Kids Small Groups

It is hard to believe, but we are quickly approaching the DEADLINE - August 29th - to register for KSG 2010-2011. Do NOT miss out on registering your Pre-K to Grade 6 child prior to this deadline. You can fill out forms and leave payment:

1) Monday - Friday 9:00 am - 5:00 pm come by the Ministry Center offices
2) During weekend services right outside the Children's Building
3) Go online NOW to http://saddleback.com/lakeforest/children/ksg.html

All registrations received after August 29th will automatically be placed on a waitlist.

Hi Friends:

We are all getting in from a VERY long day. We are exhasuted! However, incredible to see what God has done over the course of these last three days! Thanks for your prayers and support! We love you guys! We will send in update of some of the incredible stories of what God did today. But here is a recap:

Team 1 and 2 went to a Children´s hospital to visit had some great ministry opportunities with families and children.
Team 3 visited schools all day. First they visited a private school with around 100 students where they shared about Worship! The second school they visited was a public school with around 650 sudents from ages 7 - 12. All our kids shared there testimony multiple times and were personally able to lead several kids to Christ! Awesome!
Team 2 and 3 then spent the afternoon and evening doing KSG training with Children´s leaders. We have fortunately worked with three amazing churches here in Costa Rica over the last three days. I can´t tell you how excited this team is right now about how God is moving in these Children´s ministries! I will have them capture some stories for you to read tomorrow!
Here is an update from two of the teams from yesterday (Tuesday). The computers were down last night.

Team 1 Update (Tuesday):
We went back to Sendero de Luz, pastor Giovanni´s church, and group 3 with Harmon and Lea, taught a group of adults the vision and the mission of KSG. The kids are a part of the teaching as much as us adults are, and they are doing such an amazing job. At the last minute, Sean asked me to share my testimony of how I became a Christian after having Emily, and how she is now a comissioned child. Emily then gave her testimony, without her notes, and she was a star! The audience had a ton of questions, and we were able to answer all of them. It was a really great night!!

Tomorrow our group is going back to The Abundant Life Church, and then we are headed to a private school to teach a lesson to the kids. After that, we are headed to a boys home, where many of them were at one time addicted to drugs. These are young boys, about the age of the kids we have with us. We were told to dress very modestly, long pants, closed toe shoes, very little skin showing. I am a bit nervous about how to interact with these kids, so please pray for me that God will use me and the team to share Jesus.

It has been a very long day, we are all exhausted and need to be up and ready for breakfast at 7am tomorrow.

How was your day today? I look forward to hearing from you, love you!

Kelly

Team 2 Update (Tuesday):
Today was an awesome day for Team 2. Dean, Greg, Braden, Kim, Myles, Tom, Jenna, Malia and Erica went to a school for children with special needs. There were children with Down´s Syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy as well as a variety of other physical and mental impairments who attend this state run school. We were able work with a local church to reach out and show love to these children by playing games with the them, hugging them and showing them God´s love through a kind touch and a smile. None of the children there could carry on any kind of conversation, so it required us to go out of our comfort zone to try to connect with them. It was very rewarding though, and the kids as well as the adults in our group will never forget some of the children that we met today.
The children are really hanging in there despite really long days and very little sleep. They have all gotten along so well and seem to be having so much fun with each other! The adults are hanging in there as well, although we had a pretty good bout of motion sickness on the way to our location today. Dean and Erica were hit the worst, but Greg wasn´t much better off. We are a little concerned about the long ride in the van to Jaco on Thursday, so please pray for us to feel healthy and strong, as there is much work for us to do there, and we really don´t want to be laid up with motion sickness.
Please pray for our team on Wednesday night, as we are making a presentation to the local church we are working with in Alajuela. We have put together a workshop to equip them to begin teaching their children about the 5 purposes God has for their lives. We are very excited and each of the adults have paired up with one of the children on our team to teach one of the purposes in a fun and engaging way. The kids are really learning to put their fear aside and speak publicly about their faith. Each has probably shared their testimony in front of groups ranging from 15-150 a total of 3-4 times. It is getting to be old hat for them, but in a great way. The wonderful thing is that we are seeing people, both children and adults respond to them very positively. Yesterday we had about 15 kids accept Christ after hearing Braden, Myles, Jenna and Malia´s testimonies.
Back to tomorrow (Wed) night; please pray for our hearts to be open and for us to just allow God to speak through us. The children´s ministry workers here in Costa Rica have AMAZING passion for these kids. We want to be used by God to give them hope, and to empower them to reach the next generation in a way that will impact their country for good and for God. We have been so moved by their passion! The leaders cry when they speak to us, both out of gratitude to us for being here and out of passion for reaching the children in their world. We are learning much from them!
We miss all of you back home! Please know that we are having a GREAT time and we really see God´s hand at work each day that we are here. Thanks for your prayers and support and keep up the prayers! We still have 5 days to go!

