August 16th is Children’s Day in Paraguay. It’s a national holiday that is more precious that I at first knew. The short story is that during the War of the Triple Alliance in the early 1900s, children from ages 6 to 14 were deemed able-bodied enough to serve. They were killed just like anyone else. Some hundreds of thousands of children were killed during this terrible war. To pay homage to the fallen niños, Paraguay celebrates Children’s Day. Our church decided to take the celebration to four different outreaches including a new one my local church has just above our neighborhood.
I regret I didn’t take any photos, but it was amazing. There’s a severely poor neighborhood about a 10 or 15 minute walk from church that we did a VBS type activity with during winter break, and we came back on the 15th to sing songs, share the Gospel message, and give out presents to the kids. I don’t know how many showed up, but I’m sure there were close to 100 if not a bit more there.
I sang a few songs with the kids, and then after that a few of the youth from church did a really outstanding job on a skit they put together which ties the Gospel in with five different colors (yellow, black, red, white, and green). After the skit we served chocolate milk and handed out goodie bags with candy, cookies, and a sweet illustrated New Testament to the kids. It was really cool seeing the kids sit down and start reading their Bibles right away. I have a feeling they probably don’t own too many books.
I pray for the kids there. We can tell the Spirit is speaking to some of them and many of the parents. They’ve asked us to come back for more activities, and it’s cool having the kids know who you are and be happy to see you. Please pray for the neighborhood that they would continue to receive us well and that they remain open to the Love of Jesus Christ.
-j
I'm Jason, and I like to write.