We have one. Do you? If not, you should! Our candy grandma gives out candy to kids after church, in bags (small ones, but even so)! After the service, candy grandma Linda sits expectantly with her notebook in hand, pen at the ready.

The team serving in Poplar Hill landed just as the electricity went out in the whole community. The team adapted along with the community until the lights came back on, Albert Martens writes, and despite the surprise at the start he says they had one of the best “camps” ever.

This summer’s VBS at ACF focused on trusting Jesus, the only True North. With the help of various animal characters, relevant Bible truths were reinforced and the 67 attending children were immersed in life-changing faith formation activities.

I grew up with Bible camp songs, VBS crafts, and youth group nights filled with laughter, learning, and late-night snacks but in Peru, children’s ministry is still emerging.

When I served in the children’s ministry in my home church as a young adult, one of our faithful volunteers was Grandpa Ed. Grandpa Ed showed up nearly every week and was what we called a “listener”—he wasn’t in a classroom or teaching a Bible lesson, but as kids worked through their memory verses in their classroom, he was available in another area to work one-on-one with kids to memorize or recite their verse. And they loved him.

♪ I was wrong. Embarrassingly so. I had been working with leaders in training at a Christian camp every summer for 20 years, and I gave the wrong answer to the most basic question of all.

♪ ALEX IS THE boy nobody wants in their class. He’s in grade two and has seemingly limitless energy and zero attention span. His comments and questions are never on topic, and everybody is convinced that he is learning nothing. He’s usually facing away from the teacher, making faces or jokes as they try to teach, and the end of the year is a relief because he is finally somebody else’s problem.

“PEOPLING IS HARD,” said main speaker Connie Jakab at the first session of Awesome KidMin Conference 2024. And, she said, “It’s gotten even harder post-COVID.” Yet Ecclesiastes 4:9–12 emphasizes the importance of community.

I remember how it felt, if little else. Wow, I must be really bad. Whenever I sin, God can’t be with me. This is the message I internalized as a result of the teaching on sin I received at an early age: “God cannot be in the presence of sin.” With an object lesson to illustrate the point if we were lucky.

One of the many gifts children give us adults is the freedom to be childlike again. There is nothing more freeing than running in a gym playing pool noodle tag. (The fact that I couldn’t keep up is neither here nor there.)

After two years of Zoom, it felt amazing to connect face-to-face with other people in Manitoba and beyond who share a passion for kids and ministry.