On March 26 I led a short-term ministry team from Child Evangelism Fellowship of South Dakota! A team from CEF of SD came to Provo last year and God used them to reach many children in the primary schools. This year they came to Grand Turk, the capitol island of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Grand Turk is very different than Provo, as it is much smaller (only about 7 sq. miles) and only has about 5,000 people.

Grand Turk is also the cruise ship port!

With Grand Turk being the capitol island, we felt strongly that we needed to reach out to the children and churches, expanding on past efforts in 2014 and 2015. We are still praying that God will raise up a local Turks & Caicos Islander to lead the CEF ministry and we are praying for board members that are passionate about seeing the children of TCI reached with the Gospel!

Here’s what we were praying for the trip:

1. Reach children during their Easter break through 5-Day Clubs and through partnership with local churches.
2. Train local Bible teachers and equip them.
3. Cast the vision of reaching children in TCI with as many people as possible.

Friday:

I arrived ahead of time to make sure everything was situated properly, get groceries, etc. Also, before my flight to Grand Turk, I picked up 50lbs worth of CEF literature (printed freely courtesy of the Revival Movement), so that we could give it away at our teacher training night. I was also able to spend time and catch up with my good friend Raymond, an elder at Harvest Bible Chapel – TCI. My flight to GT was delayed, but I was bumped up to an earlier flight that was late, so I left at the same time I was supposed to leave ;-).

Saturday:

The team from CEF of SD arrived! They had a very long couple days of travel with very little sleep, so we kept it simple on Saturday and planned for them to rest that afternoon.

I was also reminded just how involved daily life is on a small island, as that afternoon I had to go to four different places to get water, food and ice!

Sunday:

Though we were all away from our families, it was a blessing to spend Easter Sunday with our brothers and sisters in Christ at Salem Baptist Church. It was joyful to worship together as one people from different nations, and Pastor Chad Archbold clearly and powerfully shared from God’s Word. One memorable statement he made that morning to the congregation was “Children are not things you dress up and take to church, they are the next generation of worshippers“. Amen!

(L-R) Pastor Chad, Nick Hauck, Hannah Cleveland, Blake Mendel, Kendra Baltzer, Sean Miller

I took them on a tour as well…and they got to see the Grand Turk Lighthouse!

Astronaut John Glenn landed in Grand Turk in 1962!

The team had fun seeing everything!

Monday:

Our first day of ministry through 5-Day Clubs was one that reminded us of God’s plans vs. man’s plans! We were quickly reminded of how hard it is to get children to come out on a holiday (Easter Monday), and actually did not have children at any of the clubs that day. We did however double our efforts of promotion, canvasing the neighborhoods, putting up flyers around town, and we went to Salem Baptist Church’s Easter Monday Funday!

Drawing/Designing the posters

This was a great part of the day as we were able to see and talk with many kids and parents…

…and even spending time playing soccer with the children!

Also on Monday, we also had the first of a few “visitors”….

The Caribbean Giant Centipede, which can get to be over a foot long!

5-Day Club visitor

Driving the infamous Grand Turk wild donkeys out of the yard…they would wake us up at 5am braying!

Tuesday:

This was our “true” first day of 5-Day Club ministry, and we had 52 children between all three club locations!

As the Gospel went forth, a child about 12 years old came back for counseling saying: “I thought you had to do good things to go to heaven”. You could see the Holy Spirit working in his heart, and by God’s grace he professed faith in Jesus Christ as His Savior! He now knows that it is through Jesus alone that one is saved!

Wednesday:

As we came to the middle of the week, we were glad to see new children come to the 5-Day Clubs, and we went to Salem Baptist Church that evening for Bible Study. Another church member was there, and we spent time outside discussing the Gospel, life, ministry and the vision for reaching the children of the TCI! None of us knew that church had actually been canceled for that evening, but we were thankful that God allowed us all to have that hour and a half or so on the church porch.

Thursday:

Such a joy to teach these children and also introduce some fun games before 5-Day Club begins!

A version of “Duck, Duck, Goose”, except with a cup of water!

In addition to continued clubs, we scheduled a teacher training for Thursday night. We had representatives from the two public primary schools at the training, and equipped them with a TON of free CEF resources! We found out as well that from the materials given away in January, children were using the CEF 60-Day Devotional Book to lead their school-wide devotions! Kids reaching their peers! Praise God for how He is using these materials to communicate His Word in surprising ways!

