Sunday School Explosion

A few weeks ago a pastor in our church preached on evangelism and how it was everyone’s responsibility to share what God was doing in their lives and to invite others to know Him and become involved in a church. On Easter Sunday, one of the little boys in my Sunday school class had taken that message to heart and had invited four of his friends to join him. Because we were celebrating the resurrection of Christ, I had special treat bags made up for each of the kids as they left Sunday school and went to join the morning service. I had expected extra kids because it was a special week so I was prepared. What I wasn’t prepared for was this last week, when my Sunday school class went from the regular 12 kids to 28! I don’t know if word had gotten out in the neighbourhood that they could get candy in church or whether my little evangelist had had a taste of success and expanded his horizons. I had a little boy of about 11 years old offer to translate for me into Zarma for the kids that didn’t have enough French (which was really helpful. But, what was really interesting about that is that my translator who had come for the first time that morning) kept getting ahead of me and telling the story for me and I only had to correct him once! I hope that my little evangelist hadn’t taken the kids from the other nearby churches to join us.

I suspect that there might be a slightly smaller response this week (because the kids didn’t go away with a bag of candy), but please pray that God will be at work in the lives of these kids. Pray that we as a church will know how to respond to them as well (there were more kids than adults in the service on Sunday morning, but that is a closer reflection of the population of Niger). Pray that my Zarma will be able to keep up with the need, so that I can communicate with the kids that come and can follow to know when someone is translating correctly or not.

In addition to the regular problems with electricity, I am also having computer problems with the power cord. Please pray that it would continue to cooperate until I can get a replacement.