Planting Seeds

One of our roles as followers of Christ is to plant the seed of God’s Word into people’s hearts and minds. We can plant the seeds and give them water, but ultimately is it “God who gives the increase” (1 Cor 3:7). Whilst we’ve been here in Cambodia, one of our biggest projects has been to set up and run a BEC school programme for children to come and learn English through the Bible. Our aim has been to give as many children as possible the opportunity to learn about God and to encourage them to keep coming to Sunday school every week. 

When we first arrived in Cambodia, we spent a few weeks settling in, getting to know the existing Sunday School class and familiarising ourselves with how things run over here. We wanted to be able to encourage our sisters (who teach the Sunday school class) and give them more ideas for the continuation of Sunday school after we leave. 

We worked together as a team to create a plan for our 8 week school programme - our aim was to centre every lesson around God’s Word. We had lots of fun planning lessons together, making props, and designing different craft activities and worksheets for each lesson.

We created an advert which we gave to the children in the Sunday school class and also pinned up outside the BEC. Once school began though, we found more and more children wanting to come along because their friends had told them about us! Children who went to Khmer school in the mornings were able to come to our free English school in the afternoons.

It was wonderful to see the children bouncing through the open door of the BEC every day, greeting their teachers with huge smiles. We started each day with “Mat Time” - which included singing and phonics. The children enjoyed using their own mini whiteboards to practise forming English letters and words. We would then begin our first lesson of the day - Maths. We taught them about counting, shapes, fractions, telling the time, directions and measurement. Our aim was to use these maths themes to enhance the Bible stories as much as possible. For example, when we taught about Joseph, maths lessons were all about money and coins, and when we taught about Noah’s ark, we enjoyed having a go at the 2 times table! 

Once maths lesson was over, we would have a quick drinks break before moving on to the central part of the day - Bible Time! It was so refreshing to see their enthusiasm and willingness to learn, as we taught them stories from the Bible - which most of them had never heard of before! It was all very new and exciting for them. We introduced them to the Lord Jesus - teaching them about his miraculous birth, life, miracles and teachings, right through to his ultimate sacrifice and resurrection. One of the things I'll never forget is how shocked and saddened the children were to hear about how Jesus was crucified - you could see the anguish on their faces and the disbelief that anyone could hurt such a wonderful and good man. It touched our hearts to see their love for our Lord Jesus already through just a few short weeks of lessons. Their eyes lit up when we taught them about Jesus’ soon return to earth and the wonderful kingdom which he will set up - children playing in the streets of Jerusalem, with food for everyone and lots of friendly animals. The children thoroughly enjoyed painting their Kingdom visions and singing songs about the Kingdom. They were so good at listening carefully to the Bible stories and they asked some inquisitive questions! 

The children remembered the stories best when we did lots of acting and physical activities. During “Miracles Week” we had a picnic for the feeding of 5000; played some blind fold games for healing the blind man; and we wrapped the children in toilet paper for the raising of Lazarus. There was a lot of giggling when we got them to walk over a massive blue sheet for Jesus walking on the water. At the end of the week, when we did our recap, it was these stories they remembered the most! 

We also had a lot of fun with our final lesson of the day - Topic - using these to enhance their understanding of each Bible lesson even further. When teaching about the Parable of the Sower, our topic lesson was all about the life cycle of a plant, learning about why plants grow better on different grounds. Healing miracles were enhanced by topic lessons on the human body; and learning about different animals and colours fitted in perfectly with Noah’s Ark. We also enjoyed giving them a flavour of different Empires, to go alongside the story of Daniel in Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. 

Each day ended with the Lord’s Prayer, teaching them how to say it line by line with actions to help their understanding. By the end of the school programme, the children were able to say this prayer off by heart - so lovely to see! 

We found one of the best ways to teach the children English was through singing. We taught them several Bible songs, along with other songs to help them remember vocabulary from different topic lessons. It was always heart-warming to see their happy smiles as they waved goodbye at the end of each day and headed home, whilst cheerfully singing their freshly learnt songs. Sometimes we even heard them singing when we were leaving late at night! Their favourite song was “Sing Hosanna to the King of kings”.

It has been wonderful to work with such a fantastic team of teachers and translators - an experience never to be forgotten. I have loved seeing these children grow in their love for Bible characters and stories within God’s Word. It is our hope and prayer that they will want to continue coming to Sunday school to learn about God. If it is His will, the seeds planted in their young minds will continue to grow. 

More fieldworkers are needed! If you are interested in doing some missionary work or running a similar programme for children, feel free to get in touch with us - we’d be more than happy to help with planning and ideas!

Thank you so much to WCF for funding us on this trip.

Sister Ruth Legg (UK)

Along with Sisters Beth Palmer, Faith Jenkins and Bethany McGeorge.