God will help us be ready for anything

This week, we learned about Timothy and how God helped him to be ready for anything. Through Timothy's example, we can trust God to help us be ready for anything that comes our way. Through small group lessons, a visual story, a skit, a game and prayer, we helped cement this concept in their mind. Our kids need to know that even though they are kids, God can use them and He wants to use them anywhere, anytime for anything - they just have to be willing and available!

We had several first time visitors this week. It is always a blessing to see new faces.

We have the opportunity to work with some of the best kids! They are so sensitive to praying for others needs and for the second week in a row, they have followed God's leading to pray for their friends. We also had a couple of praise reports about answers to prayer that were things we prayed for last week! Thank God that He is working in our children and giving them a testimony!

A special thanks goes out this week to Brother Jeff Davis who helped us out with our skit and to Jonathan Diogenes who entertained children who were there before service started.

Small groups enable us to teach the children in a more one on one way so they are better able to learn. Here are some pictures from this past Wednesday's service.

Welcome Back!

Last night was our first night back in KC this summer. We had a lot of changes to introduce the children to and they were troopers through it all. We mixed it up with some games to get to know each other better, so we had some fun as well.

One thing that we reintroduced them to is our prayer request box with forms that they can fill out each week as they enter. We added a new element to this that will hopefully make it more meaningful to them - prayer cloths in our fun KC material. If necessary, they can now take a prayer cloth and during prayer, they can hold that up and then take it home as a token of the faith and prayers that went out for that need. We are hoping that they will use these, either for themselves or to give to the person they were praying for in KC. After telling them about these things, there were several somewhat serious requests that the kids had, so we asked them to come forward with the need and had other children come to stand with them and pray with them. It was such a special time to see them praying with and for each other.

Some other changes that we have made involve our helpers and I want the parents to be aware of these changes. First, if your child is asked to be on the praise team for a given week, it would help if they could be at church a little early on Wednesday to go over the songs. We will let you know if they are asked and are going to try to rotate it so that everyone gets a turn to help. Some children will be asked to help with offering or to help lead prayer. We are hoping to involve as many as possible each week. There are some jobs that we are making special for just the 12 year olds to help with. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments!

We have also brought back our points competition! We have the children in 3 groups - The Orange Group is called SONG (Soldiers of the Next Generation), The Green Group is called SWAT (Students With A Testimony) and The Blue Group is called PUSH (Praying Until Something Happens). Each of these groups started with 100 points last night and each week they can add to their team points by their worship, their participation, bringing a guest, turning in review sheets that we will have each week for them, and anything good and Godly that we see their group doing! The only way they can lose points is if they just can't seem to settle down in service and listen to the lessons. At the end of 2 months, we will see which group has the most points. That group will get to choose the prize (maybe a movie night, game night, ice cream party, etc.) and the lowest scoring team will have to do the serving! This way, all teams with points will get to participate in the prize - they are all great kids!!! Hopefully, this will make it fun for them and enable them to learn and grow in Jesus all that they can.

Please keep our KC team and all of our POA kids in your prayers - we love these children and have such a burden to see them love Jesus and put Him first in everything that they do. It is our hearts desire to reach them and convey that love to them. Thanks for sharing your children with us each week!