A Changed Man - Paul's Encounter with the Light

What could be more satisfying that last week, well, only this week no doubt. The satisfaction that I feel in my spirit after today's children's ministry almost passes words. We focused on Saul today and re-enacted the story of his encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus. Some things we covered were whenever you ask who are you Lord, you must also ask what do you want me to do? We brought out that Saul (Paul) had a big change in his life. He acted differently and he talked differently. Likewise something should have occurred in our lives when we met Jesus. We ended today with telling the children something that Paul said, in effect that he kept a clear conscience before the Lord. We taught them that God talks to you on the inside. Fun, fun teaching to little ones. If you really think you know a subject, then try teaching it to children and you will see what how much you really know. We had a altar call, 6 children came forward and the end of the prayer, the Spirit was powerful as you could literally know that lives were being saved. Now the A-kids: We taught on Proverbs 20:5 drawing up wisdom by praying in the Holy Spirit. We had three that have been AWOL for a while, well they fell right back in, in the end we laid hands on them and they received as easy as any of the other kids. Then, this blessed me so much we all joined hands and lifted our voices as we prayed in other tongues. It gave me such a charge to see our labor beginning to pay off. Well, Praise God, if you help send us here or pray for us or both, you have a good fruit today. God Bless all his children. We appreciate our partners so much. Salamat Po! (Thank you in tagalog) The last pic is us guys praying together in the Spirit. More Pics here!

World Changing Power - Words!

What a satisfying day! Plus this is one of my favorite things to preach because it has helped me tremendously. That is the Power of your words. We started with a skit of 'Sad Mouth Sally". She began to tell all her troubles. Actually calling for trouble, and he came. Our devil character came and placed 'words' on Sally. The words were fear, sickness, poverty and rebellion. Then the 'devil' tied up Sally and she didn't even know it till it was too late. Following this skit we had the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. We then proceeded to preach on the power of words. Overall we had a good response. At the end we had three use their power filled words to call on Jesus. Now that was fun to see the family expand. The A-kids was a blessing today. We just started by praying in the Spirit together. That is awesome. We had a couple of kids that were not filled, so we prayed for them to be filled. It is so good to pray in the Holy Ghost with these kids. It is a closeness that I haven't experienced so far. After that Angelique, Verna's sister, ministered for a short while on prayer. Thanks again to all who bless us so that we can be a blessing! More Pics here! - Mark & Verna

Wait No More - Salvation is Here!

While I was meditating on what to preach to the kids from our story today it came to me that this was a long awaited day for the Father. After all it was His plan that Jesus die in order to secure a family. It is unfortunate that man sinned and became lost, but I am so glad that's not the end of the story. Many of the children are familiar with the death of Jesus, but do not know much more than that. Well, today we took them further. We reenacted some of the story of His death and resurrection. It was moving. We are believers that it is so much better to bring the stories to life than only using words. It is more fun too! We played some cool sound effects from the keyboard that added another dimension to the show. Alexis played Jesus and did a convincing job. We had our new centurion costumes and our new angel costume today. After the 'show' we preached a simple gospel message and centered on three points: 1) Family, 2) Substitution and 3) All for Love . At the end we prayed a mass prayer. It was a good day for salvation. The Lord worked with us to secure the eternal destinies of those present today. It was cool!

In the A-Kids we preached from IJohn 5:14-15 and focused on two points, 1) Getting God to hear us and then 2) Praying the will of God. If we do #2 then we get #1 which means God will grant our desire. It was a lot of fun. I ask them questions while we are teaching just to locate them. It's amazing sometimes how simple answers can become so complicated by religion. Some of our kids are moving away, and we are sad about that. We just put as much as we can into them for the time that we have them. We will miss them though.

Thanks for all who make this possible, you know who you are! Here are some more pics. With love, Mark & Verna