We meet again in this current issue of our Mail from MED to let you know how we have used the

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1 Be very careful, then, how you live not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity (Ephesians 5:15 16) mail from MED spring summer 2014 Dear Prayer Partner, We meet again in this current issue of our Mail from MED to let you know how we have used the time that God has given to us, and how we will use it in the coming few months. Each opportunity to share the Good News with a child and to help teachers to be more effective in their work among Polish children is a great joy to us. We are often greatly encouraged and blessed ourselves by those to whom we minister. This was the case during the Easter Recollection meetings for children and teenagers that we conducted in five nearby villages. We shared with them the important news of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Their sincere and open hearts were evidence of God s work in their lives. Because the needs are so many in our country and we MED workers are not able to meet all of them we prepare others for the ministry of reaching boys and girls. We are glad that God still touches the hearts of adults to share the Gospel with children and uses us to equip them for this ministry. The people that we train often become precious helpers as they serve as volunteers in our Summer camps. This year we plan to have 6 camps for children and teenagers. Five of them will take place here in the South in Wisła and the sixth camp will be held in the North in a new location 15 km from the Baltic Sea. We share more about the needs for the camps later in this Mail from MED. The MED Association has a good Board of Directors. We expected some changes as the term of our Board was ending, but we were glad to learn that the former board members will continue to serve in the Board for another term and support us in the ministry. We are thankful to you, our Prayer Partners, for remembering us in your prayers. Please continue to pray for us, especially as we are now very busy preparing the Summer activities. Your support is very precious to us, without which we would not be able to continue as we do. We invite you continue reading Mail from MED. Until we meet in the fall, Elżbieta Płosa The Curriculum for Teaching Preschoolers, Volume 2 Work on re-publishing our curriculum No One is too Small to Know the Bible, Volume 2 has ended and the new edition not only has a new attractive design, but it has been corrected and revised. Worksheets for the children and visual aids have been added to the book on the CD. We hope that this long-awaited curriculum for preschool teachers will prove to be helpful and useful. Danuta Pustówka

2 The Winter Edition of the MED Summer Bible School An additional 10 people have completed the MED Summer Bible School teacher training program. The students came to Ustroń to prepare for teaching children the Word of God, completed the course on February 16, and received their diplomas. I can say that the students love God and are aware of how important it is to be well prepared for this ministry. They were eager to become responsible teachers and were punctual, even though some of them had to get up at 4 o clock in the morning to attend! At the end of the course each of them presented a Bible lesson and a Bible verse for their final assignment. It was a great joy and encouragement to see and hear what they prepared. Here is what they said about their experience: Now I know what to say when I share the Good News about Jesus; I set in order my knowledge about children s meetings; I gained new ideas for visual aids; I grew spiritually and was encouraged to memorize Bible verses; I learned to prepare a Bible lesson on my own; I understood how important is the knowledge we need to have in order to teach another person; I saw my mistakes It was a pleasure to work with this group. Let s thank God for each of them and commit them to God in our prayers, that God will put each of them in a place to direct many boys and girls to Him. Lidia Króliczek Just the Right Moment For a long time my desire has been to share the wonderful news about salvation that affects us not only in this life, but for eternity. However I had problems with this because I either said too much or too little, or I didn t say everything. The MED Summer Bible School course, particularly the topic about how to share the Gospel using the Wordless Book was very helpful to me. Now I know what to say, and I couldn t wait to practice it as soon as possible. My son invited his school friend for a birthday celebration in our home. I prayed that God would help me to tell this boy the Gospel. The boys played, then they ate dinner, and when they finally sat down to rest I felt that it was the right moment to use my Wordless Book. I did this, and when I finished the doorbell rang it was the boy s mother to pick him up. God has an incredible sense of timing and He needs people who know what to say at the right time. He will then take care of the rest. Elżbieta Fryda 2 It is Worth of Sowing! Ithank MED very very much for organizing the Bible Club for little children in my area. Some people may think that working with preschoolers is simply playing with them, but they learn so much through playing. I have a five year old grandson and one day I decided to check what he remembered after he came back from the Bible Club meeting. My Ruben remembered that when the Lord Jesus was tempted, He answered Satan with God s Word. He also knew that children are also tempted to do bad things and that they can overcome temptation by asking the Lord Jesus for help and by remembering words from the Bible. Ruben brought home a piece

