The Fruit of the Spirit

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  Against such things there is no law."  Galatians 5:22-23.

At Reading Club we have a very special time that we call "Family Time".  During these precious minutes we learn and grow as individuals and as a group.  One of the topics we have focused on during this time is the Fruit of the Spirit. What a blessing it is to be able to tell one of the kids that you just witnessed them displaying love, kindness, or goodness, and yes, even self control.  

These two plus hours with the children at Reading Club have seen me frustrated a times, but the Spirit has shown and given me patience for these times. There have been times it would have been more convenient to miss a Tuesday, but God desires, and these children need my faithfulness.  Over the last 12 months, the one fruit I could always count on experiencing, during my drive home from Reading Club, was joy.  In the early days of Reading Club, it was joy in trusting God that he was doing a good work through our time with the kids.  As the months went by it was joy from actually seeing the fruit growing in the kids as well as in myself.  

From all the reading buddies to "whosoever",  come and grow fruit with us!

~Margaret (Reading Buddy)

What Will God Do This Year?

We started Reading Club last fall with 14 children, grades 1-5, carefully chosen from a hundred possibilities.

Many of these children live in tough circumstances. They may have gone through a crisis with their families or experience need on a daily basis. They are often surrounded by danger. Some are hearing the name Noah, Moses and Abraham for the first time.

And we have been tasked by God to make them into disciples who love to read.

I wish I had the space to walk you through the past year and detail the program that God laid out for us to follow with these precious, loud, (sometimes) rambunctious children. I wish everyone who reads this could have been on that journey with us. In short, we have seen children transformed by the healing power of God through one-on-one mentoring with an adult who can be trusted to love and nurture them.

The year began with some chaos, and ended with these children creating three different book clubs in which to participate. They voted on the books, formed the groups, read their selections and discussed them with each other! This would have seemed impossible at the beginning, but nothing is impossible with God!

More precious, however, is hearing them speak with growing spiritual and biblical literacy. This is particularly evident in the growing maturity of their questions about God and the Christian life. They are becoming disciples who love to read.

I can't wait to see what God does this year!

~Becky (Reading Buddy)