Thankful as well to partner again with The Gospel Coalition International Outreach—the team brought down a case of John Piper’s Finally Alive book to give to these teachers.

We also frequented the local Grand Turk fish fry that is every Thursday night…people thought we were tourists at first but then many of the kids ran up to us! They were so excited to see us at the fish fry, and were helpful at showing us the best booths to get food and snacks at!

Friday:

We got to the last day of 5-Day Clubs, and were encouraged by the parent’s comments on how the children appreciated coming to club. One parent said: “I know y’all are trained for this, but I really appreciated how the team was able to keep the children’s attention. I even enjoyed the club as an adult.”

Saturday:

As we flew over to Providenciales to make our final flights off island back to the USA, the team had a couple hours of a layover (I had about five hours) so we rented a car. I gave them a short tour of Provo and even grabbed a few of the incredible pastries at Crust Bakery.

Final team picture, taken on beautiful Grace Bay!

After I dropped them off, I was able to spend time with the Cox family of Harvest Bible Chapel, discussing the trip and the future of CEF in the TCI.

All in all God used the CEF of SD team to teach the very first 5-Day Clubs in this capitol island of Grand Turk! Apart from the most important results of 66 children being reached with the Gospel and local Bible teachers being equipped, this pioneering trip led to key TCI government and education leaders hearing about CEF for the first time through their children attending the 5-Day Clubs.

We continue to pray that God would raise up national board members and local staff in the TCI, the ministry still has a long way to go before it is fully established locally but this was a key step in ministry development.

Glory to God alone!

“Let them give glory to the LORD and proclaim his praise in the islands.” – Isaiah 42:12

We give God praise for what He did during this past trip back to the Turks and Caicos Islands!

This specific CEF ministry development trip had four main objectives:

1. Take care of “behind the scenes” administrative and logistical matters
2. Distribute recently cleared CEF materials to local churches
3. Train local Bible teachers for ministry to children
4. Prepare for the upcoming short-term ministry trip to Grand Turk

First, there were a number of things that needed to be taken care of on island. The biggest thing was that when we left Turks and Caicos in August 2015, we had left all the CEF TCI materials and equipment in a storage unit that had been paid through December 2015. Keeping the materials in storage long-term is a huge ministry cost that we did not want to continue incurring, so we are incredibly grateful for Harvest Bible Chapel opening up one of their storage rooms to us. HBC was the church we were a part of when we lived on island, and this also makes the materials more easily accessible when we need to distribute them. All of the previous and newly cleared CEF TCI material was moved during this trip.

The material in the new space at HBC! Still needs to be organized better, but that can be a later trip.

Secondly, CEF TCI received its first shipment from The Revival Movement! The Revival Movement is an amazing organization in Northern Ireland that helps CEF globally with the printing of our curriculum to equip churches in ministry to children.

No that’s not Irish butter…it’s free CEF curriculum!

During this trip, I was able to equip people from 20 different churches on 5 different islands with 914 different pieces of CEF curriculum and children’s materials! Out of those 914 pieces, 292 pieces were lessons and flashcards, a year’s worth of teacher’s packs! This is truly “above and beyond all we can ask or imagine”!

Material about to go on a boat headed to North & Middle Caicos!

There are still more churches to give these teacher’s packs to, but this distribution during this trip means that a large majority of the Bible-believing churches in the Turks & Caicos Islands now have Gospel-centered curriculum to use in their children’s ministries. Many churches have to scrounge for good materials, or import them on island at high cost and a long wait. What a joy it was to freely give them away to people that both values them and will use them!

Here are a few testimonies!

Sivil said: “I would love to have some more materials to work with in the Children’s Ministries at my Church.  The last stack of materials I received from you turned out to be very helpful and useful in our ministry.”

Gerilane said: “I remember CEF material being used at my church as a child when some missionaries came…I was so happy when I saw that CEF was getting started here…we must get into the schools, we don’t know how much longer we will have these open doors!”

I also had the privilege of training local Bible teachers in ministry. Bethany Baptist Church, a fantastic church that we have partnered with in the past, desires to start an after-school Good News Club in the spring! I was able to meet with most of the team (four people were able to come), building upon the training they had already received.

