Dunkin In the River with Namaan

Any Bible story with a visual "change" in it is candidate for a magic "change" bag. Namaan's leprosy is a perfect match. Here's how I told the story.

First, I made some cardstock figures. You can back these with flannel and use a flannel board. I simply used a pocket chart to save the extra work of backing them. These printable Bible character figures are free at Activity-Mom.com.



They didn't have a set for the Namaan story, so I chose appropriate figures for what I needed and colored over the names with colored magic markers. I copied, cut and pasted the Gideon figure into Publisher and added a text box so that I could write Namaan on him. I thought Gideon looked like a soldier and commander, so he worked well for Namaan.

I printed 2 copies of my Namaan figure. On one I made red spots with a magic marker.

I told the story up to the point when Namaan is told to dip in the Jordan River 7 times. I showed the kids a picture of the muddy Jordan and we talked about how unappealing it was, and why Namaan may have been insulted to go wash in it.


Naaman & the change Bag from Joan Eppehimer on Vimeo.

After we "straightened" Namaan out on why he should do this anyway, I got out the change bag which already had a "clean" Namaan in the hidden pocket. I dunked the Namaan figure up and down and we counted 7 times - and then I made the switch and pulled out the clean Namaan. I am no expert at this, but I did all right because they wanted to see how I had done it. If I can do it, you can too.

A change bag is about $25 at this writing. It is a nice prop to pull out once in awhile for teaching purposes. It just changes your lesson up a little - which is always a good thing. I ordered mine from a website called Kidhelper Resources.


After the story, we went over these four points about God's will and obeying him.

1. Method - God's ways are not always our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 (Naaman thought it was dumb to go dunk in the Jordan River - he had expected God to heal him by sending Elisha out to do it.)
2. Humble - NOT "My way is right or best." Willing to follow. (Naaman had to be willing to follow the instructions he was given even though they were not the way he thought it should be done. Obedience to God begins with humility - we have to believe that God's way is better than our own.)
3. Obedience - follow God, do it his way
4. God's ways are always best.