Hi there, my name is John and this is my best friend Lucy, and today we will be talking about obedience and disobedience in the story of the prophet Jonah.

Lucy and I go to the same church on Sundays but last Sunday she wasn't feeling well so she couldn't come to church. When Lucy wasn't there all the kids watched a movie about the prophet Jonah and our Sunday School teacher, Miss Lina, taught us a lot about him.

Today, I am meeting up with Lucy to tell her all about Jonah.

At Lucy's house, we sat next to the fire place to keep warm. Lucy's mother also made us some snacks for the story time. After getting our snacks I started telling Lucy all about the prophet Jonah.

I started by telling her who the prophet was. Prophet Jonah told the people of Israel God's plans whenever God told him. He was always ready to tell the people what God was saying but when God asked him to go and talk to Israel's enemy, Jonah refused. 

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell them to stop doing bad things, but Jonah did not want to go. Jonah tried to run away from God's presence, but Miss Lina told us that it is impossible to run away from God. 

Jonah still tried to run away from God's presence so he went down to a town called Joppa to find a ship going to Tarshish. 

Jonah thought this was a great idea and the best way to run away from God because Nineveh was far away from Tarshish.

Jonah disobeyed God and tried to run away from Him.

Jonah forgot that God was everywhere and we cannot hide anything from Him, not even ourselves. 

Jonah paid and went on the ship going to Tarshish away from the work God 

gave him.

So God sent a great wind on the sea so the ship was about to be broken. 

Everyone on the ship was very scared so they cried to  their own gods because they did not worship Jonah's God.

While everyone was praying to their god, Jonah was sleeping in the lowest part of the ship, he did not know what was going on.

So the captain of the ship woke him up and told Jonah to also call on his God.  Jonah told everyone that he was a Hebrew and that he feared the LORD, the God of heaven. He also told them that his God made the sea and the dry land. 

Everyone on the ship became very afraid because they knew God had more power than their gods.  They also knew that Jonah was running away from God's presence.