country for 400 years. The God explained He would will punish the nation that made them slaves, and deliver them. They would leave that land with great possessions to live in the land God had promised. God promised Abram he would live in peace to an old age .

When the sun had set a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the carcasses Abram had
laid on the ground. God promised Abram to give his descendants the land from the Wadi of Egypt to the river Euphrates

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmkGOTtvLcc