I made it through the first day of teaching clubs by myself! Here’s how it went:
Club 1: This club in Caron was great. There were 14 kids! I knew a couple of them from Caronport, so that was fun. It was so exciting to see a large club. Quite a few were younger children, but there were some 7-9 year olds who were really engaged and enjoyed answering questions. A few 11 year old girls were kind of thinking they were too old for it, and weren’t sure if they wanted to be on the sign up sheet as official members, but I did convince them and said they could help me. So I had them hold up my words for the songs, and I think they did like the stories.
Club 2: Three kids at this one. It was an interesting contrast to the last one because two of the three members were 11 year old girls and they were great and really enjoying the club. Since the kids were older, I got some really interesting questions during this club, and I was able to explain things in detail and follow rabbit trails with their questions because the club was small. One of the girls and her brother told me that they were Catholic. They also weren’t sure if they could get friends to come because their friends were Catholic. Pray that I would be careful in what I teach and would be able to handle with grace anything controversial.
Club 3: Also three kids at this one. One has been to clubs many times before, so pray that I’d be able to make it interesting, and that they would be excited about coming to a club. It was a bit harder to convince them to sing the songs and get excited about saying the verses. I hope this club will grow. I think the kids would be more engaged in a larger group.
Club 4: Once again, three kids! There were twin girls who were ten years old, and though they went to church, they didn’t know a whole lot about the Bible. It was cool to be able to explain some things to them. During the Zacchaeus story one of them asked me, “How do you know what they were saying?” I showed her in my Bible the story in the book of Luke and they thought that was really cool. These girls were also super excited about bringing friends and earning prizes, so I hope they do that!
Pray that my voice would hold up for these clubs. I’ve never lost my voice before, but today was my first time teaching four in a day my myself, and all that talking about storytelling has left me a little raspy. Praise God that all the clubs did indeed have kids, and pray that they would bring friends! I think sometimes the smaller clubs are a blessing because then I get to really know the kids and especially when they have lots of interesting questions. The Lord’s will be done in how many kids He brings to the clubs!
Pray that I would be diligent in studying my lessons every evening this week. Since I got a bit of a late start on teaching five day clubs, I don’t know the materials too well yet, so I need to spend my evenings learning them.
-Rose
