This may seem like a boring picture, taken 10 years ago today, but it really should have been a video.
10 years ago the church in the community of Jesús María didn’t have a building – they were renting the biggest place available in the neighbourhood, and were still packing it out every Sunday.
There was no place for the kids to be taught, so we would pack them into our blue van and ship them somewhere else, and then bring them back.
The van would arrive, and every door would open – even the back hatch (it’s just starting to open in the picture) – and kids would pour out!
Thank the Lord, the church now has its own building, and plenty of room for kids and teens and adults and community events and all kinds of evangelism and discipleship!
Our church in Las Palmas (Path of Life Bible Church) has a children’s Sunday school class most weeks. That means a lot of planning and prayer and preparation (not necessarily in that order!).
Shari is in charge of the children’s ministry at the church, and she works with our friend Sandra (who does a lot of scheduling, as well as teaching), and other helpers and teachers.
So what to teach? Well, we believe in teaching the whole Bible – imagine! Right now we’re going through a chronological series known in English as Generations of Grace (Generaciones de Gracia). It’s a three year program that we’re cramming into – well, 4 years maybe? 😀
Then the material is supplemented with some other activities and special Bible memorization. At the moment, the children are memorizing the Ten Commandments. And of course there are sometimes special presentations for special days.
At Christmas, for example, the kids and their teachers put together a mini Christmas program about giving gifts to Christ.
The other day the teachers and helpers met at our house to pray and strategize and organize for the coming year. Please pray for these women, who put a huge amount of work into one part of our discipleship of the younger generation!
For those of you who have been praying for a place for our church to meet, you can keep praying! I won’t go into all the details here, but you’ll be glad to hear that we have a place for the time being – hopefully for a few more weeks.
But that’s not a long time – especially considering that the holidays are coming up quickly.
So, that and about a thousand other things are on our minds as we hurtle toward the end of the year.
Thanks to the hospitality of one of our church families, we do have a place for Bible study! Shari snuck this picture of us from last week. Shari is teaching the kids, continuing the chronological study that she started several months ago.
We’re preparing this Sunday for an adoration service, a special service that we have once a month. And there’s lots more coming up!
Anyway, just wanted to give you a quick update. Keep praying for the church – not only for a place, but for the people, who are going through some major struggles.
Would you like to help our church in a practical way? We need some Bibles!
Every Friday we have a Bible study with both adults and children from our church, and of course we have services and Sunday school on Sundays. Shari is in charge of the children’s ministry at the church, and she puts hours into making sure the kids are getting teaching that is biblical and fun!
On Friday, we’re just starting a new program to help the kids understand the Scriptures from beginning to end. We want to make sure that every child has a Bible to open and learn from every week. So we’re trying to get a set of Bibles (in Spanish, of course – the version is NBLH) that we can use each week.
These Bibles can be shipped to our door for about US$15.55 or CA$19.61 each (including shipping) from Amazon.com. At the moment we need 6 Bibles, but of course if we get more we can use them for the adults and for more kids as the church grows. So if you like, you could get a single Bible, or get them all for around $100 or so.
Remember, these need to be sent to our address in Mexico, so if you’re interested, contact us directly for our address.
To order, use this link to make sure you get what we need:
This weekend we had the privilege of having Shelli (Corina) Neufeld in Ixtapaluca for a few days. Shelli and her family have served for many years as missionaries in Hermosillo, Mexico. But in fact, during our first visit to Mexico, Shelli was with us – a part of our team that served in Mexico City and Apatzingan many years ago.
On Saturday the church in Jesús MarÃa hosted a children’s ministry seminar, with Shelli as the conference speaker. Four churches were represented. Shari (don’t get mixed up, now – I realize we’ve got a Shari and a Shelli in the same post!) went to a lot of work organizing the conference.
Well, Shelli’s teaching was pure gold – so many tips for teaching children (and, in fact, teens and adults too)! We heard some excellent feedback from those who attended. So after all the hard work, we’re very encouraged that there will be a positive impact on the method of teaching God’s Word in several churches.
On Sunday, at our church in Las Palmas, Shelli worked with several of those who normally teach. They put into practice much of what they learned on Saturday on Sunday.
Speaking of which, here’s Hannah teaching the craft of the day.
Shelli also shared her testimony on Sunday morning.
So, it was a good weekend. We struggled a little because – well, we thought we were getting over whatever bug it was that we had, but apparently we either got a new one or the other one wasn’t quite finished. So Shari and I were working at significantly lower-than-normal energy. But God worked in spite of that all.
So, thanks, Shelli, for joining us! And thanks to everyone who was praying for the weekend. To God be the glory!
Yesterday we were at New Hope Gospel Church, enjoying fellowship (and great food) with our friends there.
Normally I don’t take a lot of pictures or video when we’re leading something at a church, but this time I took just a few clips during our Children’s Ministry Seminar, which we gave in the afternoon.
First, here’s a picture from the road on the way to Provost:
And here’s a very brief (about 2 minutes) video. I didn’t take any video of the more interactive times, so you’re missing out on all the fun parts. Still, it will show you a little of what we’re up to. 😉
Thanks to all the enthusiastic people who took the seminar this time! If you’d like this or another seminar at your church, find out more about them here.