Training at Bethany Baptist

Grand Turk preparation was the fourth objective of this past trip back to the TCI. We have the privilege of hosting a short-term ministry team from CEF of South Dakota again this year, and we are focusing in on the capitol island of Grand Turk.

Grand Turk is very flat, and it is where the cruise ships come, so you can see them from almost everywhere!

Over the course of the two days I was there, I realized that our initial ministry plans of school-based ministry needed to change. However, with the children being on Easter holiday, we have the opportunity to partner more with local churches and teach 5-Day Clubs!

Ona Glinton Primary School in Grand Turk

This will allow greater discipleship to take place with the children and also build better relationships with teachers and leaders in the Grand Turk community!

I ended up needing to rent a car (right hand drive) in Grand Turk…the roads are much more narrow!

Lastly, it was an eye-opening experience to be back in Turks & Caicos. It was the first time in our new missionary role to come back to a country that we used to live in. It is hard to explain, but I felt the same there as I do back in the USA. It was encouraging because there are so many friends there in TCI that love, pray and care for our family. Even when I was in Grand Turk, I walked up unannounced to a school that I had not been to in a year, and one of the teachers looked at me and said “Hi Sean!” Even after a year, people in Grand Turk still remembered the training conference that was held, and she also asked how the girls were doing.

I had the great privilege of sharing God’s Word at Harvest Bible Chapel Sunday morning. I also was able to distribute 9 ESV Global Study Bibles to local elders and pastors of 5 churches! This was through our ministry partnership with The Gospel Coalition-International Outreach and Crossway Publishing!

Giving an ESV Global Study Bible to my friend and local pastor Pedro Williams of the Jericho Baptist Church. He actually just published his own book “Walking By Faith and Not By Sight“!

All in all, the trip was encouraging, an answer to prayer and helped lay a foundation for locally led ministry in the future.

Keep praying for the Turks and Caicos Islands!

March 13-21 we had the privilege of hosting our first TCI short-term ministry team! A team of four from Child Evangelism Fellowship in South Dakota flew down on their Spring Break to teach children the Gospel.

View from the plane!

This team went to five public and private primary schools right here in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos.

(L-R Kendra Baltzer, Hannah Cleveland, Savanah Gross, Shelby Reid)

They would teach in the morning assembly,

Morning assembly at Oseta Jolly Primary School

Teach a short object lesson classroom by classroom,

 Shelby and Savanah teaching at Precious Treasures—do you see Maddy?

Give away a CEF “Meet the King” booklet for kids to read with their parents,

Then come back in the afternoon to teach an after-school “Party Club”!

They taught the CEF lesson entitled “The Secret of the Watermelon”, therefore the kids (and us!) ate a lot of watermelon that week! The watermelon often seemingly multiplied in a “loaves and fishes” kind of way to be the exact amount needed per party club.

They also taught a teacher training class at Harvest Bible Chapel here in Turks and Caicos!

They worked really hard to teach children in the heat, but they also got to have a little bit of fun in Provo!

Thankfully, other than a case of sun poisoning and also Mandi badly burning her hand (she quickly recovered), there were no major issues that happened…we really could see God protecting the team as they were here! Also, everything they did was with a long-term focus and with the right attitude. Mandi and I have a passion for effective short-term ministry teams. The team from CEF of South Dakota (and the teams we hosted in St. Kitts) was and has been the epitome of excellent short-term ministry teams.

Children being counseled!

In all:

1,818 children were reached across five primary schools

Each of those 1,818 children received their very own “Meet the King” booklet.

370 children attended the after-school party clubs

12 of those 370 children were counseled as they made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ

8 teachers were trained

100+ primary school teachers were publicly thanked in each classroom and given a “What is the Gospel?” nice hardback book courtesy of “Packing Hope”, a theological resource ministry by The Gospel Coalition. They also received a copy of an “Impact” magazine by CEF.

It was such a joy to recognize the teachers of the children at each school and give them gifts; they consistently were so surprised that we thought about them!

Additionally, we now have plenty of CEF “High Octane” club supplies on island now, laminated song visuals, and a plethora of other teaching resources they brought down! We are so thankful for the team coming and everyone who prayed and supported the team so that they could come and assist us in the new CEF ministry here.

This trip will continue to (and has already!) yield much fruit for eternity from this Turks and Caicos mission trip!