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Leaving Our Thanks: A Thanksgiving Bulletin Board

Invite everyone to this decoration. Start early in November and add to this project each week.

Hang raffia, paper ribbon, or heavy twine around the bulletin board to look like a winding vine. Prepare a stack of paper leaf cutouts. Have kids each draw a picture of something they’re thankful for on a leaf. Older students write their words on the leaf. Encourage parents and other visitors to do the same.

Staple each leaf to the vine to create a church-wide celebration of thankfulness. You and your class might want to visit the board to choose a leaf and pray a prayer of thanks for the blessing represented on the leaf and the person who created it.

The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

As always, share information from the Armenian Church calendar in class or assemblies. For students with this name (or their Armenian equivalents, Bedros and Boghos, this is their name day).

PAUL, born Saul of Jewish parents sometime between 5 and 15 in Tarsus, he studied under the famous Jewish rabbi, Gamaliel, in Jerusalem. A tentmaker by trade, Saul became a rigid Pharisee and a rabid persecutor of the Christians. He was present at the stoning of Stephen but only as a spectator. On the way to Damascus to arrest some Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem, he experienced his famous vision (Acts 9), which led not only to his dramatic conversion but was to shape the whole Christian experience. He spent the next three years in Arabia and then returned to Damascus to preach. He immediately encountered resistance from the Jews, a resistance that was to continue throughout his life and travels. Sometime between 36 and 39, he went to Jerusalem, where he met the apostles, and through the sponsorship of Bamabas was accepted by the Christian community. Saul was sent out, with Barnabas, to preach the gospel on the first of his three missionary journeys. During 45-49, they went to Cyprus , Perga, Antioch in Pisidia, and the cities of Lycaonia. It was on this journey that Saul’s name was changed to Paul. He embarked on two more ambitious trips during which he preached the gospel to many people, making enemies as well. On the way to Rome in 60-61, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta but eventually reached Rome, where he remained under house arrest in his own lodgings for two years, 61-62.

The Acts of the Apostles of the New Testament, is the major source of biographical material about him. According to Clement of Rome, writing only thirty years after Paul’s death, Paul went to Spain after his imprisonment, and on his return revisited Ephesus, Macedonia , and Greece . He was again arrested, probably at Troas, and returned to Rome, where he was executed on the same day as St. Peter (in 67, according to Eusebius) during the persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero. St. Paul is the author of most of the New Testament epistles and is considered the greatest evangelizer in the history of Christianity.

PETER, A native of Bethsaida, a village near Lake Tiberias, he was called Simon, and lived and worked as a fisherman on Lake Genesareth. His brother Andrew introduced him to Jesus, who gave him the name “Cephas,” the Aramaic equivalent of the Greek “Peter” (the Rock). He was present at Christ's first miracle at Cana and at his home at Capernaum when Jesus cured his mother-in-law. When Peter acknowledged Jesus as “the Christ … the son of the living God” (Matthew 16: 16), the Lord replied, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church” (Matthew 16: 18) and “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: Whenever you bind on earth will be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven,” statements underlying Catholic teaching that Peter was the first Pope and the whole Catholic concept of the primacy of the papacy.

Peter is mentioned more frequently in the gospels than any of the other apostles, was with Christ during many of his miracles, but denied him in the courtyard of Pontius Pilate's palace, where Christ was being held prisoner. He was the head of the Christians after the Ascension, was the first of the apostles to preach to the Gentiles, was the first apostle to perform miracles, and converted many with his preaching. He was imprisoned by Herod Agrippa in about 43, but guided by an angel, escaped and firmly proclaimed that Christ wanted the Good News preached to all at the assembly at Jerusalem. After this episode, he is not mentioned in the New Testament again, but a very early tradition says he went to Rome, where he was Rome's first bishop and was crucified there at the foot of Vatican Hill in about 64 during the reign of Emperor Nero. Excavations under St. Peter's Basilica have unearthed what is believed to be his tomb.

Reading the Christmas Story