No Mountain too High or River too Wide
The children were slumped on the floor in the tiny house church, 200 of them packed into the cramped space, ventilated only by three grilled windows on one wall. Still dressed in their school uniforms, some had walked for several hours from their homes and farms, even crossing rivers, in a remote village in Northern Vietnam, eager to meet a guest who had come from another country.The Open Doors visitor asked the children to stand up and to stretch their hands as high as they could, as if they were trying to reach heaven. "You know, there is a better way to reach God in heaven and that is by doing this," the visitor explained, clasping both hands together in prayer. Without a pause, the children clasped their hands and prayed with their guest.
"What did you pray for?" the visitor later asked Sai,* who like many of the children belonged to a family of farmers working their own small plot of land. She had walked 50 kilometres that day to meet the Open Doors visitor, just as she did every week to attend Sunday School class.
"I prayed that God would help me become a full-time church worker someday," Sai replied.
Twelve-year-old Sai explained that she is already sharing what she knows about Jesus with her friends in the village and at school. And she is always happy when she is able to bring some of them to the Sunday School and to the Children’s Camps sponsored by Open Doors through her local church.
"But some children do not like what I tell them and they don’t want to be friends with me anymore," she said.
Several entire families in that region have come to faith in Christ through their children attending these camps and the Sunday School. But in other cases, children were beaten at home by their parents for attending Christian activities. According to Sunday School workers who have taken Open Doors teacher-training seminars, some children had resorted to sneaking out of their homes or even lying to their parents to attend the Children’s Camps.
Your faithful support has enabled Open Doors to produce, print and distribute the Illustrated Children’s Bible and as a result have given Sai and other Sunday School children in the North access to the Word of God. Each copy contains 365 stories from the Old Testament, one for each day of the year. Because printed copies are very limited, five or six children share one Bible. In some areas, a local church receives only one copy that Sunday School teachers can then read to the children.
*Pseudonym
SourceOpen Doors Newsletter February 2012