Posted: 12/19/03
Canton children make a market for missions lesson
By Orville Scott
Texas Baptist Communications
CANTON–Fifth-grader Preston Hutcherson of First Baptist Church in Canton read about an idea for a prayerwalk in conjunction with the Lottie Moon Offering for international missions.
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| Members of the fourth-grade Sunday School class shown with teacher Jan Longenecker are Brittany Arnold, Caroline Giles, Kelsey Koym and Dylan Cleere. |
“We could do that at our church,” he told his parents. “It would be so cool.”
Hutcherson's parents, Perry and Lisa Hutcherson, who teach fifth graders in Sunday School, shared the idea with other Sunday School teachers for children in grades one through five. They agreed it was worth a try.
Teachers and students created representative mission fields with pictures and replicas in the classrooms and then invited the entire congregation to walk through and pray as they viewed mission challenges in other countries.
“It made a wonderful impression on both adults and children,” said Nan Skidmore, director of the children's classes.
“I think it will help our church reach its Lottie Moon Offering goal of $20,000,” she added. “We decided to leave the prayer-walk scenes up throughout December.”
In the fourth-grade class, five girls dressed in African garb and volunteered to stay in a thatched roof building created to portray life in Africa while adult classes participated in the prayer walk.
One of the five was Caroline Giles, whose grandparents, James and Mary Nell Giles, served 34 years as missionaries to Colombia with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.
Giles said the prayerwalk and her missions experience during the summer “made me want to take Jesus' love and salvation to the people who don't know him.”
Last summer, Giles and her family, along with the Hutchersons and other volunteers from the Canton church, served with a church in Latvia, helping lead more than 50 orphans to faith in Christ at an encampment.
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