In New Zealand the primary schools (Years One through Six) have a Bible teacher in every week for a half hour. The school we teach at is also the school that we serve breakfast at every Monday morning for the kids. It is the poorest school in New Zealand with all kinds of untrained kids that run the streets and don't have many people to care about them. Most of our club kids are also from this school. It's been a great opportunity to work at this school as it has given us more of a presence there and it has given us a lot of opportunities to get to know the kids. I would be safe to say I know at least 80% of the kids at Pukekohe North School. We always go early before class and talk with the kids and play jump rope and sing songs! It's been one of the highlights of the ministry here in New Zealand.
For the first two years that my Mom taught I helped her and took over a couple of times when she couldn't go. But this past school year (Our school year runs from February to November here.) I was privileged to have my own class. Actually, I taught two Year One classes because of a shortage of teachers. Five-year-olds were a new challenge for me as I've spent more time teaching and working with kids 8-12 here in New Zealand. But I had a lot of fun learning and came to love these little kids so much. My sister helped me out and she's great with kids. I taught the kids Creation the first quarter and really drove home that God created us, and all we see around us. Through the next two quarters I taught from Creation on through the book of Genesis... and there really is a lot of lessons in there that can be brought right down to there level. The last quarter I started with Jesus birth and then worked through his life. The kids learned a lot and could quote a couple verses by the end of the year; along with being able to answer questions from the whole year's worth of lessons. One other blessing is that I have a great class room teacher in one of the classes that sings the songs with the kids throughout the week and keeps things fresh in there minds.
We had fun teaching them lots of songs and doing crafts with them as well. The kids enjoyed it when we would do a chalk drawings for them or bring our instruments to play for them. Actually, on those weeks we always ended up with at least 6-8 teachers in to listen to us draw or play! Praise the Lord... a lot of teachers got the gospel through that!
It is our prayer that God will take the lessons, memory verses, songs and conversations we've had there at the school and bring them to mind through out these kids lives and that they will turn to Jesus and trust Him as their Saviour... as well as the teachers!
Click below to see pictures!
