lauraovers - God of this Universe Loves Me!

The Lord poured
joy into the Children'

s barrio ministry Monday. I believe it was the best week
we have had yet. Here is a rundown of what happened, I pray to have the words
to express the delight it brought to my heart and God's as well.

We had about 25
kids come this week and a few parents came with their infants to watch the
program. We started out as always with a Nica friend, Carlos, leading
children's songs on the guitar. The songs had the kids dancing around, jumping
up and down, clapping and singing at the top of their lungs. All this
excitement was at 9:15 in the morning. The first game we played was a water
balloon toss. Water balloons are always a blast, and it seemed to me that the
kids do not see water balloons often.

Our story for
the day was the parable of the lost sheep found in Luke. We told the story then
had the kids act it out, costumes and all. The Pharisees wore oversized dress
shirts and the sheep wore white t-shirts on with socks on their hands. The
shepherd used a broom as his staff. The kids get wound up and really excited
when we bring out whatever costumes we can scrape up to work with for the
story. The kids then acted out the story as we read it. It was goofy, but still
got the story across.

After the play
we played telephone with bible verses; Deuteronomy 6:5, "Love the LORD your God
with all you hear

t and with all your soul and with all your strength," and John
15:12 "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." Again, telephone
is such a common game in the states but the children played enthusiastically,
that I do not think they had played before. It was comical to watch yet
beneficial for the kids to hear the first two commandments.

For the first
time during this ministry, I gave the message this week. Maybe not word for
word, but here is the message:

Repeat after me, "GOD OF THIS UNIVERSE LOVES ME!" (the kids screamed it) Wow,
God created the trees, the lake, flowers, animals yet He is in love with us!
Our story today was about a shepherd and his sheep. How many sheep where there?
(They scream 100) Yes, and what did
the shepherd do when one sheep was lost? (They say, He looks for him and
finds him!) Absolutely, this story is a
picture of how Jesus loves us. He personally knows us and loves us dearly. When
we are surrounded by 100 or 1000 people, Jesus stil knows each one of our
hearts specifically. He rejoices with us when we are happy, and as we learned
last week (we did the story of the Good Samaritan) Jesus is compassionate when we are in trouble. His sole purpose in
creating us is to loves us intimately. Because of this great love, let us love
God the best we can. We love Him by praising Him to the fullest of our ability,
by praying in all circumstances and by loving each other as we were commanded
to. We are going to practice these things in a minute but let us say again,
"GOD OF THIS UNIVERSE LOVES ME!" (We screamed this again and cheered)

Then as usual we
separated into two groups to pray. My friend Caleb leads the older kids in
prayer and I lead the younger group. On Monday we prayed in the two groups,
then had the younger kids circled around the older kids and repeated a prayer
over the older kids. Then in return our
younger group sat in a circle and the older group, ages 8-10 laid hands on each
person and prayed aloud for them. The faith of innocent children astounds me, I
long for childlike faith. They prayed briefly, yet sincerely and it amazed me to
see the boldness in each child to pray aloud. I feel so blessed to have been a
part of that prayer time.

Our friend
Carlos closed our program in worship songs. During this time we encouraged the
kids to sincerely praise God as He deserves. For such young kids, I am astonished
by their expression of praise during this time. Kids will jump up and down in
excitement, or close their eyes in awe, and even lift their hands in praise.
The Lord is glorified through that time always.

After the
program was over, we stayed to clean up. We ended up playing around for another
20 minutes or so. The beautiful kids long for love, hugs, attention and we find
joy in pouring love on them.

Overall our prayers for the barrio children's ministry were
thoroughly answered through a very fruitful time of ministry Monday morning.
Thank you all so much for ongoing prayers and support. It is my delight to
share with you the Lord's work in this place.

"May mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance." ~Jude 2