63 Outreaches, 3 Teams, 21 Evangelists and 8 Days.

Sprinkle in 5 different vehicles, 2 generators and African timeliness, and you also have a recipe for disaster…

This is how it happened:

Operation Christmas Child invited me to train all the Children’s Pastors who were participating in this years outreaches - 65 churches.  The training was awesome!  130 showed up (2 from each church) and it ended with us laying hands and praying for over 30 of them who felt a call to full/part-time children’s ministry.

Then I had the crazy idea - why not train some of them in drama, skits, puppets and create teams so they can go to each distribution and really make the distribution of shoeboxes an extra-special event?  This would also ensure that the focus of each distribution will be more on the Gospel, less on the gifts.

We got 21 volunteers, so Heidi and I paired up with some of our “Give a Kid a Christmas” veterans to train them in 3 days.  Heidi took the Jesus Skit, Issaka and Gregoire took the “Sin Chair skit” and I took the puppets.  We also spent the 1st hour of each day to explain basic discipleship.

All of that was great…  But then we had to find a car, sound equipment, costumes, food, water, gas, etc… for each team.  Sound easy?  It’s not!  But God is good, and thanks in large part to our home church: Newspring, we are able to work it out (they sent 2 speakers, a generator, mics, and of course, a Ford F150).

Then we split all 65 outreaches among the 3 teams (Lightening, Gideon and my team, Ebenezer) based on proximity to each other.  Each team chose a rendez-vous point, then we had to confirm each outreach with each pastor.  Anyways, it’s been a circus!  But we have successfully completed 8 outreaches already.  Here’s our 1st great testimony:

At one church a lady stood up, in front of the entire crowd, after the Gospel presentation and said:

“Before we had great hate in our hearts for you, the pastor, but now, we understand, and we are letting our hatred go.”

Wow!  The community genuinely felt the love of God and for the 1st time understood the Gospel message (told in stories) and are now opening their hearts to the church.  That is EXACTLY what Operation Christmas Child is all about, and that is what Vision 2020 is all about.

More to come!