Hope International Tomorrow Club

Any who attended our Backyard Bible Club know that the children and parents pay nothing; we want anyone to come who would like; but, we have collected the last several years to provide a "Tomorrow Club," a Backyard Bible Club for kids in the Ukraine who could never afford to come to one like ours. $500 pays for (about) 30 children in the Ukraine to come to a Tomorrow Club for a whole year. This collecting for a Tomorrow Club is great because we who give get nothing from this, the church gets nothing from this; the ones who benefit are those we will likely never see, who will hear about the Bible because we have given. This year, I knew our Backyard Bible Club was small, and was not surprised that, by Wednesday morning, we had only raised, out of the whole $500 for a club:


A usual, I didn't want the kids to be discouraged, so I said, we'll see how much we raise and, as we did for the first year, we'll just keep raising money after Backyard Bible Club until we have enough. Hope International is just such a superb and well tested program for the kids AND for the parents. One of the sons of our senior pastor, who used to play keyboard for our praise band years ago (and still plays a mean bongo) is the president, the man who used to play lead guitar in our praise band just moved down to become director of administration, and three members of our church (including the dad of the Backyard Bible Club guitarist, Ray Cyrus Billy) serve as Regional Board Members. We know that every penny we send will get there and will be used faithfully. So, I was glad to see a big jump for Thursday morning:


What happened Friday morning, I could never have imagined. Nor could Peaches (Mrs. Pichulo). I could barely wait to tell the kids, because I don't remember this ever happening:


How amazing. These parents, these counselors, these kids. Everyone was thrilled I was thinking that maybe we'd find a way to add in just a little more to make it $500 even. Then, as people were leaving another child brought up a bag of coins they had not yet turned it. Peaches took all the money to the financial secretary of the church who counted the money with her husband. Turns out that either someone added more when we didn't see or that Backyard Club Counselors aren't the best ones to do math (though we appear to be good at addition . . . ). The total figure:

$515.30!

Wow. What a great end to a great week. This just in: next week we're inviting all who came (and won't be attending church somewhere else) to join us for church at 9:30 and then be part of the Backyard Bible Club 2008 reception after with Backyard Bible Club Snacks, pictures, and a display of the crafts (kept up from this week). We hope to have some of the kids sing two of the songs from the club and Pastor Weibley will preach the sermon on facing anxiety, from Matthew 6, one of the sections of the Bible we studied last week. Y'all come, y'hear. Yaaaahoooo. Thanks again for all who put all this work in, for all who prepared ahead of time, for all who drew the designs on the banners and painted them, all who helped set up rooms, all who gave their all so wonderfully this week and went home SO tired, who taught and played hard, Mrs. Greer (who directed the skits, and was it great!) but especially for the amazing Mrs. P. who so efficiently, week after week, worked with so many to make this such a wonder filled week. The Lord called us to this work and met us there, exceeding our hopes. Please continue to pray for all who came and that the "fruit of the Spirit" we talked about every day might be the real harvest of lives built on the spirit of Jesus working in us.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21