Prayer Letter

JIGZONE - The Missing Piece
HOLIDAY BIBLE CLUB 2001

Have you ever done a 100 piece or even a 1,000 piece jigsaw, only to find that the last and final piece was MISSING?! We have all felt the frustration and discouragement, after all that hard work!!

If your life was a jigsaw puzzle, which piece would you mark as the 'most important piece' - the one piece that makes YOUR 'puzzle' complete?

JIGZONE Holiday Bible Club was all about 'that piece' - that piece that makes our lives complete - GOD.

Miss Inga Peese (there's a play on words there) joined us for three days to show us quite visually that NOTHING ELSE can fit the space that is intended for God. By Friday, she had found her missing piece.

We collected jigsaws for months and came up with clever ways to use them. Many of you have wondered what we were going to do with them. But to give you an idea now - we painted hundreds of them to use for crafts like the puzzle frame and puzzle badges (pins), and the rest ended up as prayer cards, thank you cards, name tags, the Missing Piece game, stencils for T-shirt painting, posters for the walls, prizes, and many were just used as puzzles.

All three days were full of activity - The Bible dramas were great fun to do - the Rich Young Ruler, the Parable of the Great Banquet and Daniel Disobeys the King. We played active games, made puzzle crafts and answered questions during 'Small Talk' time. There were great songs with actions and a theme song with it's own jig written by our minister, Jim Collins. The children wrapped up the day with quizzes, trivia games, overhead stories and Miss Inga.

We ended the week with the JIGZONE Cafe and Talent Show. All the children were invited to come serve teas and coffees or present 'their talent' to their parents and other church folk who were invited. We only had three parents and two folks from church come out, along with all the helpers, but it was still such a great evening and lots of fun for those who were there and for those who participated. You can pray about this lack of parental involvement.

"Only" 25 children in total came over the three days, but as there are so many ways to see God's blessing, the small number wasn't a discouragement.............

...........New helpers were 'trained' for next year; all the children who came were sad to see it end with most of them praying to ask Jesus to be the most important piece of their lives; they were all ministered to; and Vicki was encouraged to write a JIGZONE Holiday Bible Club Resource Book for other church leaders, as she created the idea for this Club.

Pray for the information mentioned above, but could we ask you to pray specifically for the following children and their needs that we were made aware of during club?......

• PETER, 5, who vividly told us of his father's recent death - he had God's fatherly love shared with him.
• TOM, 6, who was happy to tell me that he had asked Jesus into his life. He has a Christian grandmother and uncle, but non-Christian parents.
• DANIEL, 10, very excited about the songs and helping us out wherever possible; he hung around our house a lot that week. He comes from a non-Christian family.
• RYAN, 13, and MATTHEW, 12, both willing and keen helpers at JIGZONE, both stated on a questionnaire that they prayed to ask Jesus into their lives; They both spend a lot of time with us and both are from non-Christian families.
• SHELBY, 9, and ADAM, 10 Both said 'NO' to praying and to wanting to learn more about being a Christian. They participated in all activities and had such a good time.

All of the children had 'seed' planted in their hearts as the gospel was presented many times and in many ways. Please pray for ALL of them to be 'good soil', keeping in mind that just about all of them come from non-Christian homes. Also, pray that we as leaders will know which kind of follow-up to do for these children. There are SO many possibilities!!

THANK YOU for all of your prayers for us and for the children of Dartmouth.

Mitch and Vicki Spangler
Aaron and Heather

We need more activity like this for our children so that they don't end up down in the town running around like the rest of them.....
- Barbara, mother of Suna, 7yrs old

I wish we could have JIGZONE every day.
- our very own Heather :)

The best thing about JIGZONE was the crafts and being with friends.
- Whitney, age 6