Announcing the CHAMPS!
This is a post I've been so excited to share. Today we had our first meeting! We were short about 6 youths due to weddings and illness but we had a great time!
Announcing: Ciyanjano Champions for Children
For this coming year’s best building project, Camp Ciyanjano won’t be needing to lay slab foundations, finish brick work, or purchase roofing sheets. This year we will be building youth leaders on the solid foundation of the Gospel. “Ciyanjano Champs” is a new youth mentoring program beginning in January and proceeding throughout 2015.
One of the difficulties of running our own evangelistic outreach camps is a lack of cabin leaders. For a variety of cultural reasons, it is difficult to recruit and have confidence in youth leaders. Here in Zambia it’s not possible to do a police background check and because of a high rate of physical and sexual abuse of children and a lack of biblical teaching in local churches, we’re wary about bringing anybody in to work with kids without getting to know them very well first.
We will be discipling and training a group of 12-15 Zambian youths with a passion and desire to lead children and other youth to Christ. We’ve almost completed the interview process and we’ll begin in January using the Navigators 2:7 materials at weekly meetings at Ciyanjano. This 2:7 study will give us a chance to know them and to make sure they have a solid foundation in the Gospel. They’ll also be taking part in our Ciyanjano Bible Club so we can observe the way they interact with children. Through this program we hope to meet our first objective: recruiting about a dozen youth that will be safe and effective cabin leaders for Camp Ciyanjano.
Local churches also lack training for youth leaders interested in evangelizing and discipling children. This year we will also host three short-term teams that will all focus on helping us train these youths, along with youths from some of ACTION Zambia’s other church partners. This will help us meet our second objective: to train, encourage, and empower our “Champs” and other youths from around Lusaka to lead their own Bible clubs and children’s programs in their churches and communities.
The cost for this “building” project will be much less than a building with plumbing and electricity. But the finished product has the potential to last much longer and have a greater reach into local churches. But it's a big messy project since it's all about people. So pray for these youth and for us and our new missionary Holl as she arrives in February to help with the program and for Juma our new national children's staff worker. Pray for unity and that the youth would be committed to the program and that we'd build something that will outlast anything we've done so far!
Announcing: Ciyanjano Champions for Children
For this coming year’s best building project, Camp Ciyanjano won’t be needing to lay slab foundations, finish brick work, or purchase roofing sheets. This year we will be building youth leaders on the solid foundation of the Gospel. “Ciyanjano Champs” is a new youth mentoring program beginning in January and proceeding throughout 2015.
One of the difficulties of running our own evangelistic outreach camps is a lack of cabin leaders. For a variety of cultural reasons, it is difficult to recruit and have confidence in youth leaders. Here in Zambia it’s not possible to do a police background check and because of a high rate of physical and sexual abuse of children and a lack of biblical teaching in local churches, we’re wary about bringing anybody in to work with kids without getting to know them very well first.
We will be discipling and training a group of 12-15 Zambian youths with a passion and desire to lead children and other youth to Christ. We’ve almost completed the interview process and we’ll begin in January using the Navigators 2:7 materials at weekly meetings at Ciyanjano. This 2:7 study will give us a chance to know them and to make sure they have a solid foundation in the Gospel. They’ll also be taking part in our Ciyanjano Bible Club so we can observe the way they interact with children. Through this program we hope to meet our first objective: recruiting about a dozen youth that will be safe and effective cabin leaders for Camp Ciyanjano.
Local churches also lack training for youth leaders interested in evangelizing and discipling children. This year we will also host three short-term teams that will all focus on helping us train these youths, along with youths from some of ACTION Zambia’s other church partners. This will help us meet our second objective: to train, encourage, and empower our “Champs” and other youths from around Lusaka to lead their own Bible clubs and children’s programs in their churches and communities.
The cost for this “building” project will be much less than a building with plumbing and electricity. But the finished product has the potential to last much longer and have a greater reach into local churches. But it's a big messy project since it's all about people. So pray for these youth and for us and our new missionary Holl as she arrives in February to help with the program and for Juma our new national children's staff worker. Pray for unity and that the youth would be committed to the program and that we'd build something that will outlast anything we've done so far!
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| Juma (middle) talking about a "team" vs a "group" |
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| Champs cheer! |
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| doing the yurt circle of trust team building exercise from Koinonia! |
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