Erika


Please be praying for a safe journey for the team tomorrow as we travel to Jaco! We will be leaving the hotel at 10:30. Our ministry in the slums will begin tomorrow at 2:00 in Jaco. Pray for God to go before us!

Hi Friends,

Sorry for the delayed trip update! Here is a little piece of the last two days.

Day 2 Sunday - In the city of San Jose
On Sunday morning the team divided up into three smaller teams to go and worship with our three host churches. Overall we had an incredible experience with our brothers and sisters in Costa Rica worshipping and serving together. We were welcomed with open arms. All three teams had the chance to participate or lead the each churches children´s church. It was a great opportunity for the team to connect with not only the kids of each ministry but the leaders who lead it week in and week out.

On Sunday night Shawn was given the opportunity to preach to the adult group. While Shawn was preaching the rest of the group went down to spend time ministering along side the children´s team of Sendero De Luz to around 50 unchurhced kids from the surrounding community. There were some great moments that came out of this time. Including several kids making a decision to follow Jesus for the first time. It is hard to put it in words some of the difficult situations these kids from the community are coming in the church from. It has been an eye opening time for some of our kids to hear about some of the real realities that kids there own age are having to face on a daily basis. I have been so proud to watch them minister to there own peers!

Day 3 Monday - In the city of San Jose and surrounding communities
Today was a national holiday in Costa Rica. The whole country was pretty much shut down which gave the churches here an incredible time to do a community outreach in the community. All three groups divided up to go to the churches they were assigned to. Wow what a day we had! Each team had some incredible stories of how God worked in them and through them. Overall each team had a great time partnering in ministry with their churches by doing community outreaches to kids. One story that really stuck out from the many we heard about during our team debrief came from Cheryl Badley, Amber´s mom.

At Cheryl´s church they had received a delivery of 50 boxes from Samaritan´s Purse which is a ministry that has people fill a shoe box of different items to give as a Christmas gift to kids literally all over world. We are talking about literally millions of boxes. Cheryl´s daughter Amber walked into the room and pulled a box out of the stack of 50 boxes. They opened the box to see if these were just empty boxes or actually ones that were yet to be distributed out and no joke...that was the very box that Cheryl had purchased items for and sent out herself. Are you kidding me?? Wow! What a moment! Just a huge reminder to how God sends us those confirmations that we are here at the right time.

Tonight we had our first Children´s leader training at Sendero de Luz which was lead by Maurice and Harmon´s team. The team did an awesome job as they introduced to the leaders the basic concepts of each book in Kids Small Groups through dramas and testimonies from the kids of what they learned in that book and how it impacted their life. Very powerful time as the leaders were able to see first hand the impact and result of what focused and intentional kids discipleship looks like. Incredible! Please be praying for Barbara and Laurie´s team and Dean and Greg´s team who on Wednesday will be training the children´s leaders on how to implement Kids Small Groups at there church.

Off to bed for another full day of ministry!

God is working friends in huge ways. Your prayers are felt big time...I cannot even begin to describe. The team is full of energy (espeically our girls who have now sung probably every Justin Beiber song at the top of their lungs in the van. Jesus help us! This does not count for our very own version of Party in the USA now titled Party in San Jose that we just wrote today) and healthy! Thanks for your continued covering!
Take a look of some photos from our team photographer Maurice Ling! Thanks Maurice!

http://www.linglink.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=10663&g2_highlightId=10874

Just as for the last month the KSG blog updated supporters on the endeavors of All STARS PEACE in Rwanda, we will spend the next week updating you on All STARS PEACE in Costa Rica. Here is the team's first update: