melt it (Judges 5:5). One of the unique aspects of growing a missionary heart is that
it can happen in any person at any age, not
just in children! In fact, two teens from our
church helped us at OMS’ CROSS Training.
During this lesson, we saw God grow
their missionary hearts as they learned
firsthand that missionary kids (MKs) face
some of the same struggles that they do.
Savannah and Kensey told us after the
session that serving with us and meeting
MKs changed the way they look at and
pray for missionaries.
Our final session was WATT we do together, the One Mission. Along with practicing and coloring their Greatest News
lightbulb witnessing tool, we also announced the grand total for the mission
project at the OMS conference. May I have
a drum roll please … the kids helped raise
more than $17,000 for project Illumin8,
which benefits Bibles for Cuba and Bridge
to Reading, our Africa literacy ministry. Our
Cuban friends joined us for our last session. We asked the kids to surround our
new friends so we could pray for them.
One boy named Daniel surprised us when
he prayed for our visitors in Spanish. He
wanted to connect with them and show
love to them in their heart language. Everyone was touched at this demonstration
of God’s love.
hand to volunteer for everything. She reminded us that we can and should worship
God without fear and with all of our hearts.
In session three, we learned that Matthew
10:27 speaks about Telling others, which
is part of our One Calling. Raising money
for mission projects helps the kids practice what they have learned. We have seen
God use kids to raise thousands of dollars
over the years, including one girl named
Hannah, whom God has used at the last
two OMS conferences to inspire us all to
give cheerfully. Hannah’s story has ignited
many other kids to get involved in raising
funds for missions.
Henry, one of those kids that Hannah
has influenced, didn’t let a broken arm
stop him from getting involved on missionary day. At the camp store, he found
a child’s vending machine, which he purchased with his own money to raise money
for the missionaries. He stocked the plastic machine with his own snacks: M&Ms,
goldfish, and pretzels. After you put in your
change, he helped you work the machine
to get your snacks, which he handed to
you and then promptly asked for them
back to restock his machine. His ingenuity
inspired all of us.
In the fourth session, we taught about our
need to have mustard seed faith (Matthew
17:20b). In this session, we introduced
OMS’ One Billion - One Opportunity Vision*
to teach about having One Vision, explaining that our Target is the world. Kids
(and adults) were encouraged to give God
their mountain (problem) and allow him to
*The vision is to give one billion people the
opportunity to hear, understand, and believe
the Good News of Jesus Christ over a 10-year
period. Go to billion.global to sign up.
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