Finish Strong – Change the Ending Mission Month
Tips to help you finish the month strong. Remember your enthusiasm and passion is contagious. Kids love decorations. Have fun decorating your Awana rooms with the “Planting Seeds that Reap Eternal Rewards” theme. Teach your Awana clubbers about stewardship during council time this month. Download the “Give God Your Best” or “Our Part in Bringing [...]
Kids Can Make a Difference
After making earrings for her teacher and friend, 11 year old Rebecca’s father told her that she could open a store. But, Rebecca had an even better idea. She decided to make the jewelry and sell it to raise funds so kids around the world could hear the gospel. Rebecca made her jewelry to raise [...]
Getting Started-Change the Ending Mission Month
Tips to help you get started. Remember your enthusiasm and passion is contagious. Decide which Mission Month resources to incorporate into your Mission Month plan. Introduce Mission Month by showing the Change the Ending Video to clubbers and their parents during council time. Send a letter or email home to the parents of your clubbers [...]
Change the Ending 2012 Mission Month
God is using Awana International to plant seeds of His Word in the hearts of children around the world and here at home. Would you like to participate in the planting & harvesting process? “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you [...]
5 yr old Orphan in India Finds Love of Jesus
Meet Rachel, orphaned at age two, she is five now and the youngest to acknowledge Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior in the hostel run by Lutheran Evangelical Church, Jalpaiguri. She loves to go to school and her favorite food is potato curry. She also loves to play with water and the cat. [...]
Tough Kid in Kenya is Transformed
Millicent is from Kibera, the largest urban slum in Kenya. Like other children in Kibera, Millicent lives in a squalid, makeshift dwelling without electricity, running water, or sanitation. Any money her father makes is usually spent on alcohol. And because Millicent’s parents have difficulty paying the required fees, she rarely attends school. Millicent learned early [...]
Christmas Ornaments & Bibles to China?
Dear friend, I want to invite you and your kids to be part of our 4th annual Awana Kids Christmas Campaign. There is a matching challenge for $50,000 for our China ministry. That means every gift we receive by December 31, 2011 for reaching children and families in China will be matched dollar for dollar [...]
The Harvest in China is Plentiful
Today, Awana has a unique opportunity to share Jesus’ love and disciple thousands more children and families in China. But we need your help. I want to share with you a story we recently received from a pastor in China about a young girl named Ling-ling. He wrote… We gave a children’s Bible storybook to 7-year-old [...]
Held Captive on Trinity Island in Ecuador
Background: Trinity Island is an area where fugitives hide from the police, continue their drug trades, and base their “hit man” operations. Everyone is armed. The area is divided into two sections, the Beret’s and the Jesse’s with each having a “boss” who has full control of the area . Anything done in that area [...]
9 Years Old & Making a Difference
It all started with a gift catalog from a missions organization. Elias was intrigued by the idea that he could actually provide a goat or mosquito net to a needy family in a developing country. That’s when it struck him – even though he was only 9, he could raise money for global missions projects. [...]
Come and See the Living Goddess!
We had only been in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, for just an hour or so, when we were invited to see the living goddess. Naturally, we were intrigued. Enough that we gladly stepped through low arched entry ways into an extremely ornate open courtyard. Built in 1757, Kumari ghar is the home of the [...]
Returning Hearts at Angola Prison
Louisiana State Penitentiary, May 2010 One of the best short term mission trips one could go on, right here in the United States, is to attend Awana’s Returning Hearts Celebration (RHC) doing prison ministry. This has been a part of my life each year for quite some time now and I can’t imagine not going! [...]
Awana is Growing So Fast – I Had to See for Myself
As an Awana commander in the U.S., I was only familiar with the way we do things here. When I learned that the number of clubs in Nepal grew from 155 to 1009, I wanted to learn more. I wanted to see this for myself. I was able to travel to Nepal along with two [...]
My Heart Broke a Little Bit More
My church kicked off an initiative last month called “The Least of These”. Our focus is to reach out to each of the people mentioned in Matthew 25:35-40, “For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you [...]
Loved and Valued by God
In many countries girls are devalued, under-appreciated, and even abused and discarded. I was reminded of this during my last trip to Kenya in August 2010. I was visiting a new Awana club that had just started in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp. Two of the Awana club leaders were young girls, 17 and [...]
Awana Has Made a Difference
As a grown adult, I still have fond memories of when I participated in Awana. I always knew that when my children became the age to begin Awana, we would be the first family signed up. Now, a mother of a 12 year old girl, Reagan, and a 10 year old boy, Elias, we have [...]
A Child Will Lead Them
There is great insight in Isaiah 11. The Messianic Kingdom is portrayed here vividly: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the bear and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them.” You see the place of the child? Leading! This is [...]
Walking a Day in Their “Shoes”
As a kid do you remember complaining about having to do chores and having your parents or grandparents go into that long story about how when they were kids they had to walk five miles uphill one-way to school in the snow? While your parents or grandparents were just telling stories, the truth is that [...]
Nobody Loves a Leper
How do you describe rejection, despair and disfigurement–in one word? Leprosy. In Jesus’ day, it was the most dreaded disease imaginable. Same in our day. Leprosy, we’ve now seen firsthand, is alive and deadly in Bangladesh, the world’s most densely populated country. For anyone who missed the Sunday School stories, leprosy’s progressive symptoms include skin [...]
Created in His Own Image in Kenya
“God says: God created man in His own image, Genesis 1:27.” The teacher stood in front of about 80 children in a crowded room made of corrugated metal and had the students repeat the verse in unison. They did so obediently and attentively. It was large group at an Awana club in one of the [...]
Good Morning Chicago
Good morning, Chicago! Welcome WMBI Morning Show listeners. It’s been a fun time this morning with Jon Gauger, guest host of Friday’s Morning Show. He invited me to join him and talk about photography. Specifically, photography in a cross-cultural and ministry context. You see, we just spent ten days together traveling through South Asia reporting [...]
Abused, Sold, then Abandoned—(all by the age of 4)
Of the 19 boys in the room, Rohit was among the youngest, at just five years old. For our benefit, he bravely stood up and shared with us his story of life as the son of a prostitute. “My mother’s name is Shanti,” he began. “She wanted a daughter, not a son. But unfortunately, I [...]
A View from the Top of the World
The distressed gray slum seemed at first just another chapter in a long book on human misery. We took a short walk down muddy paths so narrow, we had to walk single file. Turning a corner, we heard the voices. Young voices. MANY voices. And all of them singing. The building containing all those voices [...]
“Can you you give me Jesus’ mobile number?”
Eight year old Chancal smiles freely. Laughs easily. Is a charming child to engage in conversation. There is nothing on her face that even hints at the agony of her few years. Nothing to suggest she could be the poster child for children at risk. Chancal lives in Nagpur, India—the geographic center of the country—at [...]
