To Be An Edwards: Homework Club

This year God has laid it on my heart to become more involved in the homework club ministry taking place at our apartments. Jake and I made a deal, I would go on Tuesdays, and he would go on Thursdays that way Landry is taken care of and at least one of us gets to go help. This year, we have been overwhelmed with around 20 (sometimes more, sometimes less) kids coming to the 2 bedroom apartment we have rented in the complex to receive a snack, small devotion, and help with their homework or fun game time. Organized chaos at its finest :)

I have to share about last weeks devotion time. We had just started talking to the children about Matthew's calling by Jesus to become a disciple and what it means when Jesus tell him "Follow me." Many of these children have limited knowledge of Jesus and his Love for them, but for the past year, many of these kids have become involved in Awana, went to our Children's camp and VBS during the summer, and are now attending Sunday School. So needless to say, we have a handful of children that are starting to get it!!! So, Mr. Wayne was leading the devotion time and he got to the part about Jesus saying "follow me" and Matthew leaving everything and following Christ. We had one little girl raise her hand and say, "Wait, so did Matthew HAVE to follow Jesus or did he CHOOSE to follow Jesus?" All the adults in the room made eye contact full of surprise and amazement. What an amazing question from a child that didn't even realize what a great question that was! It just goes to show that they are listening, and God is working, and He is allowing us to see small glimpses of the fruit that is resulting from this ministry!

Shortly after, I was helping another girl with her multiplication tables and she turned to me and said, "Do you think we can make T-shirts that say I LOVE JESUS on them?" She then told me she would like her name and a scripture on the back. I told her that sounded like an awesome idea and asked her if she could think of a scripture that might go well with the I LOVE JESUS phrase on the front. She said, "Well, I don't know a lot of scriptures, but I do remember one from Camp Sizzle that says love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." I exclaimed that I thought that was the perfect scripture! My heart melted.

I am just so excited to see what God does with these kids. Please keep us in your prayers, because its exciting to see such awesome progress, but there are a lot of needs that go behind all those moments. Pray for our students grades, many are coming needing help and are finding out several students are way behind where they should be for their grade. We make the best of our volunteers, but many times we are having to do 3 to 1 tutoring due to lack of volunteers! So pray that God would send dedicated help that can see past the chaos and have a heart to help and love these kids. Pray that over the next few months as we speak with businesses around town such as Walmart, HEB, Walgreens, and Bealls, that maybe we could get some valuable donations to help keep our costs down. And lastly, please pray that we can have more moments like the above stories! We have many kids starting to desire to commit their lives to Christ, which is exciting, but we need guidance on how to lead them correctly and gently towards Christ! Thank you all!

Here are few pics of what goes on every Tuesday and Thursday!