Page 47 - RiseUpWarrior

20 NOW, your ministry starts! We fnally made it to Mexico; Huatabampo, Sonora to and villages. be exact. We had purchased a piece of land, and were It didn’t take long for the word to spread, and we de- living in a loaned motorhome on the land, while we cided to include a few more surrounding cities in the built a more permanent home. When asked how long invite for curriculum. By the end of that frst year, we we were staying there, we would say there were no were now giving curriculum to 100 churches. plans to leave, and we might just end up getting buried on the “back forty”. We were there to stay. That got a little more complicated with the printing, and so my husband had to get more involved in the planning Even though life was hard with dust and heat (to the and printing of the kid’s books and the organizing of tune of 120F/48C!) we still had some ministry “hon- giving them all away. eymoon”. We could serve wherever we saw a need. If we saw an opportunity to bless a pastor, we could just We had some work parties where we invited people do it. We helped pastors move, we brought over food, over and hand-collated the main teacher’s book outside we helped with their events, and we brought teams to and ran them thru a stapler machine Dwight had pur- bless them with construction. We had pastor’s confer- chased. ences and marriage retreats. We were trying to bless the All the while we continued with blessing the churches pastors with whatever we could, and also on the side, with other areas of ministry, including running print we did children’s ministry for them. I could do a spe- jobs for their evangelistic campaigns or other events. cial event for their children, but then I got to thinking, Since we had this small set-up for printing, it seemed I might as well print them up something, since we had like a nice addition to bless the pastors. We made them brought down our riso-graph. (A type of photocopier business cards, tracts for passing out, invites for their that can run different colors at a time, and is more eco- churches, and posters for campaigns. nomical than copies.) Then I got excited about doing a kids camp! I had been My frst curriculum was a simple VBS, with 5 coloring so blessed personally by attending a kid’s camp every pages and some fun activities. The theme was “Going year, it seemed natural to provide that same blessing to deeper with God” with a submarine under the water. the churches around us. I could help the children take (This continues to be a hot-seller!) We set a date to the next step in a deeper walk with God! So I went about pass it out, and invited the local churches. Around 25 making plans to have 100 kids actually sleeping on our churches showed on that frst curriculum pass-out, and little ministry site, and spending an entire week with us we gave them whatever they needed. After covering for camp. We passed out fyers and invited the kids for the theme and fun ideas, we would ask them how many the upcoming summer camp. children they expected, and we would give them that many copies. If they expected 100 children, we gave Life was good. We had tons to do. It seemed as though them 100 copies for each day. We had a blast. there was lots of grace for us, and lots of freedom in what we could do. I would imagine this would be simi- That frst summer I got to go and visit 10 of those lar to many who start into ministry. churches to see their VBS in action, and it was exhila- rating to think I had made a program and they were put- This is your “honeymoon” time; this frst phase of min- ting it to good use, to reach the children of their towns istry that is full of grace and freedom. 46