PEPEs are pre-school education programmes, run by local churches. They help children from deprived communities who would otherwise find it very difficult to enter the local educational system with any chance of success. BMS mission workers are involved in training PEPE teachers.
Please pray for PEPEs – for the children and their parents, the PEPE teachers and their trainers, and also the local churches and communities.
Here is an encouraging story from a PEPE in Brazil:
A five year-old girl from the local PEPE got home one day to find her mother crying. Her parents had had a fight and her father had left, abandoning them. The girl’s mother started swearing at the girl, saying that now she didn’t have her father to help earn money and pay for the fees. The girl stood up to her mother, telling that she had learnt in the PEPE that you shouldn’t use swearwords, but you can ask Jesus for things and he is powerful and hears us. She urged her mother to pray that her father would come back home. As she had been taught in the PEPE, the girl said the words of a prayer and got her mother to repeat them after her.
Early the next morning the father came home saying that all night he had heard his daughter’s voice in his head calling him back home. Her parents were reconciled, and on Mother’s Day the girl’s mother went along to church and decided to follow Christ.
The PEPE programme was set up in 1992 by BMS worker
Georgie Christine. Now there are over 300 PEPEs, in 12 countries across Latin America and Africa.