He turns our weaknesses into his opportunities...

We have been writing our second workshop for four weeks (ever since the first one). It has been a real struggle. We believed in what we were doing and we knew what we wanted to say but making sense of it in a way that was concise and clear and could be fun – well that was quite a long way out
of both our skill set and our comfort zone. The session titles we were tackling for the second workshop were Safety – the roles & responsibilities of the church & the Sunday School teacher, Managing children’s behaviour & Child
friendly church none of these automatically lend themselves to humour or are obviously fun based!
 
At the first workshop we included a note stating the date, venue & time of the second. A week before the event we emailed every Sunday School teacher we had an email address for & included a link to a google map. We sent SMS
messages to mobiles of both Sunday School teachers & Pastors reminding them and Chris created a facebook page inviting every Sunday School teacher we had links with. We arrived at Kyebando Baptist Church at 8.00 to get the
room ready and make sure we were organised for registration starting at 9.00. However, by 9.30 there were only four people there – as Dug said, the potential for an impressively high teacher:student ratio! Deb felt particularly
grumpy when she learned that one Sunday School Superintendent had told Chris that it was too short notice and the BUU should have reminded people about the workshop!
 
We decided that even if we got no more than the four we had at 9.30, we would start at 10 & would just have to run it as a seminar. However, by 10.00 we had 10 people and so decided to start as per the original plan. Within twenty minutes we had 20 and by 11 had 30.
 
Dug was first up and immediately people engaged with the subject (safety – roles & responsibilities) they became animated and lively and eagerly went into groups to respond to questions. Deb then delivered her session and was equally encouraged regarding the way people received the whole idea of positive discipline. Groups wrote rules for Sunday School classes that stated what they wanted of children’s behaviour rather than stating what they did not want. People were so engaged with what they were doing they didn’t rush for ‘snack’ when it was announced. However, snack time was good too – lots of informal discussions and sharing of situations. The snack of hard boiled eggs & bananas washed down with chi was well received. Chris did a quick game to
get us all moving again after we’d had our fill. Hunter, woman, wolf – a sort of African animated version of rock, paper, scissors!
 
The phrase ‘Grace is something we don’t deserve’ was particularly apt. We have been truly blessed by the support and partnership of a great woman called Grace. She is the wife of a local pastor and has a heart and passion for improving the way that churches provide for children. Grace has joined our team as a volunteer, she is a great asset and willingly gives up her time to share in the writing as well as the presenting of the workshops. At this one she made all the African tea (chi) as well! (Deb boiled the eggs but wasn’t felt
appropriately qualified to get the chi right!)
 
Grace got people thinking about how they could make their church more child friendly, to start to integrate the children and make them feel valued. Children are part of the church of today – if they’re the church of tomorrow then very soon we will be the church of yesterday!
 
Kyebando Baptist Church has a roof and walls, but they’re not all joined together. The orginal building is brick but the extension is wooden slats part clad with sheets of galvanised iron. There is no running water currently available and the toilets have no roof (and no toilets as understood in the UK) just ‘modesty walls’. However, all that aside, on Saturday Kyebando Baptist Church was buzzing with enthusiastic and motivated children’s workers. There was a great deal of laughter but also lots of work going on. It was a privilege to be part of that – we went home tired but feeling extremely blessed..now we just need to write the next one (30th April – watch this space…), all are welcome, UGX6000/= per
Sunday School teacher (about £1.50 - includes a snack & a certificate).