Service in Mexico brings together multiple generations

A multi-generational team from Kola EMC ran an English program for children in Guadalajara, which included parachute games.

It has been over six months since our church sent out a team of 14 participants to Guadalajara, Mexico, to serve with Israel and Sandra Chavez Plett. What we planned to be a youth trip turned into a multi-generational service team with 12-year-olds to 50-plus-year-olds involved.

While in Guadalajara our team worked on adding tin to a structure in the community space outside of the church. We also fixed up Sunday school chairs, ran a women’s craft evening, helped sell clothing at the market and deep cleaned the thrift store located at the church.

In the late afternoon/evening our group ran a two-hour English program for children in the community. This was the main project we planned to do in Guadalajara. Running an English program from scratch involving children with all different levels of English and age groups made each of us a little nervous—especially when only one of us knew a little Spanish. But the Lord provided us with excellent translators who conveyed the message of Christ as well as our English program to the kids.

Team participants lead a time of singing.

Each day we tackled a different theme in English: food, farm animals, chores around the house and parts of our body. One of our team members took the themes and connected them to Bible stories which we told the kids as well as any parents who were watching.

We had fun singing, doing crafts, and playing bingo, hide and seek, parachute activities and memory games with the kids. On the last day, each one of our group members expressed the joy they felt working with the kids program, helping Israel and Sandra with their connections in the community, and following the call God placed on us to go.