Sep 4, 2018 The Children Came Pouring In

When I led a mission team to Guatemala recently, I wasn’t expecting what God had planned for us!

Guatemala was different because, on most of our mission projects, we try to have four or five different meeting sites. But this time we didn’t have enough preachers. As a result, we ended up reducing our evangelism meetings from three sites to two.

Despite the few preachers, I had more team members than usual who wanted to help with children’s ministry. My natural, human reaction was to doubt. I didn’t think it would work to have so many people helping with children’s ministry because I thought there would be too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen.

To my surprise, however, the number of children attending grew each night and by the last night of meetings, each site had more than 80 kids! This was surprising because we were expecting around 30 kids and having more than double the expectation made each helping hand essential. Every person got involved and I know that God worked it out the way He did because He knew that we would need the help.

One night, we had so many kids that we resorted to separating them into age groups to keep chaos at bay. But we still had to get help from the local church members because the kids were so rambunctious and excited to come to the meetings.

We also ended up renting school buses to bring kids who needed a ride and each night, they came pouring out of the buses, running to get a seat close to the front of the meeting because we ran out of chairs. I even bought some extra chairs and there still weren’t enough!

After each meeting, the kids would go home and share their excitement with parents who did not want them to come alone. So, the parents started coming to the adult meetings! Several nights, it was pouring rain and we thought it would hinder attendance. But attendance never went down. In fact, it kept growing each night. Nobody wanted to miss the meetings.

In all of the missions I’ve led, I have never had such a powerful experience in children’s ministry. The impact of the kids’ program took over what was driving the evangelism. The local church started feeding the kids with snacks and everyone was doing crafts to go with the Bible stories and it was a ruckus, but it was so much fun!

At each site, we had experienced children’s leaders who could handle the energy of the kidsÑGod really put the team together, knowing whom we would need.

At the end, there were several kids who said, I want Jesus as my Savior. And even though they weren’t quite old enough for baptism, they are attending church and dragging the parents with them!

Freddy Fuentes
Guatemala Team Leader

Missions Minute: Sam Griggs

In this Missions Minute, Sam Griggs shares about her experience sharing the gospel with children in Cuba!
[vimeo 154653583 w=640 h=360]