2) Public School, Amazing Response
I taught the 10 commandment's gestures again to a different age group than before. I have taught very young, adults (parent age) and also elderly. This time I was invited to teach high school
kids...in a public school, during regular school time! I have taught teens before, 1 or 2 in a group of others, but not as a "pack." LOL.
There were about 15 teens - boys and girls. It was a little tense when I began as I had not spoken to this group before. I first asked
if any of them knew the 10 commandments. There were several that said they did, so I asked them specific numbers of the commandments - like, "What is commandment #3?" They could not tell me. I asked others and even asked the leader that asked me to present. Even he could not tell me any of the commandments when asked randomly, except #1.
After that first 2 or 3 minutes and seeing that even their instructor was not setting them up and he didn't know the commandments either, they were ready to learn!
Of course they learned them very quickly and we did several rounds of random commandment drills. One they really liked was when I asked 1 teen a specific commandment, then he asked a random # of someone else, then they asked, etc until everyone had a chance to challenge. They really had a good time doing this together and it was great to see their enthusiasm because I was not even asked to join in with them!
After they had them down well (about 10 minutes total time spent), I used the commandments to present the gospel. I use the
"Way of The
Master" technique and it is powerful!
A couple days later we were at a local restaurant and one of the football players that was in the class came in with his family. He was so polite and came to the table to greet me. We were with friends, but I asked him if he remembered Commandment #5. He looked at his hands, made the gesture and proceeded to recite, "Honor your Father and Mother". He said, "Ask me any of them!" The adults I was with took turn quizzing him. He passed with flying colors!
I asked if he taught anyone and he said he had taught 2 others and showed them to 3 more kids that hadn't really learned them yet.
AND - several of the teens are my "friend" on Facebook. One evening I challenged 1 of the teens as to what Commandment #8 was - then he was to tag another teen on FB and keep it going as long as they could. I was really surprised when they did it and kept it going for 8 of the commandments before they were back to their usual posts. Of course they could have looked up the commandments, or read them from the souvenir plaque I gave them as a reward...but that's OK if they did. Their mind was focused on God's Word for a few minutes and HE promises HIS Word will not return void!
Just to reiterate - this was NOT in a church! This was in a public high school! GOD IS SOOOOO GOOD!
Just had to share!
Joyfully Serving HIM,
Emmalea
--from SSTN: Update! The teens that Emmalea taught went to an invitational dodge ball tournament. An evangelist,
Tom Ferrell, spoke at the end. Out of approximately 43 attending, 12 of the
teens received Christ as their Savior! Emmalea said that if she hadn't witnessed it,
she wouldn't have believed it! God allowed her see it with her own eyes! 4 were football players from
the local high school, and 3 had been coming to ProTeens on Wednesdays at the high school.
Says Emmalea, "It was an amazing night in Trafalgar, Indiana. Satan lost a dozen and I have
10 new brothers and 2 sisters! WOoHOo - JESUS!!!!!"
May God continue to bless you, Emmalea, as
you teach and encourage the youth in Indiana! Thank you for blessing SSTN
with your creativity over the years, and for being an encourager of my
ministry!
YSIC,
Sarah Keith <><
