Bible Club

For about 4 years now I have been able to do a Bible Club in a low-income housing development in Shelby. For 2 years I did it with Omar and Tracy Schrock, and now I do it with Logan Fields, Jaimie Antonow, and Christy Godfrey. We always have a wonderful time. We have been able to hold it in Mr. Bray’s house, and when it is nice out we meet outside. We have had a core group of kids for all four years that were always faithful in coming, and then some others that came and went. They move in and out a lot in that neighborhood.

Well, this semester we stopped having any kids able to come out. Even the most faithful ones had either extra-curricular activities or scheduling conflicts. It was a bit disheartening to go week after week not knowing if any kids would be able to come. We just weren’t sure what to do…we knew that there were kids in that neighborhood that needed to be ministered to, and needed to learn about and see God’s Love for them. We hated to end the Bible Club, but we weren’t sure what else to do.

Then a couple weeks ago, we headed out to see if any of the kids were home. Logan told us later that in his mind that day he was telling the Lord, “I’ll try this one more time, but if no kids come, I’m done.” We were all pretty discouraged at this point. Well, as we were walking from house to house, we heard some kids playing, but we weren’t sure where the noise was coming from. We ended up walking up into another part of the development that was sort of separate from the rest, and a part that we had never been up in before. It was kind of far from Mr. Bray’s house, and we had always had plenty of kids in the lower part. But we walked up there and saw a few little boys playing basketball. We asked if we could play with them, and they were very eager to have some attention. To make a long story short, we ended up with 7 kids that day, 5 boys and 2 girls, ranging in age from 5 to 12. All but one of them were siblings. We just played ball games with them for a long time, and then sat them down for a few minutes and gave them the gospel. They had a lot of questions about spiritual things, but they didn’t really have much of a knowledge of the Bible. They recognize some Bible stories, and they said things like, “Did you ever hear that if you obey your parents God will make your days long? My mom tells us that if we disobey her God is gonna shorten our days.” Another asked, “Is it true that if you kill yourself you go to hell?” On and on the questions went, for a long time. We were able to answer some of them and hopefully set a groundwork for salvation. We have now had several clubs with them, and each time we have 7-9 kids. This last week they were baby-sitting their two younger sisters that were 2 years old, so they brought them out to the club too! They are for sure the youngest clubbers we’ve ever had! But they are all so well-behaved, even the youngest ones. Some of them should give lessons to some of the church kids in my kids choir! They sit and listen so well, and just soak up every word. We enjoy being with them so much. It is such an encouragement to see these kids that just want to learn so much. Hopefully sometime we will be able to take them to Sunday School, too. That would be a big undertaking! Here are their names, so that you can be praying for them. These are all the different ones that have come, except for the 2-year-olds, I couldn’t remember their names:

Ty’rek

Jerem

Nautica

Jazzma

Marques

Travis

Jamse

Jaeqean

Devin

Da-Da

And here are some pictures of them! Aren’t they just the cutest things you ever saw? I think their hunger to know more about God makes them even cuter to me. I am so thankful for the opportunities God gives, and this is one I will never forget.