Breaking Down the Enemy’s Walls
In May, a group of students from Lee University came to visit us and minister to the children of Agua Viva. Made up of music and education majors, this group was full of creativity and energetic ideas. This spark of enthusiasm was a great boost to our Kids Club ministry.
Kids Club began in October of 2012 and was received with great curiosity by the community. By December, we had 90 children enrolled and had regular attendance of 65 children. However, early this year, we began to experience some resistance in the community as some parents began to prohibit their kids from attending for fear that we would “contaminate” them. This is typical of the struggle in the great divide between Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity in Latin America, but it was devastating for us to experience.
Since we had many education majors visiting us, we thought it would be a great experience to visit the local school. We visited the primitive, 2-room school house that serves grades 1 through 6 with only two staff members. The Lee students held a music program, teaching the children to play with wooden flutes and drums and also teaching them to sing a song that the group had written especially for this trip. We had no idea that this simple act of sharing with the community would be the spark to begin breaking down the barriers that the enemy constructed.
When the next day for Kids Club arrived, we were surprised to see 5 children who hadn’t attended in months. The next week, another 7 children returned. We are now near the attendance levels that we saw in December and it is all because the love that these students shared with our community was just what was needed to break through.