Our Second Bilingual English-Chinese Jesse Tree and Advent Devotion

耶西樹中英粵語

Update 2021: Links are updated

We felt led to do a different Jesse tree (耶西樹) and Advent devotion for this year – the one from Martin Luther College. See below for the resources we used, as well as the additional scripture reading printables.

Advent Resources from Martin Luther College

I am blessed to be part of a Christian group, and a lovely mum had shared these Jesse Tree devotion and ornaments with us. (She had even offered to send me hard copies of the Christmas ornaments and devotion, but it was an easy download from the website. )

The Advent resources consist of the following, and are available for download from the Martin Luther College website, along with this year’s and past years’ devotions (PDF) .

  • The Jesse Tree Advent Daily devotions (for Adults and teenagers) in PDF.
  • The Jesse Tree: Children’s Bible Stories – Each includes a clear connection from the Old Testament story to our Savior Jesus in PDF.
  • Jesse Tree Christmas   printable ornaments – full color and in black-line images ready to be colored – cardstock ornaments were available prior to Advent.

 

Chinese Translation of Children’s Bible Story

The (Simplified) Chinese translations (将临期儿童圣经故事) are available on the website of 北京福音路德教会 Beijing Evangelical Lutheran Church and can be downloaded as a PDF (53 pages).

 

Accompanying Chinese characters

This is how Tingting Schwartz, a lovely Christian mum, had shared about how she incorporates Chinese – by adding characters onto the back of the cardstock ornaments (according to the order of the devotion book). You can also download her file containing the Chinese characters of the 25 Jesse Tree Ornaments (Simplified Chinese with pinyin).

耶西樹漢字中文華文華語

Idea and photo credit: Tingting Schwartz

 

Our Jesse Tree ornaments

This is how we are creating our tree this year.

We read the bilingual Children’s Stories  as a family. This allows my husband included in this Biblical activity,  as well as helping us learn more Chinese biblical terminology that is absent from my vocabulary.

I printed the ornaments from Martin Luther College website. I printed 9 to a page (due to lack of cardstock paper), and cut into squares (as it was faster than circles), and also we are hanging them on a string with pegs, so squarish would still look good.

On hindsight, I might have considered cutting them into rectangles. This would allow for including the Chinese word below (see pix for sample), although they might look like flashcards. Or incorporating chapter names , e.g. God Saves Noah上帝拯救諾亞; God ’s Promise to Abraham 上帝應許亞伯拉罕.   Also then there would be more space for the bible verses at the back, and I could have the verses in a bigger font size.

I found  a suitable  bible verse for each day and stuck the bilingual verses  onto the back of the card. Free printable of bible verses here:

If you are looking for the bible references of the stories (which can be as long as a few chapters) or bible readings to accompany the Children’s Bible Stories

Bible verses used are from New International Version (NIV) and Chinese New Version (CNV). (To learn more about different Chinese bible versions, click here.)

Special thanks to Tingting Schwartz for sharing the Martin Luther College Advent devotions, the blog links of  Beijing Evangelical Lutheran Church for the Chinese translations, as well as the Chinese characters on the back of the card.

How are you observing Advent this Christmas Season?

Are you having an Advent calendar this year? Please share what you are doing this Advent!

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