March 24

AZ Canyon

Dear Friends,

Communicating the gospel to third grade Navajos can be a challenge.  As I have worked with my students this year, I have seen that the spirit world is something they are familiar with but not in a Biblical sense.  They are familiar with spirits.  They talk about skinwalkers and who has seen one.  (My 6^th graders were talking about skinwalkers this week also. When the only Anglo kid in the class said they were not real, one turned on him in fury and said, “You can’t know about it. You have not lived on the Reservation!”)  

They have a great reverence for nature and believe everything has a spirit.  In class we talk about God being a Spirit who is everywhere.  Steeped in the traditional pantheistic beliefs. they are taught that everything is God.  They have a hard time seeing the difference between ‘everything is God’ and that ‘God is a Spirit who is everywhere.'  Their understanding of the spiritual world is a world that is dark and dangerous.  Their world does not include a personal God who cares about them. 

Prayer Circle at Revival

The concept of the Trinity is one that is even difficult for kids growing up in evangelical families to grasp.  We realize we cannot understand everything about God, but my little friends are trying to understand this concept that is so foreign to them and far from what they have been taught by their families.  I talk about Jesus as God the Son.  They think of Jesus as god the sun.  I heard that this past week.  I talk about the Holy Spirit.  They think of evil spirits doing bad things. (And my older students pray in a superstitious way – asking God to make the day go slowly because they really want it to go quickly. Somehow, they don’t want to jinx it.)

 

Fellowship and Food

The students struggle with understanding the personal God of the Bible.  They wonder if He actually exists.  They can see the world around them, but they cannot see God.  This last week we talked about how we know there is a God.  We reviewed Systematic Theology 101 that God reveals himself through creation, His Word, and His Son.  This week we will study heaven and hell.  Several of the students are very flippant about the fact they are going to hell.  I do not want to scare them, but I want them to see the Biblical truth of the afterlife. 

Cool Kids

Please pray for me to have great wisdom in how to communicate effectively these Biblical truths to my students.  Please pray for one student who has been most vocal about going to hell, yet I can see that he is really thinking about this.  Pray that he will decide to follow Jesus.

Hiking

(The older students went to a two-day revival. I have not heard yet how that went and if any of the students have made decisions for Christ (most of them have not).

Love to you all,

P.S. Today I had on my lesson plan to teach about hell. Well, I had only 30% of my class here. The enemy does not want them to hear this lesson. Pray for the class as I teach them Biblical truth about hell tomorrow.