Day One

Executive Summary:
Day one went well. 30 kids (14 junior, 16 senior). Connected again with some of the kids from last year. The Senior group is a lot less talkative than we had planned.

Prayer Points:
Give thanks that Brad and Narelle arrived safely from Perth – now our team is complete.

Give thanks for a good first day and that the tweaking we’ll give to the program will be beneficial.

Pray with us for some of the kids in particular: for two boys to own their faith that they’ve inherited from their keen (and quite strict) Christian parents; for one 16 year old guy whose life is falling apart through drugs and alcohol – he wants to make a change but doesn’t have the resources to make it happen. Pray that we’d have a chance to share the good news of Jesus with him, and that the Spirit would be pleased to call him; and for a 16 year old girl who we’ve been told is a major handful for Christian grandmother who she lives with. Pray for a miracle – that her grandmother’s prayers might be answered.

The Full Story:
The first day of anything always brings a strange mix of emotions and experiences. At our team meeting in the morning we shared one word to describe how we were feeling – we had words like, good, better (that was Hamish), anxious, excited, enthused.

This morning’s study was on Psalm 121 – where will our help come from? Does the person speaking in verse 1 look to the hills and get excited by the destination that lies ahead of them, or do they get anxious when they think of the dangers that hide in wait for them, or do they get tempted by the foreign gods whose places of worship dot the high places? Whatever emotion they face, where will they find help to deal with it all?

Maybe it’s one of the elders in the village that responds in verse 2 – ‘whatever you’re worried about young fella, my help has always come from the Lord, which is just what you’d expect because he’s the one who made heaven and earth after all! And there’s every reason to expect the same protection on your journey as I’ve had on mine.’

That’s what we wanted to take into Day 1: reminded again of the truths of our faith – that Jesus is Lord and Saviour (both of us and of everyone we’ll be in contact with here in MtM); and with the conviction that what we believe does actually work out in our experience, our prayer is to enter the day confident that Jesus will build his church, that the Father will be drawing people to Jesus, and that in that freedom we’d be able to give ourselves to whatever he calls us to be involved in today.

Our first big prayer point was for Brad and Narelle to arrive safely from Perth – partly because we wanted them to arrive safely, but also because we wanted their car (with all the equipment we needed for Kid’s Club) to arrive in time in time. And thanks to God, both things happened!

About 30 kids turned up at 2:30 including some of those we met last year. We did chalk drawings, coloured in and kicked footballs. From 4:00 we split into junior and senior groups for the teaching time – following Jesus in the footsteps of Peter (chant with us: Jesus is – the mighty mighty king – Jesus says – come follow him). The junior group was good fun, mostly aboriginal kids, quiet on the whole with some enthusiastic characters thrown in. Jess did a great job of leading the session, ably supported by Mel, Ally and me as puppeteers. The teenage group was a bit harder – with day 1 technical difficulties in setting up AV equipment, and with a group that was on the younger and less talkative end than what the team had prepared for. But Mitch adjusted the plan on the fly and came up with something that worked.

Various adjustments to be made this morning of course, but that’s the nature of mission programs like this.

Today is more of the same – though with a busload (i.e. about 15) kids coming from Yalgoo (another town about 150 km west of here). It’s probably going to be 35 degrees today – so pray we keep the fluids up, and thank God that ‘the sun will not harm us by day’ (Psalm 121:6).