Faith one of the staff at the base invited us to teach a bible seminar for the youth at the little church down the road. We excepted the invitation and began preparing. We would be teaching the youth the inductive bible study method using the book of Philemon. The seminar would run over a period of 3 days. After the first day we realized that this seminar was going to be a challenge. A requirement for the seminar was being able to read and write English, although the youth could do this there understanding of English was not very good. For my team this meant we would have to simplify everything and spend most of our time working one on one with the youth. But all this work was worth it the youth loved the seminar and even walked through pouring rain to attended.
On the morning of the last day of the seminar as I was having my morning devotional I felt God asking my to pray for the nation of Papua New Guinea. As I prayed God gave me three words to pray over the nation knowledge, understanding, and truth. I felt the reason for this was because the Papua New Guineans where depending to much on missionaries coming in to telling them what to believe, that they were not taking ownership of their faith. And that with so many missionaries from different denominations and backgrounds, and with everything being translated, that things could be confusing for them. What God was asking me to pray aver PNG was an understanding of who He is. When I finished praying I ran into one of my team leaders and she asked me if I would lead an intersession time for the team. I told her I would. During the intercession time I told my team about what I had been praying over PNG that morning and asked them to join my in praying into this. My team felt a lot of the same things I did, but they also felt as though we should pray purpose over the nation as well. By the end of our prayer time we all felt as that for the rest of our time in PNG we should focus a lot on the theme of purpose and challenge people to make a difference.
That night was the last night of our bible seminar with the youth, at the end of the night Faith asked the youth to give us some feed back on what they had learned from the seminar, One of the eldest girls told us with tears in her eyes how the story of forgiveness and redemption from Philemon had really challenged her. She told us how she had been struggling with forgiveness, but after hearing this story she was now encouraged and challenged to make things right in her relationships. We finished the night by breaking up into small groups and praying for the youth. when we had finished my team met together to debrief the night, during our debriefing my leader who had been praying with the girl that shared and some of her friends told us how she had, had a good discussion with the girls about what is purpose and the difference that they can make. We where so blessed and encouraged to see how God was already answering our prayers. We where also really encouraged to hear that Faith has plans of continuing to do bible studies with the youth.
On the morning of the last day of the seminar as I was having my morning devotional I felt God asking my to pray for the nation of Papua New Guinea. As I prayed God gave me three words to pray over the nation knowledge, understanding, and truth. I felt the reason for this was because the Papua New Guineans where depending to much on missionaries coming in to telling them what to believe, that they were not taking ownership of their faith. And that with so many missionaries from different denominations and backgrounds, and with everything being translated, that things could be confusing for them. What God was asking me to pray aver PNG was an understanding of who He is. When I finished praying I ran into one of my team leaders and she asked me if I would lead an intersession time for the team. I told her I would. During the intercession time I told my team about what I had been praying over PNG that morning and asked them to join my in praying into this. My team felt a lot of the same things I did, but they also felt as though we should pray purpose over the nation as well. By the end of our prayer time we all felt as that for the rest of our time in PNG we should focus a lot on the theme of purpose and challenge people to make a difference.
That night was the last night of our bible seminar with the youth, at the end of the night Faith asked the youth to give us some feed back on what they had learned from the seminar, One of the eldest girls told us with tears in her eyes how the story of forgiveness and redemption from Philemon had really challenged her. She told us how she had been struggling with forgiveness, but after hearing this story she was now encouraged and challenged to make things right in her relationships. We finished the night by breaking up into small groups and praying for the youth. when we had finished my team met together to debrief the night, during our debriefing my leader who had been praying with the girl that shared and some of her friends told us how she had, had a good discussion with the girls about what is purpose and the difference that they can make. We where so blessed and encouraged to see how God was already answering our prayers. We where also really encouraged to hear that Faith has plans of continuing to do bible studies with the youth.
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