Prayer Spaces

What a week! On Wednesday and Friday some of us from Ignite joined a lady in running “Prayer Spaces” in one of the local schools. Basically we set up different places around this chapel where the kids can interact with different forms of prayer.

In one section we had a bunch of newspaper clippings glued to large pieces of cardboard and we let the kids read the headlines and write their thoughts and prayers on the subjects beside the clippings. It was very insightful as to the innocence of children. A lot of them wrote things such as “that’s not fair!” or “those people shouldn't
 have died”. 

We had a section where they could write down what they were thankful for, and while some of the answers were really silly, some were quite heartfelt. We had them write them on pieces of cardboard and pin them up on the hanging threads, creating a really cool effect.

We had places for them to imagine what they would do if they were to make a new world; what they would keep of our world and what they would do away with. Most said they would keep "Love" and "Kindness" and "Family". And when they wrote what they would do away with a lot of the kids said "Terrorism" or "hatred". 

You'll notice one child wrote that what they would want to keep from our world is "beds". Yes, I would like to keep those, too!

We had a space to write their cares and worries down, then they’d drop them in a box to symbolize giving them to God. Then we had a place with this tall bubble machine that lit up with different colors and sent bubbles continually upwards. With this we had the children write down their prayers and stick them to the tube as a symbol of their prayers going up to Heaven.








 
And one of the most popular spaces had a shredder in it. Here they could write down something they were sorry for and then stick it in the shredder to let God get rid of it. A lot of them said they felt relieved with it, while others said it was just plain fun to shred things. I found one little boy about to put the picture he drew of his sister down the shredder! Not quite what we were going for.

In both youth clubs we had our first week back, and both went really well! I tried introducing a “Question Ball” game where we had loads of questions written on a beach ball which (supposedly) would be tossed and whichever question your thumb lands on, you answer. Well, in GYC we only got one or two people to answer questions before they got bored and started kicking the ball around and we had fun just playing with the ball in the end. In TYC we had a spontaneous dance party and we acted out a few scenes of the Lion King!

All in all it was a great week. Thank you so much for your prayers and support for this mission. I am blown away by your generosity! We are seeing God work with these kids in the prayer spaces as well as in the youth clubs. God is good!