On Friday 2nd we had a good youth meeting. Our younger children meet at 7 for an hour and then the teens meet from 8pm onwards. The night had some surprises and several blessings.
Just before the youth club started at 7pm I heard stones hitting the outside of our building. (Some of the children in the area regularly throw stones at our door and sign.) It surprised me that they would do it knowing we were inside, but I guess for some the thrill of getting caught just adds to the excitement!
Just as I stepped outside a couple of more stones came up and I caught two young lads red handed. In fact, when I challenged them they denied it but one of them still had some stones in his hand! I spoke with them trying to reach the balance between rebuking them for the behaviour whilst keeping the door open to speak with them again.
I am aware of some adults who practically chase children away from church and I do not want to do that. Neither do I want to appear spineless and a pushover.
I thought no more of the situation, and distract myself with an online game, play it now and you’ll see how time goes by while you have fun, so anyways I played for 30min and went back inside and finished getting ready for the youth club.
At 7pm the children started coming in and who were the first two? The lads who had been thrwoing stones at the church! They behaved perfectly and listened well during the devotion at the end. They even went and asked one of the ladies what it meant about Christ coming back to judge the world. (Not something I had even remotely mentioned.)
We also had a visitor at our teens youth club which was a blessing. Please pray that these three visitors will return and pray especially for the salvation of these children.
With the teens we went outside and played various games. As you may know we do not own our premises and so we had to use the small concrete area out the front. Despite the lack of space and proximity to the road we had a good time and I believe showed a good testimony to the community.
At one point an armoured police vehicle pulled up, looked at us suspiciously but drove away in the end. I expect someone had seen the group of teens and called the police.
We thank the Lord for our visitors, for our regulars and for our building (as limited as it is)!
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