“And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature.”
The kids’ Bible class in home churches on the Peruvian mission field looks very different from our homeland experiences. It is often much more chaotic and informal with a mixture of lighter and darker faces and the English and Spanish languages. However, the same principle remains: instilling in the children of our church the foundation of faith. We pray for them to grow in wisdom and in faith, through the stories and teachings found in the Word of God. Most of the time we share the story-time part of class with the adults, as many of them are not as familiar with Bible stories as we are in the States and the lessons we learn from these are valuable to all ages.
While we may lack kids-size tables and chairs, we are definitely up to snuff as far as flexibility and creativity! We strive to keep our lessons, crafts and activities simple and straightforward so they can be easily reproduced by our Peruvian brethren. Please pray that in time we will find a few willing and gifted Peruvian brothers or sisters who will regularly join us and eventually take over the education of children in our church family.
On Celebration Sundays when our two house churches gather together, we tend to have a slightly more elaborate story time. It will usually include a skit or puppets (Peruvian style: colored images on a stick!). It is a fun way to get the whole church involved and up-to-date with what the kids are learning.
This year we are going through the life of Christ as found in the gospel of Luke using a curriculum created by Mission Arlington (it comes in Spanish as well!) and adapting it to our kids’ needs as well as the culture here. We plan to have the two house churches take turns leading the Celebration Sunday lesson. This way the church members can read the story together, come up with ideas on how to present it and two of us (a missionary and a Peruvian) can then work together during the week to get down the details. We hope this way to involve the church as a whole more consistently in the education of the kids, impressing on all the understanding that we do not do kids’ class just so we can get the rowdy small people out of the room so the adults can do their lesson; but that our kids are the next generation of faith and teaching them the way of God is as important for their personal souls as it is for the grander vision of God’s continued mission in our world.
Keep our kiddos in your prayers! They are:
Shaye, Cora, Aria, Andres, Angel, Harold, Lorenzo, Maya, Evan, Florcita, Gabriel, Briana, Isabel.