3 of paper with the verse The Word of God is active (Hebrews 4:12) that he had memorized, and knew it when I asked him the next day! The story continues. When our friend s daughter committed suicide, we tried to support them in every possible way. One day to comfort them I quoted the same verse, that the Word of God is active. The active Word sowed during the Bible Club brought home by a little boy became a blessing to this suffering family. I thank God for all the MED workers who continue to sow the seeds of God s Word in the soil of little hearts so that it will surely produce fruit, even in places where it seems it won t produce much. May God bless you! Grandma Ewa Training Sessions in the MED Office On the last Saturday in February the first training session took place in our office. The title of the training was How to Prepare the Bible Meeting for Preschoolers. Because so many people applied, we repeated this session twice since then! The participants attentively listened to what should be included in meetings for preschool kids, what to do during the Bible lesson for them, and what visual aids can be used. I am glad that interest in working with the little ones is so big. I pray that the fact that little children are not too little to teach them from the Word of God will be acknowledged by more Christians. The other training session involving Sketch boarding took place on March 29, again in the MED office in Ustroń. These sessions proved to be interesting and we had two groups that day. Those who participated learned basic sketch boarding techniques to use with Bible stories. Monthly training sessions in the office seem to be a good idea, and I am grateful to God for them. Lidia Króliczek MED Summer Bible School in Łódź In March MED began teacher training courses in Łódź (central Poland). Twelve people from various cities Dęblin, Łódź, Warsaw, Zduńska Wola and different churches participated. Most of them are religious education tea chers or Sunday school teachers who desire to develop and improve their ministry to children. Thanks to the training they will be able to better use our teaching materials. Some of them confessed that because they didn t know what to do with the main truth or applications, they just skipped it in their Bible lessons. One of the teachers shared a testimony with us that we think is worth quoting here: I want to share what I experienced preparing my assignment for the Bible lesson. After our first session I started to work on a text from John s Gospel about Mary anointing Jesus in Bethany. I read the story several times and realized that I never really thought about it. It seemed to me unclear and complicated. Trying to find the main truth and teach it to children seemed very difficult. Together with my entire family we looked through Bible commentaries and tried to find out what the author meant. Then I read my notes from the course and used the advice given in them. The text became a little bit clearer but I still felt it wasn t. Later I realized that I didn t do step one from my notes Pray for God s leading. I then prayed short and simply: God, please help me to understand this story and let me find the right truth in it. Amen. 3

4 The answer I received left me breathless. I felt God s presence so intensive that tears came to my eyes. I then understood that the main truth for my lesson was: God s presence is the greatest treasure. I know that I was given it from God and no one never can take it from me. I have already taught many Bible lessons in my life, but this experience made me think. It encouraged me not to choose the easiest way but to look for God s leading in preparing to teach the children. (Magda) The training course ended on May 10, but the ministry of its graduates with new information, experiences and ideas will begin. Let s pray for eagerness and enthusiasm in their work with children. Danuta Pustówka Workshop of Good Fun in Gdańsk On March 15 twenty participants of the first Good Fun workshop had an incredible time of games and activities. The purpose of the workshop was to teach about good, practical, and interesting games that can be used with Bible activities for children and young people at Christian camps and other re creational activities. The participants learned rules for the games and practiced movements associated with the games. They also learned how to adjust the games for various age groups and ability levels. Here are comments from some of the participants: We were provided with a long list of games to use at camps and other children s meetings. It was also a good occasion to make new friends and to renew friendships with children s workers from other Christian fellowships in my city. The 3 hour duration of the workshop worked well, and I hope there will be more because they are good for children s workers. We wait for another workshop like this! (Joanna) I participated for the first time in such a workshop and I admit that I had fun! I knew some of the games but most of them I saw for the first time. I think such knowledge will be useful to me as I work with children because it is good to have something fresh for them. (Karolina) Thanks for good workshop. I have already tested some of the new games and they were well-received by the kids! (Iwona) On April 26 the workshop was repeated in Gdańsk and on June 28 it will be repeated in Ustroń. In June I plan to have another workshop in Gdańsk with games that can be played in the open air. Bartek Nowaczyk-Wyszkowski Meetings of Young Explorers in Gdańsk Since November of last year, the children who participated in our MED camp in the north or who live close to Gdansk are invited to meetings where we preach the Good News and teach Bible truths by which these young people can live. We teach the Bible lessons using the MED program entitled: Honorable and Casual. We also play games, do arts and crafts, sing, and have quizzes and sometimes a short film. This year we plan to end our meetings with a family outdoor party just before the Children s Day. We play outdoor games that apply to the Bible lessons. Some volunteers will help me and the preparation have already begun. I am thankful to God for the volunteers, for the children who came, and for the young open hearts to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Bartek Nowaczyk-Wyszkowski 4

