Light in the Darkest Places

One of our strongest areas of instruction here at the BI is one of the most precious and vital forms of witnessing: child evangelism. Our method of pursuing and teaching this happens to be through the well-known, efficient organization, CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) which was established in 1937 and has been producing well-written curriculum and visual aids for many years. Lila happens to be the director of APEN (the Spanish translation of CEF) in all of Baja-California, Mexico. Needless to say, she keeps pretty busy and is fortunately blessed with a strong team all throughout Mexico that coordinates in spreading the news to these precious little ones.

An activity strongly encouraged in CEF/APEN is to form Good News Clubs for the kids to come have fun and learn about the love of Jesus. Our students here at the BI have formed several of these clubs throughout Tecate. They gather the kids by going door-to-door and personally inviting them and they all meet together at a certain time in a certain place: parks, dumps, homes, etc.

One of the clubs that was originally formed by a fellow TMI member and staff member at the BI, Marbella, was compassion-inspired. The kids of this particular club come from a slum apartment complex where the worst of the worst takes place: incest, drug dealing, drug taking, drinking, and more--the kids are pulled into this at very young ages. This complex is infamous for these terrible, treacherous things, and these kids are stuck with no way out.

Marbella started up the club once a week, and after it was established, passed it on to some of our students. It was a challenge, to say the least. You can only imagine how these broken children would have behaved. The students were sending kids home every week; in a few cases the guys would have to physically restrain the kids from injuring others; one child broke our student's glasses. But these students of ours have heart, dedication, compassion, and grace--in this way they reflect the heart of Jesus. He came to the earth to bring love, but instead he was rejected and persecuted, but he, too, had heart, dedication, compassion, and grace. Praise Him!

Back to the club story, the students came up with the notion of visiting the homes of the children individually; having no fear that God would be with them. The children who had misbehaved at the clubs answered their doors with fear that the students were coming to inform their parents of their bad attitudes and misbehavior--instead the students had just come to thank the parents for letting the kids attend. When the kids saw this, they noted the heart, dedication, compassion, and grace of our students, they felt the love, and their own hearts were changed. Since those home visits, the club has been transformed; the children our pleasant and enthusiastic about learning the Word of God. Of course, like typical children, they have to be reprimanded here and their, but it is nothing like it was before. God is amazing and we are honored to serve Him!