Emma was a 5-Day Club teacher who went through the Christian Youth In Action (CYIA) training for three years. She graciously shares her first 5-Day Club experience of that summer with us. Emma wrote:
On the thirty minute ride to 5-day-club, I felt nothing but exhaustion and discouragement. The previous day’s club had been, well, not exactly ideal with kids possessing far more energy than they could contain. And now, as we began to set up for club, dark, ominous clouds enveloped the sky. A gentle drizzle progressed into a torrent of rain. Our club, full of bouncy, energized children, was uprooted from the yard and replanted in a little room in the basement. Yet these energetic kids paid attention, even with thunder rattling the windows and little to no room to move. After my Bible lesson, as I gave the invitation to trust Christ as savior from sin, Jonathan (name changed), a twelve-year-old boy, stood up and followed me to the back of the room. And that was when my mind went blank. All of the hours I had poured into studying what to do and say, every practicum I had struggled through, left me. There were a myriad of distractions. The basement had begun to flood. The host was a mere three feet away mopping up the sopping floor. My teammate was teaching missions loudly and enthusiastically just behind me. Humanly speaking, this was the day when everything went wrong. All I can distinctly remember praying was, "God, please help me!" And thanks be to God that He is gracious and does not expect us to lean on our own understanding. When I asked Jonathan why he had come back to talk to me, he said, "Something inside of me told me I needed to come back here and talk to God." There were tears in his eyes as he told me that there was so much wrong with the world. There was so much sin. I asked Jonathan if he had ever sinned. He began to break down in tears, admitting to the time he had brought a water bottle into class when he knew it wasn’t allowed. As we continued to talk, Jonathan told me he wanted to trust Jesus as his savior. When he bowed his head to pray, there was silence. He looked up at me and said. "I don’t know what to say." "Tell God what you told me," I urged. He prayed, confessing about the time he had disobeyed his teacher, and telling God that he believed Jesus had died on the cross and risen again to take the punishment for his sins. When he finished, he had to wipe his glasses on his shirt to clear the mist that had gathered. I had the privilege to give Jonathan his first Bible, and he carried it proudly back to club every day. That rainy Tuesday, God took everything that had gone so very wrong in my eyes, and used it for His honor and glory.