5 To Glorify God with Children For the first time this year we were asked by one of the local churches to lead Easter Recollection meetings for children. At the beginning of April we met with over 100 children in Bąków, Drogomyśl and Pruchna. During three very intensive days as held three meetings each day for two separate age groups, we received many blessings when we saw how wonderfully these children praised God in their singing, how attentively they listened to the Bible lessons, and how eagerly they memorized the Bible verse II Corinthians 5:17. They were a great encouragement to us. Many of them responded positively to the invitation to trust in the Lord Jesus. Some of them want to enroll into our Bible Correspondence Courses. A week later other opportunities through Easter Recollection meetings were in Górki and Brenna. We were in these villages for the third year in a row. In addition to school age children we also had a good group of teenagers about 90 kids all together. We are grateful to God for these opportunities to share the Gospel with the kids in our area. Elżbieta Płosa, Danuta Pustówka Camps Are Just Around the Corner And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (Matthew 18:5). We welcome children in God s name and as this year we offer six Summer camps for children and teenagers. In Wisła Jawornik we will have two Camps of Young Explorers, then a Special Camp for Young Explorers designed for children with special needs, and in Wicko in the north we will have another Camp of Young Explorers. We want to present God s Word to children and teach them the important truths of the Bible based on the life of king David. We are convinced that the MED camps are a good form of Summer rest combined with getting to know the Lord Jesus through the Bible lessons, Bible verses memorization, singing and prayer, and games and quizzes. In addition the children learn in small groups how to study the Bible, how to cooperate with others, and how to compete in a good way. The camp is a good occasion to create good ha bits such as tidying up rooms, obeying counselors, and punctuality. These goals can only be accomplished with God s help. In Him is our hope and we pray that He will lead us and give His wisdom that we need to prepare the program, to choose the right counselors, to make the many decisions in organizing the camp, and then to lead the camp. Let s thank God for: The children who applied for the camps; The volunteers who agreed to help us before and during the camps; The camp program; The prayer partners and sponsors 5

6 Let s pray for: God s wisdom during the preparation for the camps; Enough volunteers we still need more; God s work in the hearts of children and adults during the camps; God s protection, strength and good health for the campers and all those who will be involved in the camps; Financial provision some children can be at camps only because we find donors especially at the camp in the north and at the camp for special needs Elżbieta Płosa Camps for Teenagers This year we again plan two camps for teenagers. The first camp Am-En Camp (July 2-12) is already full. However we lack the counselors. The camp will be held in Wisła Jawornik. We need many prayers for the preparation, a good program, a safe trip for the group of native speakers from Evansville (Indiana) and for God s protection and His work in the campers so that they will grow not only in their knowledge of English, but most of all that they will hear the Gospel and respond to it. The Climbing Camp will start on July 16 th and end on July 26 th. As usual we will be climbing at Kobyla rock in Wisła. We also need faithful prayers for this camp, especially for safety, for the counselors that we still lack, for the safe arrival of the climbing instructors, and most of all for good fruit in the lives of teenagers. Sometimes we get s like this: Hello. Is there the possibility for me to come for the climbing camp again even if I am already 17? I have gone to your camps since I was small and I would like to experience again this wonderful time. I have already been at 7 MED camps and in my opinion you have the best camps in Poland. Greetings, Andrzej. How can we say no when the request is so encouraging and motives us to continue the ministry? Teaching Materials 6 Danuta Pustówka Let the Animals Speak, Treasure Island, and The Great Olympics are only some of the MED teaching materials that we publish to help children s workers. In addition to our curriculums for year-long teaching there are also Bible lesson series containing 5 to 11 lessons that can be taught at Bible Clubs or Bible Camps. An interesting offer are missionary stories with illustrations and vivid story lines that can be told at various children s meetings. We want to develop this area of our MED ministry and we constantly work on new publications that will enrich our ministry. We plan to publish another series of Bible lessons that include Esther, Daniel and king David. Our workers prepare not only the Bible lesson texts, but also additional materials such as worksheets, songs, and ideas for crafts. Every series of lessons is tested at our Summer camps before it is published. Our publishing possibilities are limi ted because it takes a lot of time to prepare a series for printing and some workers are involved in other projects during the year, such as teacher training, workshops, camps, children s meetings, etc. We would appreciate your prayers that new materials will be published more frequently, that God will call new people to the publishing ministry, that He will help us to use the time wisely, and provide the needed finances to publish new teaching materials. At the same time we are very thankful for each act of prayer, financial, and practical support. Bartek Nowaczyk-Wyszkowski

