In February, I (Tona) took on a new role in the district. I was invited to be part of the Western District children’s ministry planning team. I really had no idea what that would mean, cialis but it turns out taking on that role would change the course of our entire year and introduce me to some of the most amazing people in the country.
I flew to the city of Calí to meet with the team. We spent an entire day vision casting and practically planning how we could reach more children throughout western Colombia, how we could train pastors and children’s workers and how we could motivate churches to invest in kids. We worked non-stop for hours on end and planned all of 2013.
I came back from Calí the next morning just in time to gather my things and get to a teacher workshop. We had a great time training our current team and adding new teachers. Our children’s church has been growing and we were desperate to train new workers!
Speaking of our children’s church, our kids are amazing. Check out this video of one of our little ones singing her heart out to God.
We also serve on the youth leaders’ team at our local church. There isn’t a youth pastor, so as a team we have tried to keep things moving. It’s been a difficult situation because there is a big lack in organization and consistency among the leadership, mostly because everyone is swamped in other ministry and youth ends up being the last thing to get organized, which means it was often getting cancelled. In February, one of our youth services was run by Alex and Maggie, who talked about their experiences in youth in all the different places they’ve been. It was a great motivator for the youth to create their identity as a place for their friends and take action to organize themselves.
This is just a glimpse of how busy some of our days were in February, although you can also see here we try our best to take Mondays off!
Maggie kicked off another season of soccer. This year Alex has aged out of the school.
In February I was also invited to be part of the national TAMI team. TAMI stands for Children’s Adventures in Missions Time (translated, obviously). I met with the team in the city of Ibague for a weekend to plan training workshops for churches to learn how to teach children about missions. This is a great time to be working with children’s ministry in Colombia!
We finished February with a big birthday party for our children’s church kids – a day of music, games, food and fun!
