The Mission Bag can be used for Sunday School, vacation church school, children's sermons, devotions with children and the like. It creates interest and suspense in the children as they anticipate what the bag may hold. For greater involvement, let the children, one at a time, draw an item from the bag and try to identify it.

How to make the Mission Bag

Decorate a cloth bag (about two feet square) with scenes from foreign lands (costumes, trees, buildings, etc.) and items related to health care. The decorations could be stenciled, painted, sewn or glued on or you might find appropriate "global" fabric.

Sample topics that can be used with the Mission Bag

People: Place into the Mission Bag plastic, rubber or paper toy people painted or dressed as doctors, dentists, nurses, cooks, patients, etc. Include people of various races. As the children take the items out of the bag you can explain how all people need health care from professionals.

Tools: Place into the bag a tongue depressor, stethoscope, thermometer, twig (which many poor children use as a toothbrush), bandage, cotton ball, roll of tape, syringe, rubber gloves, etc. Talk about what these tools do, why health care people need them and the shortages in mission hospitals.

Food: Place into the bag samples of the essential food groups. As each is taken from the bag explain why we need to eat this particular food. Emphasize how most of the people in the world not only don't get all the essential food groups, but don't have enough food of any kind. For good nutrition we should have food of more than three colors every day.

Liquids: Place into the bag tighty-sealed plastic bottles of clear water, dirty water and fruit juices. Also include an empty bottle. Explain the need for water and how most people have dirty, disease-carrying water or none at all. We can help them with money to dig wells and purchase pumps. Juice is given to adults who suffer from dehydration due to stomach and intestinal illnesses.

Equipment: Place into the bag pictures of hospital equipment such as x-ray machines, operating tables, beds, etc. Many children will be able to tell off some experiece they have had with such equipment. Overseas hospitals often do not have even the minimum equipment needed.

Make sure to use only child-safe and age-appropriate items for the Mission Bag.

How to use the Mission Bag

Sample script:

Today we're going to talk for a few minutes about health. How are you? How do you feel? Do you hurt any place?

People sometimes ask us, "How are you?" Usually we say, "Fine." Maybe we say "Fine" even when we're not feeling well. We may have a cold, a headache, a stomachache or a fever. We don't like it. It isn't much fun to be sick.

Do you know that two out of three people in our world today are sick? (Divide some of the children into groups of three.) If all the children in the world were divided into groups of three, two in each group would be sick. They don't feel well. Today and every day something is wrong with them. Isn't that sad?

Missionaries and health care people in the Lutheran churches try to help these sick people throughout the world. But often they do not have the things to work with that we have in our hospitals, so they do the best they can with what they have.

Suppose you live in a country in Africa, let's say Tanzania. (Take a bandage from the bag.) If you have a cut or sore, a real "owie" that hurts, the nurse might want to put a bandage like this or a piece of gauze on your sore. The bandage may have been washed two or three times after being used before.

Now suppose you also need a shot, an injection against some disease. Sometimes the hospital does not have the medicine to give you the shot. (Pull out the syringe.) If they do, the nurse comes to you with a syringe like this which holds the medicine. There is also a needle. The needle may not be sharp or it may be bent, so it hurts more than shots usually do. The syringe may have been washed so many times that the markings on it can hardly be read. How would you like to get such a shot? I would rather have a new needle and syringe, wouldn't you?

Now the doctor or nurse has treated your sore. What can they put on it before you leave the hospital? (Pull out swath of cotton.) They may have to take a roll of cotton and make their own cotton balls.

The nurse would rather use a Band-Aid. (Pull out Band-Aid.) Sometimes there isn't enough money to buy any so they make their own bandage with gauze and cotton.

And they need something else to hold the bandage. (Pull out roll of tape.)

(Pull out scissors.) If they have tape, they cut off a piece to use. The scissors may be old and dull so they don't cut very well.

(Pull out rubber gloves.) Now, if we're lucky, the nurse will be wearing rubber gloves so your sore won't get infected. Her gloves will probably have been washed and powdered many, many times.

With all these reused materials, I hope your sore doesn't get infected.

We feel sorry for people who don't have good health care!

Is there anything you and I can do to help? Yes, there is!

PRAY - You can pray for these sick people in Africa, Asia and South America, and also here in the United States. Pray that there will be enough doctors and nurses to promote loving health care.

GIVE - You can give money to your church, right here where you go to Sunday School and worship, to help send missionary doctors and nurses to these countries overseas. Jesus asks us to reach out with the Word of God and send people to heal sick people. You can give money to Global Health Ministries, so they can send out hospital equipment and supplies like those I showed you so that the missionaries can do a better job.

LEARN - You may continue to go to school and college to learn to be a doctor or nurse who'll be able to help people who are sick. Jesus is asking you to be a missionary, whether here in the United States or in some other country such as Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, India or Brazil.

Jesus, our Lord and Savior, is calling each of you to be faithful followers and workers in his Kingdom. (Point to individual children.) Jesus says to you, "Be healed," "Be well," "Help others to be healed."

So let's do it! Let's help others in every way we can!