Teacher Training - January 2011

Besides VBS every afternoon, Cristiane and I did a teacher training course every evening and Saturday morning. Two of the girls that came up from Cuiabá were able to take adavantage of the time and participate in the course also. The rest of the group were 4 of my adolescent girls (Luana, Carol, Josiane, Adriana) and Wellita who was taking it for the second time and taught for a time before she had to work on Sundays. My purpose in coming to Campo Verde was to train teachers to do children's and adolescent ministry. However we just haven't had many adults willing to teach or have have legal marriages to be qualified to teach. Therefore most of our future teachers will be my adolescents who are very willing and excited to do so. They had the assignment to evangelize 3 kids other than VBS. They loved it. I will continue the training these next two weeks in preparation for my absence. Since I will be gone for almost 4 months we really need others to take the responsibility of teaching the children.

Vacation Bible School - January 2011 - Part 5

No Bible school is ever complete without a time of recreation and snack. Bette and her helpers planed the recreation for every day. Each day a diferent snack was served: cookies, cake, ice cream, popcorn, and on the last day hot dogs which are the Brazilians favorite.

Vacation Bible School - January 2011 - Part 4

Ater our opening session the kids were divided into two groups. Thais and her helpers took the little kids upstairs. It was challenge to teach the very large group with over 35 kids from ages 3-7. We didn't have enough chairs for the group so they all sat on the floor.

Zoe Peffer taught the older kids from 8-14. The benches had to become tables for them to work on their activity books. It was after one of Zoe's sessions that 20 kids responded to the invitation to accept Christ so I took them upstairs and was able to explain the gospel with them and pray with them. Only the Lord knows how many really understood and were sincere in their prayer. I pray for them to follow the Lord and return to church to learn more and grow in the Lord.

Vacation Bible School - January 2011- Part 3

The theme of VBS was "Around the World with Jesus". The opening session included many new songs which the kids loved and learned fast, the pledges to the flags and the Bible, puppets, a Gospel flash where Cristiane explained parts of the Gospel, the Bible verse for the day, the mission story, and a country of the world.

Our missionary story of the week was about Joni Earckson Tada and her tragic accident and how God transformed her life and how is using her in an amazing was through her ministry of Joni and Friends. I also focused on a deiferent disability each day.

Vacation bible School - january 2011-Part 2

The Lord blessed us tremendously. We had had rain every day in January up through the day before VBS. But during the week of VBS the Lord gave us beautiful sunshine every afternoon except one day. And even then the rain came after VBS started and was over by the time of recreation outdoors and we had the most numbeer of kids that day. We had between 55 and 72 everyday plus the 15 adult workers. I was happy to see 90% of them return on Sunday morning for the closing program. The greatest blessing was that 43 kids make a decision to accept Christ as their Savior. As you can see our little church was filled to capacity.

Vacation Bible School-January 2011- Part 1

January 25 through 30, we held a Vacation Bible school in our little church in Campo Verde. Cristiane was one of my former adolescentes many years ago. She is now married, graduated with a degree in teaching and teaches school, but also has had training with Child Evangelism in Brazil and qualified to train teachers. Cris oraganized the VBS program and a group of workers. The team first did VBS in their church in Cuiabá, then the following week they came up to Campo Verde. They did a fabulous job leading, teaching, and helping out wherever they could. We also had a group from our church here in Campo Verde who came everyday to help.
Kimberly helped giving our their name tags every day while the kids waited in line.