Children's Ministry Missions Discovery ProgrammeIntroduction
The Lord commissioned the leaders of the ministry to bring children on mission trips in Dec 2001. After studying the various possible destinations and some preparation, the ministry finally took the first batch of children up on a mission trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
KKMC, together with Methodist Missions Society (MMS), planted a church, Santi Methodist Church (SMC), in Santi village in Nov 1998. At that time, Santi village was inhabited by 15 Red Lahu households (about 60 people) and none of the villagers were believers. Most had not even heard of Christ. Today, the village has grown to 20 households and all except 4 households have accepted Christ. SMC was dedicated in Jan 2002 and today, it is a young and vibrant church with outreach efforts to their community and to MaeYa Min village (a cluster of 8 Red Lahu villages with the main village having more than 70 Red Lahu households). MaeYa Min is 70 km away from Santi, of which 17 km is on dirt track accessible only by 4-wheel drive vehicles.
The Children's Ministry conducts two different kinds of mission trips to Chiang Mai, Thailand each year. Once in April period (which coincides with the Thailand school holidays) whereby teachers from the Children's Ministry will go there to conduct a Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the Lahu children. We do this in partnership with SMC. What we do during this trip is a lot of bible teaching through skits, puppetry, object lessons, art & craft, worship and games. At night, we will also have night programmes to reach out to the villagers who have been out in the fields during the day. At night is usually a programme of worship, song & dance, testimonies sharing, videos and skits. Pastor Amnard, who is based in the village, may also do some teaching.
The other trip is in Nov which is mainly for our primary 6 children, their teachers and other adults. We always ensure that we have a min. ratio of 1 adult to 3 children for the trip. During this trip, we will also have a doctor with us. The doctor is there to attend to the team during the trip and also to provide medical ministry to the villagers. During this trip, because it is during the Thai school term, we go there to teach the Lahu children English (conversational and vocabulary) through activities, skits, songs and games. In the night, we will again have programme to reach out to the entire village. The children will usually put up items such as tambourine dance, music played on recorders, skits, mimes, sharing of testimonies, singing of songs in English, Thai and Lahu.