So I didn’t post at all about my clubs last week, so I feel a recap is in order.

My first week of teaching EVER was great! I was blessed to be teaching with a veteran, Shamus Westra, and also to have great, engaged clubs! I loved all the clubs and was blessed to start off my teaching experience with easy, well-behaved clubs.

Club 1: This club was a VBS and started slow but quickly picked up speed. By the end of the week the kids were energetic and really seemed to enjoy being at the club and hanging out with us. This was also the biggest club, however, and was the hardest to keep quiet and under control. Despite being a bigger club, many (if not all) of the kids had already accepted Jesus into their hearts. So I took this club as an opportunity to further disciple the kids and try to give them another godly influence to look up to. My favorite memory of that club was the Extra Story. This year, the extra story is the life and conversion of Tony Rossi, the man who started Tropicana®.  This story can get a bit bland, so I put cliff hangers at the end of every day’s portion of story. By about the third day, after I told the kids that they would have to come back tomorrow to figure out what happens next in the story, they all screamed “NOOOOO!”,”Tell us the rest!”, “You’re so mean!” So I took that as a job well done.

Club 2: This club was much smaller than the first, only about 8 kids. However, this club tuned out to be my favorite club by the end of the week. I knew this club was going to be good when the kids started running from a block away to get to the club. This club had some struggles (the road next to the house was very busy, people were mowing their lawns, not very much shade) but the kids really enjoyed the club and by the end of the week they were just as enthusiastic as the VBS. Almost all of them completed all their lessons, and they seemed to have a good knowledge of the Bible, so this club I also saw as an opportunity to disciple the kids in their walk with God and provide a good role model. There were a couple kids that were not churched, and did not accept Jesus as their Savior but the Lord brought a verse to my mind;

“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”            – Philippians 1:6

This verse just really encouraged me in saying that even though I may not see the final product now, or ever for that matter, I have planted the seed and Jesus is ultimately the one who makes it grow.

Club 3: This was the hardest club to teach. The kid just seemed to be all churched and were not nearly as enthusiastic as the first two clubs. And being the last club of the day, I was already tired and I was getting hardly anything out of these kids.  But God gave me the strength to push through the temptation to “just get through” the club and actually make an impact on the kids. And it paid off. The last two days of this club were great! The kids, who at first seemed very unresponsive, were elated to see us and could not seem to get themselves off of us. This encouraged me tons and showed me that we cannot rely on our own power to teach these clubs, but rather lean on God and get our strength from him.

So that was last week AKA my very first experience with teaching clubs. Now this week, I have only one club to teach, and it’s on a reserve. Now, I’ll be completely honest, I was a little worried because I didn’t know what to expect. But this club was absolutely amazing! We had about 20 kids and they were all very engaged and seemed to have a great time. And best of all, I got the extremely awesome privilege to introduce three of them into the family of God! It was so incredibly encouraging! A great way to start the second week!

My biggest prayer this week would to be able to effectively teach these kids the Gospel story, relying on God’s strength to speak the words He wants me to!