Our last week in Arraijan, Panama has been amazing. We are working with a baptist church full of young adults that love working with youth and with children. Many of them are associated with a sort-of-bilingual private school in the area (we are sleeping on the Principals floor!). They asked us to come and help the students practice English. Everyday we earn our title of “native speakers” many times over. I was assigned to work with the two sixth grade classrooms with Teacher Nelson. I have never seen a group of 11 year-olds so focused on learning. Plus, there are many benefits to being their American… such as the standing ovation I receive every morning when I enter the classrooms. Nelson is a really wonderful teacher, the kind of teach you can tell loves his job.
Our last day together he gave me the opportunity to share my story with the students and to prepare the topic for their “Mind Map” (sort of like brainstorming as near as I can tell).
After my story I decided to tell them the story of Joshua and the Israelites… a story that just keeps coming up this year. I told them how God did amazing things for the Israelites but they would always forget and run back to their idols. At the end of the book of Joshua, he is addressing God’s people and tells them that they have a choice. They must choose who they will serve… God or Idols. That message resonates in our lives today, doesn’t it?
Enter the Mind Map. Our topic was “Choose who you will serve.” And we drew pictures of what it looks like to serve God or to Serve an idol.
I will let a few pictures demonstrate the results:
(please note the boy with the heart thoughts idolizing his girlfriend… they were very proud of this example)
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord!” Joshua 24:15
