A team of fifteen adults from Lighthouse Church in Puyallup, Washington has spent the last five days in a village their church supports in partnership with NewLife Ethiopia. Their focus has been on the 40 kindergarten students and the eight evangelist missionaries bringing the Good News to this village and several surrounding villages.
Our two kindergarten teachers gladly welcomed in-service workshops offered by three American teachers on the team. Visual teaching aids along with practical demonstrations of teaching methods encouraged the teachers by giving them tools and hands-on teaching techniques.
The children loved the interaction with the team, too! Instruction about hygiene along with creative play, crafts and fun Bible stories filled their days.
The team also brought the children well-built shoes that will last and (amazingly) grow with them!
Pastor Paul from Lighthouse had a day-long seminar with the evangelist-missionaries. It was his joy to share with them and also to listen and learn from their wealth of experience in the field. These men live and work in hostile environments, so Paul’s encouragement from the Word was a welcomed and needed refreshment. A family at the church service on Sunday where Paul shared the Good News received God’s gift of salvation!
The kindergarten classes are freshly painted inside and out! The children and the community are delighted with the facelift.
The team, along with Pastor Worisso, painted a mural of the worship tree inside one of the classrooms and everyone got to put their handprint leaves on the tree!
The biggest deposit left behind is the tangible love expressed by the team to everyone they met in the village. One of the scriptures the team has internalized is John 13:35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples.
This amazing church and these representatives of that church clearly extended God’s love to this least-reached village tucked in an out-of-the-way spot. There is no electricity. Water is hauled for personal use from a water station. It is hot and dusty with the people eeking out a living by sustenance farming. Lighthouse Church has impacted lives in a meaningful and substantial way with community transformation as the ultimate goal. The village church, the children and the missionaries look forward to having a Lighthouse team return next year!