When VBS (HBC) time comes around - you know one thing is for sure: you are going to get dirty and tired! This week was no exception, and like usual it was worth it. We started the week with several concerns: the roof was not yet on the building, the weather was not great and we were not sure how the ongoing work on the site would distract from the time with the kids. However, the week went better than any of us expected. we had around 65 kids on day 1, which was not bad considering the weather. But this number grew and grew throughout the week to around 100 by Friday. This is pretty amazing considering nearly ALL the kids walk to VBS and many of them are from unchurched homes. On Friday night we had our closing program and again we were unsure of how things would work out. We set out 160 chairs to be on the "safe" side thinking that around 120 should be more than enough. Well, 5 minutes into the program it was standing room only! our count shows 215 people that night and 166 of them were new to TPF that means 77% of the people who showed up were not our "church" folks!
These people all heard the gospel clearly presented by Pastor Selvan and on Sunday we had new faces in our church service also at the new building. Now the real work starts - the need is there in the community, we knew that. The community is responsive to the ministry of the church - we now know that. Now we have to really focus on seeing folks be discipled and mobilized for ministry and how we do that will be key. Please pray for our leadership team and we wrestle with this issue in our staff meetings in the days to come. Praise the Lord for a great, tiring, dirty week of VBS!
