• Every Penny Counts
Every two years the Cambodian Evangelical Churches in the U.S. conveign a Regional Conference. They send delegates from each church for a denominational gathering for about 30-40 churches, mostly from Calfornia, but several from other states too. This group of Cambodian Evangelical Churches are affiliated the Christian Missionary Alliance Churches and have their conference every two years. They move it around the country. Next year it will be back East or in Texas. This program is mostly focused on the adults leaders. Originally, they only provided “child care” for the delegate’s children.
Here I am with six of the seven children who responded to the invitation.
However, thanks to the vision of an involved and concerned mother Lida Thang, they have provided an organized program for the last three conferences. This year they decided to use Group’s Power Lab Curriculum (VBS) as their core program, they expanded it and added a speaker. I was the fist outside speaker for this children’s program. I complimented the lessons with my messages. They wanted me to include an invitation in my messages. So it worked out that I did an opening session every morning and a longer session teaching the curriculum every evening. In addition, I lead four small group classes every morning, called “Fun with Barney (twenty classes).
I introduced cup stacking to the children, it was so fun, most of them had never heard of it.
But when I pulled out the timing mats things got really competitive and more fun for the kids.
We also played character pogs. It was more challenging for the smaller ones, but we tried it.
I taught them how to witness using a tiny pocket-sized Wordless Book. We had a great time, my magic tricks worked, God blessed us and seven leader’s children came to Jesus last week.
These Cambodian kids were second and third generation Cambodian children, all spoke English well. Because the children were “delegate children” from about 30 churches, not from the area, most of them stayed in hotels in Artesia. There were only 61 children (total) registered, but not all of them were there at one time. There were nearly forty leaders and youth helpers that assisted in the 60 hours of programming in five days (12 hrs a day). I was able to suggest that our India Playground be their Missions Project. Further, I suggested that we needed more help with the teaching sets for flannel-graph materials that compliment the Jesus Film for Children for the Indian churches needing training. So they agreed to have a Penny Offering with the boys against the girls. So every evening we took up the Missionary Offering and I explained another aspect of the total project. Nobody expected they would give very much.
However, as the time moved on, the children began to really get what we were doing. Well, it was amazing. With this limited number of kids and not being at home, they raised $229 in pennies, that’s 22,900 pennies! My penny buckets were filled to the brim. The Girls Won!
The closing program the children sang some of their songs for the adults, which they all just loved. One of the boys that accepted the Lord gave his first testimony of his coming to know the Lord this week. That was worth it all, priceless!
And one leader just gave me $50 check for a set. That made five sets from there. Another leader (unsolicited) just gave me a gift of $200 for playground, $100 cash now and $100 later in the mail. One person expressed interest in going on the trip, once we have a date to consider. Another interesting thing happened. I was able to tell one interested young man about the virtues of going to school at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He told me he was going to apply and prepare himself for full-time ministry, as a result of the week. Wow, that was really special.
Just what the doctor ordered. When we combine this five sets with the nine sets donated from the New Hope Community Church in Lancaster, we now have 14 sets of training materials, so far. I think that is not too shabby, coming from smaller groups. Just thought you would like to know. Praise the Lord for this, not only does every penny count, but think of the prayer support we got for the playground. I believe God is pleased when children pray and believe that Jesus will supply the need.
The days were long and we all grew weary. This one, just could not hold out anymore and went to sleep. But we all had a really good time. I sure enjoyed the Cambodian kids.
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