7 Knowing God Through Correspondence Courses In our previous Mail from MED we tried to encourage people to order material from Bible Correspondence Courses. Some were interested and ordered material either to study it themselves or to use it in their children s work. We also give out many copies during the teacher training sessions and other meetings with teachers or children. Recently some children enrolled after the Easter meetings that we led. Here are some testimonies from those who participated or distributed the lessons: The most important thing I learned from the second Mailbox Course is that we need to watch all the time because we don t know when the Lord will come back. I also learned that Jesus Christ is ALL I need, and that I can turn to Him and He will never let me down. I would like to share a little story with you. I was to write an assignment on the second coming of the Lord Jesus. I had no idea how to do it. I have been ill and absent in the church when there was a lecture about this. I had the last four days to complete the assignment. I opened the file with your correspondence courses materials and sat down at the computer. I prayed and asked God to help me. After I finished I opened the eighth lesson of the course that talked about the Second Coming of Christ! It was an incredible feeling and I knew that with God s help I could do it! (Monika) A few years ago the Christian Association PHILEO that works in prisons found out that the MED Correspondence Bible courses work well with prisoners. From time to time Phileo workers conducted Mailbox Club correspondence courses with some prisoners. In the last year the number of interested prisoners grew because we gave out the book with testimonies of former prisoners, and as a result more prisoners from all over the country started writing to our Association. We started sending them the correspondence course materials. Some of them have already completed the first course, received their Diploma, and started the second course. They recommend the material to others including their family members. In the electronic era one might think that correspondence materials on paper are old fashioned, but they are still an attractive tool! We are glad that the door is open for sharing the Gospel in this way! (Ina) We still encourage Christians to order the Mailbox Club correspondence course lessons and use them throughout Poland. Elżbieta Płosa Invitation to the MED Summer Bible School At the end of the Summer we plan to have another teacher training course for Sunday school and religious education teachers. The teacher training sessions will take place for three weekends in the MED office in Ustroń on July 26 27, August 9 10 and August We are not able to list all of the summer activities in which MED Our Summer Plans workers and volunteers will be involved in the coming months, but we would like to give you some dates that have already been set and ask you to pray. We greatly value your every prayer for us and the children during the summer camps and other events. June 30 July 4 Holiday Bible Club in Rawa Mazowiecka July 2 12 Am-En Camp in Wisła Jawornik July 6 12 Camp I of Young Explorers in Wisła Jawornik July Camp II of Young Explorers in Wisła Jawornik July Climbing Camp in Wisła July Special Needs Camp of Young Explorers in Wisła Jawornik July Holiday Bible Club in Zelów July MED Summer Bible School in Ustroń August 2 9 Camp of Young Explorers in Wicko August 9 10 MED Summer Bible School in Ustroń August MED Summer Bible School in Ustroń 7

8 The work of our MED Association is possible thanks to the financial support of friends like you! We need funds for the various projects in which we are engaged during the year, such as: Teacher Training Courses that we offer to children s workers. Bible Camps for children and teenagers. We need additional finances to subsidize the stay of the children from poor and dysfunctional families, as well as for those from orphanages. Conferences for children s workers. The MED Office renting the office and storage space, telephone service, book keeping, maintaining the computers and copy machine, etc. The salary of our workers, without whom the work of the Association wouldn t be possible. If you would like to support our ministry you are welcome to send your gifts to our general fund or to designate it to a specific need listed above. For a gift towards a worker s salary, you can record that worker s initials with the gift. You can send a one time gift or support MED on a regular basis. Even the smallest gift is precious to us! Thank you. The work of MED is made possible by the financial support of friends like you. Christian Association MED, Ustroń, POLAND Banc account numer: SWIFT: BPKO PL PW med.@med.org.pl Office: ul. Partyzantów 1, P.O. Box 33, Ustroń, phone: