Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Loaves, Fish, and Crayons (a modern update of the original Bible story)




A recent volunteer group from Black Forest Academy (BFA) in Kandern, Germany came to work with us at the Abernathy Primary School in Longido Tanzania.  Their main work was assisting the students in various subjects and activities.  One of the classes involved art and drawing.  The BFA students brought materials for the students to use, including pencils, paper, crayons, soccer balls, books, and other educational supplies.

One day in the art class, the students were assigned to draw pictures.  One of the BFA volunteers began to pass out crayons. Knowing the number of students and the number of crayons, she gave 6 crayons apiece to each of the 40 students.  Since crayons are at a premium in Tanzania, the students wanted all they could get to use on their "masterpieces".  As the BFA student continued around the class, the number of crayons began to decrease rapidly.  She thought that she would run out of crayons before she gave some to every student.  As she continued her distribution to the students, she noticed that there seem to be more crayons in the bag than when she started.  She reached the last student and still had crayons left in her bag.  So she went around again and gave each student an additional 2 crayons making a total of 8 crayons for each student.  When she finished the "extra" distribution, she was amazed to discover that there were more crayons in the bag!!  So she gave out more.  She said that she never ran out of crayons even though some "walked out of class".  Her only and final explanation was that God increased the number of crayons until all the students had enough to draw with and then had extras left over for other art projects!  This BFA student saw God work first hand in her classroom and life!

God still works miracles in different places and different ways when the situations call for them -- loaves, fish, crayons, money... God is not limited in any to complete His Ways and Purposes!