Loving Albania's Lost
The Resourceful Hearts Challenge
One conversation with a mother in Albania changed the meaning of the word “resourceful” for BMS World Mission worker, Mat Gregory, forever. It sparked the BMS Resourceful Hearts Challenge: an all-age activity in three easy steps. Want to inspire the children in your church to live wholeheartedly for God’s kingdom? Get everything you’ll need to take the challenge below.
Get kids in your church engaged with God’s work in Albania with the Resourceful Hearts Challenge. Take the challenge with kids in your all-age service, Sunday School, in a children’s talk or as a summer holiday craft. Step 1 is a story of Albania’s need, that you can tell children at the start of the activity. Step 2 is an inspiring challenge to all God’s people. And Step 3 ends with an easy craft to visually commit those ideas to memory, and to God.
Step 1: The story
Read this story at the start of your activity.
What are the things you do that make your family proud?
Maybe your mum or dad are really pleased when you get ready for school by yourself. Or your grandma is over the moon when you help her do the washing up. When we use skills like this to do something well, to help others or solve a problem, it’s known as “being resourceful”.
Let me tell you about a man called Mat, who works for BMS World Mission in Albania. He works at a community centre, helping some of the poorest people in the community. One way he helps is to support parents as they look after their children. One day, Mat asked the parents, “What are the things your children do that make you feel proud?” “What does the word ‘resourceful’ mean to you?” Mat knew what he would say: “I feel proud when my kids do their homework on their own.” Or, “My kids are resourceful when they tidy their room without being asked.”
But to the parents in Albania, being resourceful meant something else entirely. It meant taking scrap metal from the back of a broken fridge…
Forming friendships at the community centre has been crucial as Mat and the parents support each other in raising their children.
Step 2: The challenge
A challenge to change our perspective.
We’re fortunate in the UK. We have lots – food, the skills we learn at school, and enough money to get by. God tells us in the Bible that everything we have comes from him (James 1: 17). And we have a calling to use those gifts, those skills and those talents. A calling to show God’s love to people by putting them before ourselves. To be resourceful. Mat and his friends at the community centre in Albania have been doing that already. People who had to take food from the centre’s food bank in order to eat gathered together to give out free food at Christmas time. People with woodworking skills have gone round to fix broken things in their neighbours’ homes. And parents are making sure their children go to the preschool groups at the centre, instead of going out to beg, because they know education will give them a brighter future.
Parents are committed to giving their children opportunities they never had through the BMS-supported community centre.
So how can we join them, and use the resources we’ve been given to help others? Well, one easy way is to give to BMS work in Albania, which helps people like Mat to love and help other people in turn, and share the good news of Jesus with them. You can find out more here. Other ways don’t involve money at all!
Step 3: Resourceful hearts craft
Committing it to God.
a) Create the resourceful heart craft using an old coat hanger, or piece of copper wire. Follow the steps in the picture below to bend it into shape. You may need pliers, and be careful of sharp edges!
b) Ask the children to think of ideas of how they can be resourceful. Whether it’s praying for something, helping someone, sharing Jesus or being a loving friend, ask them to write it on some paper or masking tape, and stick it to the heart.
c) Hang the heart up somewhere where you can see it. Ask God to help the children use what they have to help others, and to be resourceful for him. Pray for the children of Albania and their parents, and for the work of Mat and other BMS World Mission workers. And thank God for Jesus, who gave up everything he had for us – even his life – so that we could know him.
Words by Hannah Watson, Editor of Engage magazine.
