“Where is God?” I asked a crowd of Kovol kids and, received the reply, “He’s in us!” That was the answer I was expecting! I treated it as a wrong answer as we try to push back against some ingrained cultural ideas. “Remember what the lesson said?” I asked. “God is in all places!”
So how did this come up? For the last year our team has been running a kids’ club every 2nd Saturday. The kids’ club involves about an hour and a half of outdoor games followed by us serving popcorn. Each week has been attended by 20 to100 kids. There has been much laughter and only a few minor injuries!
It has been a successful way for us to serve the Kovol kids, making use of our background in youth groups to run all kinds of games. We’re sure the kids had never before seen 3-legged races, relay races, dodge ball, chain tag and all kinds of other games. The games were also intended as a way for our own kids to play alongside the Kovol kids despite the language barrier.
Our team is currently preparing Bible teaching material to teach the Kovol community from Genesis to Revelation. This involves preparing 47 lessons and translating about 1,000 Bible verses. In all, it will probably be 600+ A5 pages of carefully translated and checked material. That takes time to prepare, possibly until July or September 2027, but it is an investment for the Kovol community long term. The material will be the only Bible commentary they have for quite a long time! When the material is ready we’ll publicly teach it multiple times a week and judging from our experiences with literacy we’ll be expecting a crowd.
All the material is not prepared, but each week I am getting a lesson drafted and checked alongside the scripture portions needed. That got us thinking. It might be a while until we’re ready to teach the community, but we do have some material. Why don’t we cut the lesson length down to a single main point and create a children’s version? With kids’ club only being once a fortnight we should be able to keep up.
After weighing it for a while we decided to go ahead and start. We didn’t do so with a big announcement. As we served out popcorn we got everyone to sit down and then we gave a quick 10 minute lesson. The lesson taught that God has communicated with man through his word. We’re going to study it and learn about God. God is all knowing, he is in all places and he is three in one.
My team mate Natalie and I will be taking turns to teach the kids. We’re praying for these simplified lessons to nonetheless plant seeds in kids’ hearts. We’re also praying that this could be an effective additional check on how well the material communicates. We haven’t received any feedback yet, but that isn’t so surprising. Kids in England also didn’t come up to me afterwards to comment on the quality of the lesson I just gave!
As I think about the kids’ club it makes me realize just how much we need to be praying. Looking at it through one lens, the question is why wouldn’t we do it? Natalie and I have youth work experience. Why wouldn’t we serve and teach the Kovol kids with the gifts we have? It’s a great example for the future church of serving, loving and using our gifts to benefit others.
On the other hand we have started a totally foreign, unreproducible activity. Games organized by adults for groups of children isn’t something we have ever seen in Kovol. No one else in Kovol has the experience to run the games we run. This isn’t an activity that I can foresee being passed on. When we’re playing games I see the adults spectating, but they are not seeking to get involved. Does this show the future church that the missionaries can do things that they can’t do and thus they should depend on the missionaries to run the work and lead the way?
I can’t possibly begin to understand the impact (if any) of what we have started, or of its unintended consequences (if any). Do even the potential adverse side effects I have thought about exaggerate my own importance? It can be easy to feel paralysed in the uncertainty of it all. Thus, I need to remember to be praying earnestly for the Lord to use our efforts to bless others. After all, we are here to bring something new, the Gospel. We have put effort into learning the Kovol culture and we do our best to do things in a more “Kovol” way, but we’re here to introduce something new.
Here’s what I am praying for. That the Kovol kids continue to think on what they have heard after the lesson ends. I am also praying that the details of how kids’ club is run are forgotten, but that the idea that kids should be taught God’s word sticks.
1 Comment
Lois S. · 22/09/2026 at 12:03 pm
Wow! I can see that there could be a lot of questions in your minds. I will pray with you for the teachings about God to stick in their minds and grow, for the idea that children should be taught to likewise stick and grow, and the details to stick only to the extent that the children you teach now will someday think: We could do for our kids what the missionaries did for us. If you cycle through some of the games multiple times, in a decade your 12 year olds will be 22 and perhaps have their own children, and perhaps soon they might think of the joy it would be to have a kids club of their own! And hopefully, by God’s grace, they will be able to lead it.