For the past eleven or so years, I have had the opportunity to teach children ages three to ten about Jesus on Sundays. I would memorize a small group lesson or a script every week and would present it to the kids Sunday mornings. While I have loved my years teaching back at my home church, and loved seeing God change the lives of these young children and their families, I have always wanted more. I joined The World Race hoping I’d be able to move past a script and reach the un-reached. I got to do exactly that through a ministry called Manantiales.
A group of twenty of us arrived at a pretty rough displacement village in Medellin, Colombia. We came armed with bags full of coloring books, colored pencils, and other little fun things kids like. Our goal was to go and deliver these packages to the families already in the program through City of Refuge. We got much more than that. At first, I was a little discouraged because it felt like we weren’t doing anything. We were all moving as a large group to these houses and passing people the entire way. Something in me didn’t feel right. We all stopped as our translators spoke to a family further down the path. As we waited, five of us in the group noticed a little girl and boy playing right outside their house. We walked up to them, handed them some coloring utensils, and watched as their faces lit up. Their mother noticed us from inside their home, and we all started talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We were there for so long that the rest of the group left without us! We prayed over them and invited them to check out the program.
We continued on our way and walked through a pretty tight alleyway, at the end of which we were greeted by a hoard of kids wanting to play with us. A lot of them were not part of the foundation’s program, and never heard the name of Jesus before! Naturally (me being the child I am on the inside), I jumped right in to play with them, hold people’s babies, pray over them, and give them a chance to just be kids. I watched as the boys walked a little bit taller after I told them that they and their name were strong. I saw little girls blush after we told them they were beautiful. I was invited into people’s homes and given the chance to pray over them and tell them about God. I walked for what felt like miles with kids hanging all around me. It. Was. Glorious.
We invited the kids and their families to come to a children’s program happening the next Saturday. The next week, our group saw 280 kids at that event, and they all got to hear more about Jesus. If we didn’t go that day, how many kids would have continued their lives never hearing the Gospel? How many people are living their lives separated from God, simply because no one will go out and tell them that He made a way for them to have a relationship with Him?
As I was playing with the kids in the streets of the slums of this village, sharing the Gospel with them, I thought to myself, “This is why I left everything I’ve ever known to follow Jesus. This is the life I want.”
