Ben's Alabaster

** As a pre-note to our story today! September is Alabaster month at our church. Alabaster money is collected for missions and is used to build churches on other countries.

As we were leaving church one evening Ben noticed the little Alabaster boxes that people can take home and put their change in. Ben took a box and on the way home he was saying how he is going to put money in it and buy some gum. So, I decided that now is a good time to talk about what that money is for. So, here was our conversation:

Me: Ben, we don't use that money for gum. That money is Alabaster.
Ben: What's Alabaster?
Me: We save our money in that box and it goes to Jesus (thinking that was the easiest way to explain it)
Ben: What does Jesus do with it?
Me: Jesus uses it to build churches.
Ben: Well...who's strong enough that they can throw that money up to Jesus?
Me: (giggle!) Well, we don't give that money right to Jesus. We give it to people who do Jesus' work here on earth, and we build churches for people.
Ben: We build churches with this money? Why?
Me: Well, there are some people, that live really far away, that don't have a church home, so they don't get to go to church to hear about how much Jesus loves them. So we help build a church so that people can go to that church and learn about Jesus, like we do.
Ben: There are people that don't know that Jesus loves them?!
Me: Yes. That's why we help build churches.

The next day, with Jason there, I asked Ben to tell Daddy what we do with the money in the box. He said, "This money is for Jesus. We build churches with it, so that people can know Jesus." Then he lowered his voice and said, "There are people who don't know that Jesus died on the cross for them!"

The whole story was very awesome, and I was very excited that he could understand it! Ben already has a few dollars worth of money in his box!