After the king had made Esther his queen

and Mordecai stopped the two bad men who were going to kill the king,

the king made a bad one his top leader.

Then all the king’s leaders had to bow down to this bad one. But Mordecai wouldn’t bow down to this bad one

because he only bowed down to the Lord our God

who made us.

The other leaders talked to Mordecai each day, telling him to bow down to the bad one, but Mordecai always said, No!

Since the bad one was very puffed up about himself, this made the bad one very mad.

He hated Mordecai with all his heart.

Mordecai had told everyone that he was one of the children of Israel carried away captive from their homeland. They were called Jews.

So the bad one told the king lies about Mordecai’s people, the Jews,

and made a sneaky plan to kill all of them

everywhere in the world.

Letters were sent out all across all the king’s country

to kill all the Jews on a special day

and take

all their land

and money and stuff.

Then the king and the bad one sat down to drink wine,

but the people of the city were upset and didn’t know what to do.

When Mordecai found out the plan, he stopped everything and started talking to God about it

When Esther heard about Mordecai's stopping everything and praying she sent to find out what was wrong.

Mordecai sent a message to Esther, at the palace, asking her to help her people by talking to the king to stop the plan to kill all their people.

She said, I can’t talk to the king, he hasn’t sent to see me for a month. And if I just go right in, the guards will kill me.

Mordecai told her, If you don’t help, God will help us some other way. But you also are in trouble, because you are a Jew too.

Maybe this is the reason you were chosen to be the queen, to save all your people.

So Esther agreed to risk her life and talk to the king. She told Mordecai to gather all the Jews in the capital city to pray for her.

Also she and her ladies prayed hard for 3 days and then she went to talk to the king.

After the 3 days of praying, Queen Esther put on her queen clothes and went in to talk to the king.

When the king saw her standing in the court, he held out the golden king’s stick to her so she came and touched the golden king’s stick. That meant it was ok, she wasn’t going to be killed.

The king always had all the power in the kingdom and so he asked Esther, What is it you want? What can I give you?

Esther just said, If it seems good to you, will you and Haman come

to a party of wine that I’m making just for you.

So the king told Haman to come quickly and they hurried to the party.