Follow the link to get your copy.
(Photo courtesy of VBB)
International (MNN) — Do you have a heart for missions and want to get your family involved? How about your children, or even your grandchildren?
Vision Beyond Borders has released a 15-day prayer guide that can help you and your family minister to the lost, hurting, and needy around the world. Dyann Romeijn of VBB says, “The purpose of the prayer guide is to call the church in America to prayer for the people overseas. Our belief is that things change through prayer, and that this is a situation that needs to be prayed for. But this prayer guide is a little different than others that we’ve produced in that it’s aimed at encouraging children to be praying for children overseas.”
The prayer guide features illustrations by children along with their stories, testimonies, and important facts that help put things into perspective for other children. These children are mostly from Burma, India, and Nepal.
Romeijn says, “We tend to be raising, in many ways, an entitlement generation that thinks that everything is like it is here in America–and it’s not true. And so I think it helps raise awareness, helps kids develop a sense of gratitude in them for all that we’ve been given, but also a sense of responsibility.”
This responsibility is the call from God for Christians to take care of the less fortunate. In many cases in Nepal, the less fortunate are children sleeping in great clumps on the street because they have no home or shelter.
The stories not only provide perspective for the children that are better off, but they highlight ways to pray and encourage. One girl in Burma was sent to a Christian Children’s home because her parents couldn’t take care of her anymore. They didn’t know Jesus, but they wanted her to get a good education and to be taken care of. She now lives with 16 other boys and girls, has a safe place to rest her head at night, and she hears about Jesus every day.
Of the homes, Romeijn says, “They’re actually evangelistic. It is about protecting these kids and it’s about providing a safe covering and providing school because schooling is only mandatory to age nine.” Much of the workforce is poor in Burma because the people are so uneducated, and so the homes are working against that trend. “But more than that, it’s to create knowledge of Jesus in a country where only 4% are Christian,” she says.
The homes are raising up a generation of evangelists that will be able to go back to their villages to share the Gospel and start churches. Children praying for children is one way we can raise up a generation of world-conscious believers.
Along with guiding prayer, the guide helps parents and their children know what practical action they can take to help these children out. This includes the child writing a letter, drawing a picture, or sending hygiene and school supplies, clothing, and shoes.
“A lot of the children that we see come from the lowest half, so they’re used to people treating them terribly. They’re used to people not caring about their needs. So for somebody in America to show them love is so meaningful to them.”
If you’re interested in getting a prayer guide, or you think your church should go through it together, click the link here to find out how to request it.
We would like to publish prayer points in our Jericho Walls Prayer Guide regarding these children. Would it be possible to send us a booklet “A Children’s Prayer Guide” to South Africa? We receive your Mission Network News every day, and we use many of that information in our booklet for prayer pointers. My address is: Annarie Carstens, 2 Watsonia Road, Stellenberg, Bellville 7530, Western Cape, South Africa
May 3, 2014
Do you have any more of these prayer guides still available? I teach children’s church and have been doing a missionary lesson with them each time. I have a few books I use that help, but this prayer guide would be excellent.
Thank you!